Cross posted with a few minor modifications from race42008.com

In the primaries most of you know I was a huge Romney supporter (still am) who made the mistake of agreeing to be on his Faith and Values Steering Committee. I doubt I would agree to do something like that again. Why? Because it really removed my ability to call things as I saw them. Every time I wrote something that was at all criticizing of Mitt people who hated Mitt would talk as if the tables have turned on Mitt and those who like him immediately supposed my motives where to get some air time or something self-indulging.

It’s pretty silly really. When I wrote the post Romney’s Fork, I had a lot of responses, including the Wall Street Journal using my writing to fill up about two-thirds of one of their articles about Mitt supporters unhinged. Believe me, there was no joy in any of that. I didn’t want it publicized everywhere; I just wanted the people I write to and with to have some different angles to consider. There is always someone wanting to exploit I guess.

I sincerely doubt that most in our party who write negative posts about McCain or Palin do it to become noticed or because they want to throw and anchor to a drowning man. Sometimes criticism of those we support is the best thing they can hear. You disagree? Then why do we a have a first amendment? To allow us to cheer for our party’s leaders louder? No, it’s tell our leaders what we expect, whether we like them or not.

I am going to go out on a limb here, and extrapolate that our Founding Fathers saw criticism as a net positive. Call me crazy. Sometimes good people still are inclined to hand constituents and supporters crap sandwiches, which is apparently what a lot of the party think McCain was doing, both in his handling of Palin and bail out.

There are a lot of things I enjoy about the sport of Politics. But there are a lot of things I don’t. One of them is the constant impugning of peoples motives when they decide to take a popular idea to task within the party. Another would be the idea it’s bad to say our VP did so-so among the people whom we need to win over even though she threw the base more red meat than one could devour in a night. Maybe that’s because I don’t think the world is made solely of black and whites, but instead Black and White with huge amount of grays in between that Human’s will never (at least in this life) be able to authoritatively declare what is black and what is white. It’s a complex world with more angles than our own.

So to those who don’t like negative talk or criticism of our candidates, I say relax. If McCain and Palin are really that fantastic they will hold up and perhaps learn from their folleys…which all candidates have.