A House Divided...

Back when I was young and cared about politics, I went to the Florida State Democratic convention. That was in '86. It was a pretty interesting experience for a 19 year-old commie wannabe. Florida Dems were a motley krewe in the mid-eighties. There were arch-conservatives, Democrats only because Lincoln was a Republican. There were environmentalists. Big labor. Gay rights activists. Middle class socialist brats (Thanks Danny). None of these groups particularly agreed with or even liked each other, but that didn't stop anyone from joining these hellacious parties that were thrown in various hotel suites at night.

I remember someone giving a speech (and I don't remember who it was), talking about how this 'diversity' in our party gave us strength. I bought it at the time, but I was 19 and was easily convinced of all sorts of stuff. A couple of years later I started to question this reasoning. It seemed like this diversity did not make us stronger- it made us more fractious and likely to get our asses handed to us in presidential elections (Thanks Mike).

This stuff came tumbling out of the disorganized self-storage unit that I call my memory today when I was reading FARK links. I know that there has been increasing tension within the Republican party recently, with the Libertarians increasingly fed up with the Evangelicals. And vice-versa. I don't know if it is better or worse (for a party) to have two main groups at odds, or to have a multitude of special interest factions constantly squabbling.
But if you are going to go the two-group route, you should probably take it easy with this kind of talk, especially if your last name sounds like 'Bucketry':

The greatest threat to classic Republicanism is not liberalism; it’s this new brand of libertarianism, which is social liberalism and economic conservatism, but it’s a heartless, callous, soulless type of economic conservatism because it says “look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government. If it means that elderly people don’t get their Medicare drugs, so be it. If it means little kids go without education and healthcare, so be it.” Well, that might be a quote pure economic conservative message, but it’s not an American message.

And that sound you hear is half the Republican party growling in irritation.

Seen in the corresponding FARK thread:

America: 300,000,000 rugged individualists telling the other 299,999,999 how to act

Heh.