Thanks for that, Lee, because you've usefully sidetracked me from another Bataan Death March with Tom, and given me a chance to take a fresh approach to explaining my thinking.

To sincerely hold a set of beliefs is not partisanship. Tom quoted (and then proceeded to deny) the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of "partisanship" as "exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance." The keyword there is "allegiance", and in particular how one resolves conflicting allegiances. In the present context, I'm specifically talking about the conflict between loyalty to America and loyalty to a political party.

It's fashionable in Republican rhetoric to maintain that patriotism equals Republicanism, and that the only "True Americans" are Republicans. A moment's thought would reveal the illogic (and extreme partisanship) of that position. Neither pure Democrats nor pure Republicans constitute anywhere near a majority of Americans, even if you only count those who vote. Republians cross into the realm of hyperpartisanship by going on to accuse non-Republicans of being anti-American and working to destroy America. How can a majority of Americans--non-Republicans, I don't mean Democrats--be anti-American? Yet to label non-Republicans as the enemy is to clearly place allegiance to the Party over allegiance to America.

I'm only half-joking when I define a Conservative as somebody who loves America, yet hates Americans.

The way that you express it, you have your beliefs, and selected the Republican Party as the party whose beliefs most closely match your own. That doesn't sound partisan to me; but the opposite case, of holding a set of beliefs because they're the Party's beliefs, is very much partisanship. Let me ask you: Does the GOP agree 100% with you? Does it have to? For that matter, is it statistically likely that anywhere there is somebody who came to their own belief system completely independently and it just happens to match 100% the platform-du-jour of the GOP? I suspect partisanship when that happens.

By the same token, is it necessary for a Republican candidate to conform 100% to your beliefs before you'll vote for him (and perhaps someday her)? And is it therefore reasonable to declare a candidate who deviates from the party line to be not really a Republican? To demand that level of conformity is another way of defining "partisanship", because again, it's all about allegiance to the party.

What do you get when you present a candidate with a list of non-negotiable ideological demands?

You get a liar.

Or you get an empty vessel which is filled by whatever beliefs are necessary to get elected. You get a poll-watcher, and a weathervane.

I place Mitt Romeny in the second category. He's an empty suit, inflated by hot air calculated to maximally satisfy some checklist of ideological purity. I don't assume he's a liar, because there's not enough substance there to create any conflict that might be resolved by lying. Intellectual dishrags aren't tempted to lie.

I respect John McCain because he follows his own compass, most of the time anyway, and just soldiers along enduring the rain of spittle from frothing hyperpartisans. I'd say that his experience in a North Vietnamese prison camp prepared him well to stand up to the rhetorical torture he's undergoing today...at the hands of his own Party. McCain isn't courageous because of (or I should say, only because of) what he endured 40 years ago. He's courageous today to chart his own course in the face of hurricane-force hyperpartisanship.

Nothing expresses hyperpartisanship more than to hate John McCain because he promises to put America ahead of all other considerations. To call John McCain a "traitor" is to reveal oneself as putting loyalty to a political party ahead of loyalty to America...to reveal oneself as a hyperpartisan.

When you said "I'm not a regular voter for Democratic candidates", you imply that you have occasionally voted for Democrats. Sounds like you're not particularly partisan. For my part, while I don't often vote for Republicans, in recent years I voted to reelect Arnold Schwarzenegger, and voted for John McCain in California's one-and-only open primary. I didn't base those judgments on a degree of relative agreement with my own beliefs, but simply on job performance (in the case of Arnie), or character as a predictor of future job performance, in McCain's case.

I'll vote for the good guy over the shit even if the shit says he agrees with me. That's how I define what's good for America.

(Took me long enough to answer your question, didn't it? ;-) )