The GOPe types have lost all credibility with me. Conservative has nothing to do with them, hasn't for decades.
A long time ago, in a different forum, I started a thread with a simple question: "what makes an individual a conservative?"
Mind you, this was posted in a conservative forum.
Within a matter of twenty posts or so, the fights broke out, with everyone basically saying that everyone else posting their definition of what conservatism was to them, and the ideology's parameters wasn't a "true" conservative.
"Conservatism" is a narrow definition created by each individual that you ask to suit their own ideas of how things should be.
I consider myself as being very much a conservative, but since I am also very strongly socially liberal, most social conservatives label me a liberal, even radically liberal.
I defend my socially liberal ideas by saying that i promote personal liberties over conservative statism since in my definition of conservatism there is no room for statism at all.
The GOP is not, nor was it ever supposed to be as conservative as the most conservative ideologies found in the right. The GOP is made up of a wide array of center-right ideologies all with a seat at the table, and with the right wing of the party both diminishing in size and moving even further right, there is massive dissonance in the Party itself.
Mind you that however "not conservative" you may see the GOP as being, the absence of the GOP will spell disaster for this nation.
