The partisan bug doesn’t bite me very often.
Jim Geraghty described me (and Glenn Reynolds) yesterday as “laid-back libertarian-ish guys who want to see terrorists blown into tiny chunks and to be left alone on social issues.” And that’s a pretty fair description. Jim then added, “A smart Democratic candidate could win a whole bunch of votes from these types of folks.”
He’s right. In fact, last year I wrote that Bush “is begging me to support a Democrat in 2004.”
Politically, I can be pretty slutty. Support my position on the issue I think is most important, and you’ll probably get my vote. Democrat, Republican, whatever. I just like the attention, you know?
What I learned yesterday was something I already knew: The way to draw lots of traffic to your site is to trash one of the two major political parties. We had over 44,000 visits and nearly 60,000 page views here yesterday (not a record, but still second best), almost 400 comments (and counting) to a single post, 58 known Trackbacks and god knows how many other un-trackbacked links.
I already knew something else, too: I could write partisan drivel every day of the week. I could probably double or triple the traffic to this site, no problem.
But I won’t do it.
I don’t read or link to Blogs For Bush or DailyKos or any of the strictly partisan sites. “All [Republicans] [Democrats] are evil!” just doesn’t appeal to me. And the attitude isn’t intellectually honest. I know that this site, due to my pro-war stance, appeals mainly to the Right. I also know, thanks to many unkind emails, that when I stray (as I often do) from the Right path, that I lose readers.
Well – so be it.
I’m just a guy trying to figure out, not where I stand, but where the world stands. I try to call’em like I see’em. I try to keep my mind open, and the blog honest. While I’m certain that I often fail at the former, I know that the latter is true, every time I post.
Don’t come back next week, if you expect everything I write will tar the Democrats and call to the high heavens for a Republican victory. That just ain’t gonna happen. But do keep coming back if you want to read the semi-entertaining opinions of a guy who, like most everybody else, is trying to find his way through a very messy world.
And now we return you to the usual, useless, smartalec-y ponderings of someone who like his politics the way he like his vodka: Straight up, with a twist.
UPDATE: What a load of self-important crap. I ought to delete all this and replace it with “My bandwidth, my rules. Neener.”
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