Apologies

I hear McCain wants Obama to apologize for the "lipstick on a pig" comment. That'd be great if he would, but I don't think we should ask for one. We should just let 'em keep it up.

If they got too out of hand and got explicitly nasty about Sarah or John, I'd just say "hey, that's beyond the pale" -- but even then, don't demand an apology.

This day and age of demanding apologies is -- I don't know -- a little whiney. A little childish. (Yes, we should still make our children apologize so they learn to do it on their own before they are adults.) But once they are adults, we should just call a spade a spade and say "Hey. That was wrong. I think less of you now" and leave it at that. We all know what is rude and what is acceptable. The adults will decide who the adults are and who the children are.

So it is with the whole "gotcha" soundbite thing. I heard the Obama comment about (and he was making an effort to appear fair to McCain when he said it) that John McCain hadn't said anything about Obama's "Muslim Faith" ... that was a slipup (and I think we're going to see a lot more of that in the next 60 days when Obama's off-script. It's now clear why he backed out of the Town Hall meetings with McCain) -- but really... we all misspeak and anybody who's been paying attention to the flurry of charges against Obama on the internet and elsewhere would know he was addressing the allegation that he is some sort of secret Muslim. And praising McCain for not supporting that or buying into it. Of course it was the first part of a back-handed compliment, but... that's politics, I suppose.

It was like the 57 states or New Pensylvania. Misspeaking. For which Bush (90th percentile intelligence, flew fighter jets, 3.6 MBA at Harvard) gets accused of being stupid.

And that's what I want to talk about here, really, is double-standards. Most of the time when I bring up some sort of complaint about something the Left has said to bash someone on the right, it's not as much about what they said, but about the double standard. Democrat picks a woman to do anything, it's Historical™ and an Advancement™ for women. Republicans pick a woman or minority, and it's at best "Oh, look, a bunny! No really, over there! Nothing to see here." And here with Palin it's far worse. "It's a backward step for women". "She's not really a woman."

Because you know if your beliefs are outside of Gloria Bunker's Steinem's, you're not really a woman. Used to be all you needed was two X chromosomes. Now you have to pass a test. It's a club, apparently.

I don't identify as a Republican because I don't have an allegience to any political party. By that I mean that I don't believe what I believe because that's what my political party tells me to believe. I tend to vote for the political party most likely to advance the cause of the things I believe in. Right now it appears to be the Republican party. Reviews have been mixed in the past 8 years. On the war and security, they've been relatively solid, mostly thanks to George Bush's political courage and leadership in these areas. They mostly say the right things about illegal immigration, energy, and economic policy, giving some lip service to controlling government size ... but so many have slipped.

Since I'm voting that way, I'd like it to be the party of adults. We don't whine, they do. We are critical, but we're not playground bullies. We will defend our positions when they become unpopular. We will promote our causes with effective PR so that people know and understand what we are really about. When people misrepresent us, we will firmly and politely (the first couple of times) correct them. (We may get stern after that.) We do not intentionally mislead. We have nothing to hide. We don't play "gotcha" with trivial soundbites out of context.

I could be a part of that "we". Even if it isn't Republicans in general, I'd like my fellow conservatives to adopt this. Most of them are probably already on board with this. But the deal is, if we play by these rules and they don't, we're allowed to point it out. They will look bad. Perhaps they will learn to behave. Then everybody's the better for it. It would sure make it easier for me to defend the GOP.

We run around playing the same games they do, and there's no crying "foul" when they foul. We do that, and they can just look back and raise an eyebrow and foul again. Let's not give in to rumors and innuendo. Let's check our facts, and admit when we are wrong.

In the end, I think the electorate wants adults in office. Adults aren't people who went to big fancy schools and majored in law or polisci.

Adults can take a punch. Adults are people who know how to conduct themselves.