Chill Out

Anchoress blogged Okay, I think the whole Harriet Miers pro-con side-taking is officially now out of control and is getting embarrassing for the conservatives.

You are absolutely correct

Michelle Malkin coined the term “Illin’” in response to Patrick Ruffini’s Coalition of the Chillin’ - then I get this email from Macho Nachos directing me to his site where he is trying to - it seems - amass a great Coalition of the “Illin,” and I guess all of this is supposed to be the drawing of battle lines between… Between what, folks? Between the “elite” conservatives vs. the “bluecollar” conservatives? Between the “pure” conservatives on one side vs the “pure” conservatives on the other? I am appalled to see conservatives running headlong into this adolescent game of line-drawing, side-taking and base mockery. It is beneath us all. Everyone needs to stop it, cool their jets and recover their dignity and their senses.

I completely agree. This circular firing squad has got to stop.

This woman has not even had the opportunity to appear before the Judiciary committee so that we can all get a sense of her, before she is either confirmed or dumped. One month ago, everyone on the right was saying to the left that the President was entitled to his nominee. Suddenly, this is not true?

The president and this woman - who seems to be a completely honorable woman - deserve at bare minimum the respect due the Office of the President, and the respect due a professional woman who has served that Office well for 5 years. I am frankly amazed to see that so many on the right have forgotten what was supposed to be a basic tenant of conservatism: respectful debate rather than shrill jeering, name-calling and underarm farts. Clearly, Ann Coulter’s hot-headed sorts of excesses are winning the day here, and taking the right down a path that looks very similar to the one trod by the left.

This is absurd and disgraceful. I am seriously disappointed by what I am reading everywhere - from The Corner to Hugh Hewitt and all spots in between: overheated rhetoric, defensiveness, barely-concealed (and too-effusively denied) contempt and class-conscious snark.

I’m consistantly telling the left to “grow up.” Now, I say it to my friends on the right, fully aware that I will most likely be taken to the cyber-blogshed for it by folks on both sides (and go ahead and dump me from your blogrolls, too): GROW UP. For heaven’s sake, GROW UP.

The president has named a nominee. She will now have to sink or swim at her own “job interview.” If she is the incompetent boob, “cafeteria lady” some of you vaunt, she will embarrass herself and be rejected. If she is the “pitbull in size 6 shoes” the president characterizes, she will impress enough people to be appointed.

Meanwhile, an insider-war between “pure” conservatives and “pure-er” conservatives, or whatever the hell the distinction is, will serve only to weaken both the party, and the president who may yet get to name two more jurists to the SCOTUS. Some may think that they are “sending him a message” by carrying on regarding this nominee, but this president has already demonstrated that he follows his heart, not polls or pundits.

And if you are sending him a message, it is that he should appoint Alberto Gonzales. After all, if his base is going to criticize him, he might as well appoint someone he knows.

You used to love that about him.

I still do.

From my undereducated and mildly dyslexic corner, from where I can only observe and then comment with whatever sense God gave me, I have to say - this is an appallingly swift descent into jointly stupid behavior, a descent into precisely the sort of behavior we abhor from the left, precisely the sort of behavior that has so weakened them.

Send your messages, snark at each other, form opposing coalitions within the same party, and then blast each other all you want. I’m not joining. A pox on both. This sort of “in-fighting” to see who is more correct is why I left the Democrats.

There are things seen and unseen, always at work, and more in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophies or imaginings. In all of this carrying on, while countless little, puny Masters of the Universe pound their keyboards and declare to know what is the “absolute best thing” under every circumstance - God still has HIS hand in all of this, too. And that always leads to surprises. And hopefully, to a little humility, too.

Go ahead. Fire away. Blast me too, if that’s something you feel you need to do. Bedtime comes soon enough.

I’m certain that I cannot be alone in this feeling. But if I am…that’s fine.

You are not alone, Anchoress