YOUNG COSERVATIVES - What It Means To Be A Young, Moderate Conservative.

"At the very furthest extremes, both parties would have us living in dirt floor huts, reading books by candlelight."  

First things first: I think we reached our saturation point for all things election-related sometime around two months ago, and so for whatever degree of fatigue this brings you, I apologize. But I also specifically waited until after the election before sharing my thoughts, a) because it’s not my or AskMen’s job to influence anyone’s politics and b) to hopefully avoid an onslaught from rabid Obama supporters looking to defend their candidate. It’s over; he won. There’s nothing left to support or defend.

Growing up when and where I did, in a very red time in a typically very red state, supporting the Republican party meant something very different than what it does today. I knew no one from the country club set, no WASPs or corporate bigwigs. No one I knew was particularly religious -- at least no more fanatic than attending church on Sundays. Nobody was gay (at least not openly), though for kids growing up in the South, homosexuality became a flashpoint topic right around the first time someone called you a “fag” in middle school. No one’s voting preferences depended on any of that social stuff. Calling yourself a Republican was a way of telling the world that you worked for your success, that you believed in the spirit of capitalism and you weren’t a fan of excessive government spending. Voting Democrat was for the effete, the uninitiated and anyone looking for a government handout.

Fast-forward to today, and now the Republican party is about as attractive as prison rape. Frankly, I’m relieved that the election is over, because it marked the end of a six-month stretch in which mentioning that I tended to vote for Republican candidates placed me in what many people consider an untouchable caste. I’m tired of the smugness, the condescension and people acting as though my support for certain tenets of conservatism is an insult to their intelligence. I’ve been called, without provocation, a racist, a misogynist and a homophobe. “Oh, you’re a Republican? You must want to take us back to the 1950s,” people would say, ignoring the fact that at the very furthest extremes, both parties would have us living in dirt-floor huts, reading books by candlelight. The only difference would be the choice of book. Some friends would say things like, “I have a brain, so I’m voting for human rights.”

No, you smug f*ck. You’re voting for the POTUS. But that’s the problem with being a modern Republican. Some racists are Republican, so all Republicans must be racist. We all must hate gay people. We all think women are best kept barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. Republicans are only Republicans because they want to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. It sounds ridiculous when I say it like that, but those are the notions and attitudes of many people I encounter, and they don’t even realize that what they’re suggesting might be insensitive (or incorrect).

Were I to say that all Democrats are a bunch of queer hippies looking to abolish the very idea of private industry, of course that would be just as ridiculous. The difference is, that would get the same reception a white guy would get if he dropped the n-word doing stand-up at the Apollo.

As the election was wrapping up, pundits noted the closeness of the popular vote and were quick to suggest that it was proof of how divided America is. That’s fine for them, and expected, because there’s no story to report on if there’s no element of contention. The truth, though, is that a two-party system leads to less polar division, not more. And to me the popular vote is proof not of a divided America, but a confused one.

When a candidate can appear on national television saying that he’ll raise taxes and still manage to win (call Michael Dukakis and ask him how well that worked out), that's a sign that voters are dealing with a lot of internal conflict. That is, most of us (yes, even us Republicans stuck in the dark ages) agree that we want the kind of progressive social policies the Democrats campaigned on so successfully. It’s impossible to logically argue against gay marriage. Anyone who’s ever had a job that required interacting with the public is probably OK with abortions. Larger issues, like immigration, fiscal and foreign policy are more complex and worthy of ideological debate. Those are the issues I vote on, and the reason I count myself as a conservative. The problem, though, is that for the average, modern conservative, it’s almost impossible for us to get a candidate who represents the whole package of what we’re looking for. 

"If you have a friend who’s a conservative, cut him some slack."  

That smallest part of the Republican electorate is also the biggest problem. Democratic primary candidates are free to tiptoe as far toward the center as they want and only be as liberal as they need. Republicans, on the other hand, have to battle it out in a race to the bottom to see who can ignite the kind of core voter who participates in a Republican primary election. They’re forced to avoid the center, and the near-misses by Rick Santorum and Rick Perry are proof that it’s almost impossible to go too far to the right. For the Republican candidate to have a shot, he has to creep back toward the center, which the opposition will hammer him on, relentlessly. Abortion, gay marriage and other questions that shouldn’t even be a presidential candidate’s domain create a trail of ideological flip-flops that are hard to dig out of, and all to appease a portion of the electorate that will vote for the candidate wearing the red tie no matter what. Candidates with a sincere, consistently moderate social stance would fare much better, but the core right won’t let them see daylight. Just look at how many presidential nominations Ron Paul’s won, for instance.

It’s disheartening to have to vote for a less than ideal candidate, but on the big issues, the issues that truly affect me, I refuse to compromise my principles. As insensitive as it might sound, I’m a white, straight, middle-class male, and the social stuff just doesn’t affect me much -- the POTUS doesn’t really have a lot to do with those things anyway (I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to explain to friends that the president cannot wave his hands and magically grant marriage privileges for our gay friends). Instead, I don’t believe in spending our way out of a recession, I favor maintaining a strong military and I don’t believe that the solution to the immigration problem is to encourage more immigration. It’s awfully hard to defend the party on the basis of policy when factions of it are having more difficulty with the meaning of the word “rape” than Clinton did with the word “is,” but it’s our cross to bear.

The moral is, if you have a friend who’s a conservative, cut him some slack. He doesn’t like the status quo any more than you do. No, we’re not thrilled that Obama won the election, but we will happily perform abortions at your gay wedding reception. I will hire two hookers, one male and one female, and pay them equally after making sure the female one has access to adequate contraceptives. We just happen to have some divergent, albeit legitimate, views on the bigger, more complicated issues. It doesn’t make us foolish or stupid. It makes us people. After all, if there was a single, perfect ideology, we’d all just go with that one.

Next time you encounter conservatives, rather than call them names or dismiss their beliefs as uninformed or archaic, maybe listen to what they have to say. And give them a hug maybe, also. It’s been a tough year for us.