"How would you like to replace Tom with whoever dreamed up the smear campaign against Obama and Clinton?"

Well Ms Clinton says she going to enter the Blogsphere so this might happen regardless of whether Tom leaves or not.

"I'm perpetually baffled by Tech1 and often baffled by gbaikie. They both take vectors on a very different heading from Tom, and sometimes it's not clear whether they're actually assisting him or not."

Actually for an adult to have this attitude is a bit puzzling to me. No, let me rephase this, I understand to some extent why you have this attitude, what is hard to understand is your blindness to how silly it is.

Now I understand why you feel the need to "help" posters like Bowser and Lindy. It's like a pet getting run over by a car. And btw, Tom shares this sympathy. Most posters would, until realize this dog/cat appears to have some kind of mental disorder which consists of a deep urge to get run over. Evenually you just have to throw up your hands, because it's going to fight you, bite you, stratch you, dig hole under the fence, everything in it's limited power to get run over.
But this isn't the main thrust of what you talking about- though btw it has a lot to do with your idea of applying different standards to different posters. Your point of view is you think you have correctly idenitified me or even Tech1 as a republican, and you think I'm a coward and little sneak, who doesn't want to admit it. Or basically the same thing, I'm playing both sides of the fence. To say the least, it's a bit tiring. One result of this "being tired" is I'm less inclined to explain why you are making this error- I have better things to do. Btw, It's not an insult. It doesn't indicate I'm upset. It's I have better things to do, period- as in it takes time and I don't consider worth the time spent.

"But to paraphrase Tom's comment below, "If there's anything that makes this fun...", "It's having people like SDAI-Tech1, gbaikie, and one or two others lecture me on 'reality.'" "

When I read this from Tom, I didn't include myself in the "and one or two others". And I still don't. If Tom had me in mind when he said "one or two others", I would VERY interested in this- because it would indicate a complete mis-reading and therefore an unknown to explore.

"While it may be true that unholy trinity of TB, Tech1, and gb are hogging the spotlight, I don't think that they represent the entire spectrum of Conservative belief, by any means. I would respectfully suggest that you stop "sitting on the sidelines" and be a little more agressive about contributing your own personal beliefs to the Conservative mix."

I didn't know I was hogging the spotlight. Rather I would say that I haven't been paying as much attention to it as I did in the past. I used to make an effort in posting regularly [perhaps not as much as Tom] but now it seems much less frequent. In my opinion it has very little to do with this board or the "politics" of the board. It has more to do with macro events [space and Iraq war]. But mostly to do with what I spend my time doing. As one proof/example of this I haven't given any time to thinking about pipelaunchers, nor made a post about it in months.

"Republicans got their asses kicked in the last election, and it's disorienting and the Right is in disarray...and that's a good thing. It means that all relationships on the Right are in flux, and entrenched power and stale ideology can be overturned by fresh faces and reinvigorated (if not new, because after all, we are talking Conservative here) ideas. This is a time of opportunity for the Right, and I hope y'all don't waste it."

Kerry got closer to winning the election then I thought he would. The dems did much better than I though was possible in the last election. But one shouldn't draw much from this. The dems won, but their Left didn't do so well- and the republican had quite disadvantage to overcome. Had they kept the House, but would have been a disaster for the Dems. It would have even been a disaster for the Republican- they were fat and complacent- and it would have got worse. Once more [somehow] the America public [somehow] knows to right course to take. If I believed in God- I would say God had some hand in it.