CRASS CONSERVATIVES: Embarrassing Themselves, Hurting Our Cause

With troubling regularity, I recall a humorous cartoon I spotted some thirty years ago: A bunch of angry protesters are stomping around a sidewalk, holding strident placards. To one side, a rather more analytical participant silently frumps about the proceedings: Sometimes I don’t like the people who are on my side. 

Sentiments that have become familiar to me over the years — and, lately, percolating up more and more… 

Is it just me, or is the “slob-factor” deepening among those of us boasting Constitutional conservative bona fides? Along with the worst of Barack Obama’s outrages, must we add his stirring up the worst in not a few of his ideological adversaries?  Tarring the entire limited-government, low-tax/regulation, pro-family, pro-military, law-and-order, patriotic movement in the process? 

Of course, I’m thoroughly acquainted with gobs of fellow “right-wingers” who are good people, thoughtful, decent to-the-bone. Many of them committed followers of Jesus Christ, who unapologetically live out their faith.

Then there are the occasional — but annoyingly clamorous —  dolts who besmirch the reputation of the rest of us by responding moronically to today’s “Progressive” tsunami.

Examine any sizable cohort of homo sapiens, and you’re guaranteed to find at least a smattering of homo idiotis. Medical associations, religious denominations, social organizations, political aggregations? Even on the best days, therein lie at least a handful of villains, chuckle-heads, oafs.  

Perhaps among the anti-Obama set the genuine clods are merely an infinitesimal sampling; but this minority assuredly embarrasses themselves; and along the way, hobbles the conservative cause to which they cling like odoriferous barnacles.

— There’s iconoclastic, former New Hampshire Republican state representative Steve Vallaincourt who, during the just expired midterm election campaign, called one female Democratic candidate “ugly as sin…more like a drag queen than most men in drag.” To underscore his declaration, he emphasized how fetching was her lady Republican adversary. 

Reportedly and  Incongruously, this women’s-appearance-obsessed pol is an outspoken homosexual. Although, that doesn’t make his ham-handed observations any less distasteful. 

— An Idaho resident and decided non-fan or our current Chief Executive celebrated Halloween this year by impaling an Obama mask on a pole in his front yard. ” ‘I’ve got the Grim Reaper on the ATV, and Obama’s head is on the spear and he has been decapitated,’ Richard Piersol proudly tells KBOI-TV.”

I’d presume we’re dealing with a ten- or eleven-year-old homeowner — except that, besides the flagrant childishness of his stunt,  there’s nothing to indicate as much in the news coverage.

— Not quite as tactless — or clueless — but bad enough, is the Edmond, OK Halloweener who mocked up a graveyard in front of his house, complete with a tombstone featuring Obama’s name.  A particularly ghoulish touch was the red rivulets (blood?)  trickling down from the letters. 

A question mark was painted where the interred’s birthdate should have been, suggesting the prankster was spoofing the multiple questions surrounding our fifty-three-year-old president’s mysterious background. The casual bystander, mind you, would be forgiven for concluding the point was a public wish for Obama’s demise.

— Did you know for around $7 you can purchase a roll of “Barack Obama Toilet Paper“. Or, if you prefer, the Hillary Clinton brand? Each two-ply square sports their respective visage and — as one advertisement gleefully promises — is “[p]rinted throughout the entire roll and fully functional”.

Classy. 

What next? Fart or poopy jokes? 

I’m old-school: there are some things gentlemen simply don’t say about/do to a lady — even if her initials are HRC. I wouldn’t cast a ballot to move Hillary into the Oval Office, but that doesn’t mean I want her demeaned in such cloacal ways. She’s a fellow human being, someone’s wife and mother. Does it make me a sexist taking that into account? If yes – so be it. 

When the go-to option too reflexively becomes crass, mean-spirited insult-dropping or mocking the First Couple’s — or Pelosi’s or Reid’s or any Lefty’s — appearance, versus a well-crafted take down of their venemous philosophies? It might be time to re-evaluate one’s expository techniques.

The proportions of our president’s ears or of his wife’s bottom are beyond irrelevant for the purposes of serious discussion. What really matters? What’s between those ears or the bottom-line of her influential viewpoints. Commentators who fixate on the former concerns, instead of the latter, generally disqualify their other insights from substantive consideration. 

I admit, my reactions toward radio-talker Glenn Beck can oscillate wildly between approving head-bobbing as his daily program mutters in the background, to growling he doesn’t know what he’s expounding on. Still, one heroic observation the fifty-year-old Mormon opinionator has recently been offering insistently — okay, preachily — with which I take no issue is: we political and cultural conservatives need take pains we don’t junk basic, personal decorum while we’re trashing the Left’s fecklessness and taking up the banner of rescuing our degenerating society.

It’s a plangent warning which, I grievously confess, many of my fellow patriots — heartbreakingly including voluble “Christian” patriots — are either not hearing; or hearing but muleishly not heeding. There’s no denying, they, and our “cause”, are the poorer for it. 

Contrast Beck to former talk-radio luminary G. Gordon Liddy, whose now defunct syndicated program was an early ’90’s, weekday staple for me. When “the G-Man” openly enthused about his taking shooting practice on targets fashioned like then-White House occupants Bill and Hillary Clinton? Dumb — shockingly dumb. Particularly so for a fellow as accomplished and conspicuously intelligent as Liddy — who plainly allowed his sometimes overblown machismo to get the better of his discretion for one puncturingly ill-consdered on-air moment. Liddy’s reputation, career and the credibility of his otherwise perceptive critiques suffered a set back from which, conceivably, he never recovered.

Conservative efforts to take back our nation face all kinds of impediments. Self-imposed set backs we don’t need.

To the louts who, commendably, stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me against Obamacare, lawlessness, overweening government, baby-killing, etc, I say: knock off the elective and counterproductive churlishness. Think twice. Grow up.

We can’t afford to put up with your antics. 

Image: Courtesy of shutterstock