"We've got to stop being the stupid party."

Why am I so hard on today's Conservatives? I think the best answer came from a Conservative. During an interview with the author, C-SPAN quoted from Matt Lewis's book, Too Dumb to Fail, "Somewhere between Reagan's 30 minute speech in 1964 and the most recent government shutdown, the Conservatives movement became neither conservative nor a movement. Hijacked by the divisive and the dumb, it now finds itself hostage to emotions and irrational thinking. It became more personal and less principled--more flippant and less thoughtful. It became mean. It became lazy. It became it's own worst enemy."

The author later added during the interview, "...but there's no doubt that, In recent years, we've seen the dumbing down of Conservatism". Later he added "…because of the political milieu, even the smart Conservatives are forced to play dumb."

He went on to make a number of statements which were entirely counterfactual, indicating that he's not entirely exempt from the gullibility and stupidity of contemporary Conservatism. For example, he repeated the old, entirely unfounded, declaration that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. Nevertheless, I agree with his essential points in regard to what went wrong with the movement.

Almost every criticism I make about today's Conservatives is also made by this dedicated Conservative. What I oppose isn't the concept of reasonable caution in moving forward, what I oppose is emotionalism, extremism, and a hatred of rational thought. When an entire political party is dedicated to a constant state of outrage over lies, deceits, and half-truths; you can bet that something is very wrong with that party.
Permit me to repeat, I am not particularly fond of the Democratic Party, but when you have two bad choices; one of which is merely bad while the other is absolutely horrific, you take the merely bad.

I could go on and repeat myself like an older, wiser Marco Rubio, but I won't.