Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Ltd.

Quick point about a quote from Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) (from Time magazine, May 18, 2008, p. 24)

“We’re excluding the young, minorities, environmentalists, pro-choice – the list goes on. Ideological purity is not the ticket to the promise land.”

Problems with this quote:

1) Snowe commits one of the greatest offenses of the left: group everybody up instead of treating them as individuals. As a writer, I’m personally offended by her grouping of unlike things, but it is also an ideological problem. First, the young and minorities are two “groups” that have things in common that have little to do with beliefs and ideas. There are conservative young people, liberal young people, and moderate young people. There are conservative minorities, liberal minorities, and moderate minorities. Environmentalism and pro-choice are ideological positions, and they lead us to point two:

2) What is the point of having a political party if there isn’t a common ideology? People that believe and think as the majority of Democrats do should be Democrats. Perhaps Senator Snowe could explain why she’s a Republican? You see, a party cannot represent everyone; if it could, there would only be one political party. Certainly there will be disagreements in a party, but in general those disagreements are not over fundamental ideological principals; otherwise, the party should split, just as the Democratic-Republicans did in the early 1800s.

A large part of point number two is that different people have different priorities. For example, I am pro-life, but that is not my number one consideration in voting for a political candidate. The issue may make a difference in choosing between two candidates who are otherwise very similar, but I am not going to vote for a socialist who happens to be pro-life. If the abortion issue is your primary issue, then you have a clear choice: pro-lifers vote Republican, pro-choicers vote Democrat. Let’s say, however, that someone is more concerned with limiting government spending, lower taxes, greater economic freedom, and national security than they are abortion, but they happen to be, if pressed, pro-choice. This person should (and usually does) vote Republican also because their priorities.

None of this requires that the Republican party change its ideology; it simply needs to know how to get its message out there.