We're All Conservatives Now

I woke up Wednesday morning and found out I was a conservative. See, a whole slew of candidates I supported were elected - enough to form a majority that will work to pass legislation of which I wholeheartedly approve - and I discovered from pundits that this is evidence of how conservative America really is. Since the outcome is precisely what I hoped for, I must be a "conservative Democrat" too.

They've been beating the drums for 72 hours now - "conservative Democrats, conservative Democrats, conservative Democrats." Both Hunter and Markos tried to set the punditocracy straight, but I suspect this probably does as much good as spitting in the wind. So I'm ready to go all contrarian and Zen on right-wing blowhards and embrace the label.

Yes, I'm a "conservative Democrat" and I agree with the upcoming agenda I've seen floating around here and there: oversight hearings on Iraq and spending, raising the minimum wage, nationalizing health insurance for everyone under 25 as Howard Dean suggested on The Daily Show, using skillful diplomacy as a first resort and military force as a last one, restoring the checks and balances of the Constitution, outlawing torture, re-legalizing habeas corpus.

These are "conservative" ideas? Cool. I'm hinky with it. Call them what you like, just implement them.

So go ahead, Blowhard Boys and Girls, keep saying it: "Conservative Democrats won on Tuesday, which proves that America is really conservative."

And please, don't catch on that every time you insist that "conservative Democrats" won, every time you couple the words, "conservative" and "Democrat," not only does an angel get its wings, some voter in Mississippi is getting the message that there is a natural home for conservatives in the Democratic Party. Make it crystal clear, repeatedly, from now until 2008, that citizens in the Mountain West and the Midwest who cast their votes next to a "D" for perhaps the first time in their lives were NOT betraying "traditional values," but were, in fact, reinforcing them.

If the right-wing devotes thousands of hours to this "conservatives really won by electing a Democratic majority" in the next two years, they'll have softened the South up enough for us to canvass in 2008 with the simple statement, "Hey, I'm a Democrat and I want your value vote," and it will make perfect sense.

So thanks, Rush, Sean, O'Reilly and the whole gang at National Review: You're saving Democrats a boatload of cash two years from now that would have been spent on re-representing our party as the natural home for those with true American values. We couldn't get this message out without you.