Go ahead and read the Volgi’s posts today. Still willing to read more?

Check out a superbly done piece by Christian Hartsock on five things the conservatives have got to stop doing because, frankly, they fuel MSM fires and make us look dopey.

In short, they are:

1. Knock off the 18th Century costumes at gatherings. They look dumb, and turn off 90% of us. You need that 90% if you hope to have a positive effect.
2. Cool it with the Obama-as-traitor talk. Hartsock is right, and this has been a sticking point in the Czar’s craw since 2008: Obama made it pretty clear exactly who he was to anyone who wanted to listen carefully. And we elected him anyway. It was a combination of Bush Derangement Syndrome, MSM white washing facts we did not bother to check, and psychological projection that made us ignore it.
3. Could their be a more distracting piece of nonsense than Obama’s arcane religious practices? So far the guy hasn’t called up Cthulu, so settle down.
4. Stop with the nitpicking. Hartsock lists some good examples, including outrage over dijon mustard, and every little gesture the President makes. Not that this isn’t good fodder, but his point is good: this is the same crap the liberals did with Bush. It is cheap and petty.
5. Can we ease up on the end-of-the-world urgency stuff? A lot of us are doing it, but Hartsock seems to be targeting Beck. In lieu of that, Hartsock advises (well) that conservatives ought to look at Chris Christie as a role model: when the other side gets hysterical and irrational, start pounding them with a-b-c facts. So far, the Czar is uncertain whether he has seen Christie lose an argument to anyone. Ryan, Bachman, Kantor, and a handful of others are also quite good at this, so it works.

Over all:

The beautiful simplicity of the conservative message risks getting muffled in a chorus of intellectual dead end mantras and mouth-foaming contrarianism. It has been made clear whom we stand against, but not what we stand for. Our message is simple: That the sole purpose of government is the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice, and that when government ventures beyond these functions, it accumulates power, which diminishes liberty; that when it interferes with the work of the market economy, it reduces the strength of the nation; and when it takes from one to bestow on another, it diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and the moral autonomy of both.

I’m confident most in my generation would embrace our message if they simply knew it was that simple, and could hear it more audibly over the screaming about Obama’s Muslim faith, the hyena-like cackling over his every move, the beating of the drums and the battle cries for the coming revolution.

All true, and a good way to capitalize on the college age crowd’s sudden disillusionment over the Great One.

But hey—Hartsock—the correct spelling of the word is “all right.”

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.