Hear No Evil, See No Evil

Culture11 has an interesting debate between Conor Friedersdorf and Joe Carter on the question of whether Sarah Palin should be dropped (or recuse herself, I suppose) from the Republican ticket. I agree with neither of them - or rather, I agree with Carter on the narrow point of whether she should be dropped (that is, I think she shouldn't), but I disagree with much of what he has to say in Palin's defense, and with his read on what her performance to date says about her readiness for the vice presidency. But my disagreements with Conor and Carter are as nothing compared to my disagreement with ... no, let me be frank .... my utter disgust with Erick Erickson's RedState response to Friedersdorf (and Culture11 as a whole), which you can find here, and which I'll excerpt:

I'm happy to let Katleen Parker [sic], etc. say what they want. Some people are on the team. Some people are not on the team. Some people want you to know they are conservatives first and Republicans second and by God let me pee on the GOP just so you know how far apart I am even if I play willingly into an unfair media narrative against Sarah Palin.

... Thankfully Joe Carter has a brilliant take down of the guy. I'd link to Joe, but then I'd have to link to Culture 11 and I'm not going to do that.

... There are days when I think we deserve to lose. And this is one of them. It's all great to say you are a conservative first, but at the end of the day, there are only two teams playing on November 4th -- pick one. I guess Culture 11 has chosen Obama.

So let's not confuse them with any sort of conservative standard bearer organization. They clearly are not.

Sometimes conservatives like to say that the great thing about the American Right is its vibrant internal debates, its tolerance for the free play of ideas, its disinterest in rigid ideologies and inflexible party lines. Sometimes this is true. Sometimes, though, it isn't. (Just ask "Katleen" Parker.)

The irony is that Erick Erickson no doubt really and truly believes that by blacklisting (blacklinking?) any conservative writer or website that isn't sufficiently on-side, he's just doing What It Takes to rebuild a conservative majority - when the reality, of course, is precisely the reverse.