Time to make Lemonade, not Political Kool Aid

Pat's had some good posts at his blog the past week. Today he had these:

Party-poopers vs lemonade-makers

It has some excerpts from today's column by Jonah Goldberg, in which he responds to criticisms that Michelle Malkin made about his column yesterday that had an agreeable bi-partisan tone. Malkin claimed she would rather be a "crank" than agree with Goldberg. It's worth following the link to read Goldberg's comments and Pat's comments too, about "shrill permanently outraged conservatives". I left the following comment on the post:

Malkin most certainly is a crank, which is why I'll probably end up delinking her from my blog. She still makes some good arguments, but plenty of other conservatives do the same thing without the shrillness. Her commentary also seems to be increasingly petty.

How many conservatives are going to be suffering from Obama Derangement Syndrome for the next 4 to 8 years, beating the shrillness drum? If that's the way it's going to be, then maybe bringing back the fairness doctrine wouldn't be such a bad thing. Then at least, we may get some level-headed conservative commentary interjected into the mainstream media, aimed at ordinary folks who aren't particularly ideological.

I find the ideological shrillness of the right to be just as tiresome as the dopey knee-jerk emotionalism of the left.

It's time to make Lemonade, not Kool Aid. I'll be focusing my efforts regarding political posts on listening to and promoting what the adults are talking about. Kool Aid is for kids at best; at worst, it's for suicide cults.

For years I've heard conservatives joke about the Left drinking the political equivalent of arsenic-laced Kool Aid. It would be too ironic if the Right now starts doing the same, and can't see it.

For eight years, the Democrats were the "shrill" party, always against whatever the Republicans were doing, more than being "for" something positive.

Then came Obama. All the flowery speeches. You can say whatever you like about those speeches, but they were never shrill. But the criticism of his speeches often was.

I did a post a while back:

The Real Winner of the 2008 Election: Optimism

It went into detail about the optimism factors in elections, and even methods of measuring optimism in presidential campaigns, including the most recent one.

McCain tried hard to run an optimistic campaign, but the shrill segment of the party pushed him hard to be more negative, to attack more. He gave in to it periodically.

The final analysis for the 2008 election showed that Obama had a higher optimism factor in his campaign, and of course he won.

Too many people in the Republican party today are drinking the Kool Aid of shrillness. It didn't work well for the Democrats, and it won't be any better for us. Please folks, find a better political beverage. I recommend starting with the Lemonade. Sugar to taste as needed.


Related Links:

What W thinks about O

“To Don’t” List for the Right

No use crying over spilt milk