Ian Lang at AskMen.com wrote an excellent article about being a Republican in today's world:
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.
