Please stop telling us what is wrong with… well, US. Seriously, I just cannot take it any more.

It’s like Yankees who come South because it’s generally such a nice place to live and then tell us we’re all a bunch of idiots and that we need to “do it like they used to do it back in Detroit.” Spare me – move back to Detroit and leave me alone.

We all recognize the problems we face as a nation, and as a Party. You want a frigging medal because you, too, can read polls and recognize that we need to sort out the Hispanic-gap, the suburban-soccer-mom-gap, the generational gap, the new-young-christian-gap or any other gap the numbers indicate? No freaking crap, geniuses. We just want to start with principle instead of a craptacularly stupid effort to buy-off their votes.

I can tolerate (while vehemently disagreeing with) your random ideas about traffic jams and ramping up police forces, your gas tax to pay for other tax cuts and a green agenda, your musings about FDR somehow being the model for 21st Century conservatism, and I can even tolerate your boring books that some Republicans read to prove they are “introspective” and thoughtful about the movement.

What makes me want to scream – and I mean a pull-my-hair-out, punch-someone-in-the-face kind of scream – is your self-indulgent, holier-than-thou proclamations about how wrong most of us “conservatives” are simply because you have seen the light after all this time writing for the New York Times, all of 5 minutes working for the Bush Administration, or all this time well, doing very little other than writing a book called Grand New Party and putting yourself out as the savior of a movement you apparently want little to do with.

I do not want – as I suspect most Republicans do not want – to suggest that we cannot have a fine debate about ideas within the movement. We always have. We always will. There is nothing new about that. I do it all the time with a great many smart conservatives. And you three have offered some fine ideas along the way, when not spending your time trying to re-make us.

Yes, we are a big tent… but we are a big tent with principles. Those principles vary a little bit, but there are large, common threads – freedom, personal responsibility, limited government and an appropriate deference to the Almighty are just a few of those principles the VAST majority of conservatives and Republicans I know embrace.

I love being a conservative and am proud to call myself one – so please do us a favor… quit calling yourself conservative, moving the goalposts on us, and then complaining we are on a different field. If you want to have a discussion of ideas, gentlemen, put them out there and we may find common ground. But STOP the condescending babbling about how “bad” we are and recognize that life is too short to go around being pompous and angry in your self-promotion.

p.s. If you are wondering what triggered this particular reaction, it was this post by David Frum, but it was only because it was the most recent… it could have been any one of hundreds of others…