“Yeah, I understand it. Everyone in the Republican establishment wants Romney and they’d like everyone else to go home,” Gingrich told ABC News’ Jon Karl in an interview Tuesday. “They’d like to have a coronation, but that’s not how this is done.”
There is weird thinking in the USA conservative movement that Governor Mitt Romney is not a true Conservative. This kind of thinking betrays a pathological bias more than an ideological divide between Governor Mitt Romney and Senator Santorum and Speaker Gingrich.
The best way I can describe it is to make analogy with the Christian Church. Firstly, let me say clearly that this analogy is not anger toward or indiscreet criticism of the Christian Church. I love the Christian Church, warts and all. However, the analogy of Christian and indeed, Jewish and Moslem denominationalism fits the current Republican scene.
Christians, including Mormon Christians, proclaim that Jesus is the Christ. They adhere to the creedal formulations of the Church and they distinguish themselves from other faith religions. However, within Christianity, there are various labels for various Christian Churches. The two big ones are Roman Catholic and Orthodox. Then there are the many so-called Protestant groups, like Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Baptist.
All of these groups aka. “denominations”, profess Jesus as the Christ, that God is Trinity in character, and that a person is granted eternal life through a relationship with God through Christ in faith. That applies to 100% of the groups mentioned as being Christian. So what’s the difference? Why are there denominations? An adequate answer to both questions would require a treatise. However, a simplification would be to say that all the denominations are a result of social/economic/political and cultural differences between various people at the time of the inception of each denominational group. Not much help in understanding the core basis of denominationalism, is it? That’s because there is no simple answer, denominationalism is a phenomenon.
Today, the battle within the Republican party is between the so-called Conservatives, Moderates and Liberals. They are all part of the established Republican party which party is the only Republican party there is and the only one entitled to be listed on the ballot in fifty States as Republican! Like all the groups within Christianity are Christians, so all the groups within the Republican party are Republican. The names they call themselves, their denominators, are self-imposed qualifiers. Over time, these qualifiers have become nuanced so that a Conservative in 2012 is not the same as a Conservative of 1912.
It is this writer’s opinion that in other elections the nuances between the groups and even within the groups were allowed to blend. This blending producted hybrids known as Moderate Liberals and Moderate Conservatives. The adjective “moderate” allowed Republicans the flexibility to pull the right and the left toward the center of the Republican spectrum. However, the advent of Talk Show radio has introduced an element of rigidity into the party which denies that such moderation is allowed. Rather, Talk Show hosts insist upon a definition of Conservative which precludes the hybrid, Moderate-Conservative designator. And in the present context, Governor Mitt Romney is seen to be a hybrid and not purely Conservative.
From my seat along the sidelines of politics, it seems that Liberals and Moderates are still willing to allow flexible definitions of a person’s political philosophy. So, they allow that a person can be strictly Conservative in economic politics while being moderately Conservative in social politics and maybe, conservatively liberal regarding international politics. It is possible, there may be many so-called “pure” Conservatives who also will allow flexibility regarding Governor Romney because they feel that he has the best chance of winning against President Obama. Sadly, it is becoming evident that Talk Show hosts like Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh, (to name the best, biggest and most influential) are fundamentally opposed to any graduated designator.
In the title to this article I use the concept that this refusal to allow moderation of so-called “pure” Conservatism is pathological rather than ideological. I believe that an ideological difference can become nuanced when influenced by reasoned conversation. However, both Santorum and Gingrich and their promoters say that they are essentially anti Romney. Since they denominate themselves as the true Conservative in distinction to Romney’s Moderate Conservatism, then, I believe, their opposition to him is unreasoned, ingrained, emotional and I suggest, pathological.
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