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1. No more “fiscal conservatism”

Sorry, guys, but you have shown us repeatedly that you could care less about managing the people’s money well.  Being responsible with the public purse is no longer synonymous with conservatism, and for good reason.

Also, no conservative who argued for going into and staying in Iraq can claim the mantle of being fiscally responsible, ever. How dare you complain about government spending on social programs (like health care for children) because it costs too much.  Sorry, but you’re the ones who are spending over $2 billion a week on an unnecessary war—you can’t waste our money on one hand and attack others for spending money on the other hand.

1. No more complaining about a lack of civility

Stop with the fake outrage and the pearl clutching.  Remember, you’re the ones who gave us the Limbaughs, the Hannitys, the Malkins—it’s your movement that spawned the O’Reillys and the Coulters.  Your side has spent decades demonizing your political opponents, engaging in disgusting smears against sick children, veterans, war heroes, you name it. You’ve compared your political enemies to terrorists and you’ve outright questioning their patriotism. 

Yet, you have the nerve to cry fake tears when someone goes after you, even legitimately?  You have the nerve to complain about the smear artists and spin doctors, despite the fact that conservatives have elevated smearing and spinning to an art form? Are you kidding? Pot, meet kettle.

So, no more crying about being attacked by savage liberals.  No more complaining about being taken out of context when you were directly quoted.  No more talking about vast left wing conspiracies.  No more complaining about being oppressed or having your right to free speech taken away.  Until you clean up the trash heap on your side, don’t complain about the smudge of dirt on ours.

1. Pro-life means pro-life.

Sorry, but “pro-life” does not mean anti-abortion.  Words have meanings, and you can’t change what some words mean to come up with a handy political label. You can’t be pro-life while denying sick children health care.  You can’t be pro-life while pumping your fists every time we kill a few more Iraqis.  You can’t be pro-life while vehemently defending the death penalty. 

Supporting life means supporting life in all circumstances, not just the ones that are convenient.  If you oppose abortion and support the war in Iraq, for instance, you’re a hypocrite and you’re not pro-life.

1. Similarly, support our troops means support our troops.

Support our troops isn’t a bumper sticker slogan.  It’s not an applause line.  It’s not a synonym for  “support the war.”

You can’t support the troops and give them inadequate body armor and armored vehicles. You can’t support the troops and deny them world-class healthcare and doctors and hospitals. You can’t support our troops and attack and smear veterans who disagree with you politically.  You can’t support our troops and use soldiers as political props to inoculate yourself from criticism.

Ideally, it means you want to bring our soldiers home so they stop getting killed.  The bottom line is, if you say you support our troops, you better do it all the time, not just when and how it’s convenient to do so.

1. You’re no longer the tough-guy party.

Sorry, but  there are a lot of people on your side who believe that a few thousand loosely-organized and poorly-funded religious fanatics are going to conquer the world.  These conservatives wholeheartedly believe that terrorists  are a bigger threat to the U.S. than the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, the Civil War and even the British during the Revolution. 

After 9/11, you were all to willing to throw your ideology out the window: small government, states’ rights, limited government spending, protecting civil liberties.  You let your party get turned into a cult of personality and you lead us into worst foreign policy disaster in a generation, wreaking havoc on the American military.

You’re the ones who are willing to throw nearly everything this country stands for in the garbage.  You’re the ones willing to destroy our constitution—the very foundation that American greatness rests on—in order to maybe prevent another terrorist attack.  You’re so afraid of terrorism that you’re willing to destroy America in order to save it.

You don’t need to upend your social and political order to fight terrorism—look at the British and the Spanish, who have both faced significant terrorist attacks.  You pass stronger laws, you gather better intelligence, you improve law enforcement, you go after the people responsible (and not just anyone you feel like), and you go about your lives.  If the point of terrorism is to destroy what makes America great, then don’t hand them a victory by doing it yourselves.  Freedom has risks, but our founding fathers and generations of Americans understood that those risks are, by far, a price worth paying.