The One Loss Every Campaign Should Welcome

One sure sign that the presidential campaigns are starting sooner and sooner every four years.

It’s only February, at this writing, as a matter of fact, it’s Super Tuesday and I’m already ready to vote and get it over with.

Not just the primaries.

I mean the whole tuh-mata.

Because the thought of having to listen to five more minutes of droning by the various “commentators” and “political experts” and “voices of the people” makes me wish my parents were Jose Feliciano and Marlee Matlin.

See no idiots. Hear no idiots.

And speaking of Ann Coulter…

Before I start bashing the blonde, though, let me offer up that which I promised you in the title of this piece.

The one loss that every campaign should welcome.

Labels.
Conservative, liberal, moderate, left of center, right of center, ad nauseum.
Who the hell cares?
Idiots and commentators.
Which, I admit, could very well be redundant.
Present company excepted, of course.
There is an old saying, “The Lord takes care of fools and drunks.”
I think we should add idiots and commentators to that.
Somebody has to look out for these clowns.
Lord only knows.

And what, you ask, rightly so, has my political tail feathers all pointy and standing up on end today?

The way the “conservative” commentators are ganging up on John McCain.

First of all, I’m neither here nor there, at this point, on John McCain as a candidate. My interest has been pretty much focused on Hillary and Barack. For now, that’s where all the zing and ping of this year’s race is going on.
The Republican contest looks right now to be the B-side of the hit single.
I’m sure it’s got it’s own little groove, but I’ll listen to it later.
Thing is, though, I am reading that the “conservative” Republican voices are whining, in ever louder tones, that McCain isn’t “conservative” enough.
Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Hugh Hewitt, Lars Larson and the usual suspects are getting more vocal about their concerns that McCain doesn’t hit on all the cylinders of criteria required to be considered a worthy flag bearer of the conservative cause.
My friend Carla has a catchall phrase she likes to use. I think it fits here.
In the first place, who cares?
In the second place…who cares?
Well, obviously, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Hugh Hewitt and Lars Larson.

Enter the voice of reason, Ann Coulter.
Yes, I’m being ironic.

Coulter says that, if McCain is the nominee, she will campaign for Hillary Clinton.
I’m not sure which is more wearying. The transparent way that Coulter insults the intelligence of voters by trying to use her “clout” to take McCain down when she opens her mouth.
Or just the fact that she opens her mouth.
But, Ann Coulter and her efforts to compensate for whatever trauma she has experienced in her life is a topic for another time.

My point, here, is simple.

We shouldn’t have to look for a label when we are choosing someone to represent and, hopefully, lead us.

Because labels don’t mean a thing.

Anybody who has ever purchased anything that says, “guaranteed fresh” on the label will nod in agreement, I’m thinking.
And “voices of the people” like Limbaugh and Ingraham and Coulter do a disservice to the entire process by yanking the honest discussion of issues back into what amounts to stereotyping.
Political profiling.

Yes, I know you can always tell a conservative radio host.
But you can’t tell them much.

And the problem with labeling isn’t that it helps to differentiate between one’s viewpoints versus another’s, which it does. That is exactly the point of having a democratically run republic that not only allows for dissent and disagreement, but encourages it.

The problem with labeling is that it is puts parameters on possibilities.
(And I anxiously await your assessment of my alliteration.)

When Limbaugh or Ingraham or Coulter or their ilk start slapping tags like “liberal” or “quasi-conservative” or what have you on people and their positions, they turn a blind eye and deaf ear to one of the priceless qualities of the human condition.

The ability to adapt and adjust when circumstances require it.

And it turns the political party they represent, in this case the Republican Party, into nothing more than a snobby social club that looks down their noses at anyone who doesn’t “fill the bill”.
If these “commentators” want to be considered credible, they should just come out and say, on the front end, that they disagree with this position or that position a given candidate takes and not try to paste a bumper sticker on the candidate’s butt that forever categorizes them as “conservative” or “liberal”.

Because the world has grown too complex, its issues too multi layered to be dealt with intelligently from one and only one agenda of any one political party.

At some point, we’re going to have to grow up a little more and realize that, it’s not only mature and prudent to consider all points of view, it’s critical because there are far too many questions in the world that need answers without being restricted to finding them in only one book.
And, as far as Rush and Laura and even Coulter are concerned, they need to stop pretending to be champions of a cause and just admit that they are pandering to an audience.

We deserve to be informed, not pandered to or patronized.

It says so right here on the label.