Principles Before Incumbents...

Welcome back to the world of the Political Chicken.  It's been a few days since my last blog post, and I am going through withdrawals.  I'm a chicken when it comes to politics and voicing my opinion...yeah right; and the moon is made of green cheese.  At any rate, I'm back to share more from inside the hen house. 

Now, I know normally, you'd hear the line principles before party.  That's where I was headed, but I took a right turn somewhere in my thought process.  Forgive me.   I'm a right winger and the party I align myself with has begun to disappoint me with their actions.  Their attitude of 'wait your turn to run' style politics or 'what have you done lately for the party' is getting us nowhere.  I still consider myself new to the world of politics and over the past month or so have found myself questioning whether we really and truly put principles before party or incumbents, for that matter.

For example, I have begun to push my own self outside of my political comfort zone, if you will.  I used to be afraid to step outside of my neat little conservative box and afraid not to vote for the person with the incumbent 'i' beside their name.  Now, don't get me wrong, you aren't going to find me voting in a Democratic primary or anything like that, but some of the actions from within our own local party as I mentioned earlier have left me with some doubts; and, darn it, I want to know, without a doubt how willing my incumbent Republican representatives are going to be to stand up for my conservative principles?  Are they going to be willing to stick their neck out and make an unpopular vote if it's the right thing to do?  Are they going to do what they say or are they just giving lip service?  Or, have they been in their seat too long and have they been too corrupted by special interest groups to be anything other than a puppet?  I am of the mind now that if you are the incumbent, you must work for your seat.  I don't mean just at election time.  I mean all the time.

Another little pet peeve of mine is this idea that simply because the challenger to the incumbent has little to no experience as a politician or has never run for office before, the general public refuses to give them a fighting chance.   Again, I speak from experience as someone who held this view.  Lets face it, all of the people who have been elected to represent us had to start somewhere.  Whether or not the person's experience comes from growing up around politics, working as staffers for other representatives or it comes from a small business background or in the medical field, I think that if the person has something to offer they should be considered. I don't think that this makes someone a 'flash in the pan' person for the political landscape. 

I'm sick and tired of the same old rhetoric from the conservative local party.  Let's look at the definition of the word conservative.  In the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary it defines conservative in about four different ways, but one that caught my eye is this one: Disposed to maintain existing institutions or views; opposed to change.  Ha! I can definitely think of a few folks who fit that description and I was one of them.  We can't be opposed to change; and no I don't mean the kind of 'hopey changey' thing you are thinking of...  If something is broken at your house, you fix it, right?  Why would the political landscape be any different?