My buddy Bob Elisberg has a new column up in which he argues that Republicans are a lot better at speaking and acting with a single mind than Democrats. I think he's right about that but I'd disagree that it really comes out of any permutation of Conservative philosophy. I think Republicans have just been better at convincing each other that their base will punish anyone who even puts a toe outside the reservation. I don't see that it has a lot to do with politics.
Yeah, Republicans are the ones who say "My country, right or wrong," but I've always felt that was just a slogan…like "fair and balanced." It comes from the same place as assertions by right-wingers that they're the true Americans because they have the right view and maybe the right religion. Conservatives are just as apt to trash America (or to blame it "first") as Liberals when it isn't doing what they want. Lately, some of them can't say enough bad things about the competence of the government, or its duly-elected officials, to do anything right.
My friend Roger, who describes himself as a guerilla Conservative, does that all the time. If I say that I think our military leaders are doing something wrong in Iraq, that's "blame America first" and hating this country and not supporting our troops. And five minutes later, he'll be telling me how the post office is incompetent, the immigration department is a pack of clowns, and Congress is mucking up everything it touches overseas.
But his side loves America and mine doesn't.