This week’s free missive is a long one: about 4,000 words. I’m publishing it a little earlier in the day so you have the time to spend with it. It’s a discussion about the future of the Republican party, and ultimately tackles arguments raised by Bill Dyer (aka Beldar) in favor of fighting for the soul of the Republican party from within. Rather than dismiss these arguments out of hand, I try to take them seriously — and I end up drawing an analogy between Bill leaving my blog and my leaving the party . . . an analogy that really helped me understand his position better.

I still see an analogy here. And it helps me understand Bill’s point of view much better. And maybe it will cause some of you — especially those of you who miss Bill’s presence at my blog — to take his argument a little more seriously.

See, I think Bill could make a more effective case for why one ought to be a member of the Republican party by doing so as a member of the Patterico.com commentariat — because as such, he would be a member of that community, making a case directly to other community members, even though many of them disagree with Bill and are hostile to his pro-party views. But if I believe that . . . doesn’t that same logic extend to the question of whether we former Republicans ought to make the case for our vision of the Republican party as members of the Republican party? Wouldn’t our case be more effective if we were party members making a case directly to other party members, even though many of them disagree with us and many are hostile to our views?

I’m going to try something different with this piece, which I will not necessarily repeat in the future; namely, I want all commentary on this piece to take place at the Substack post for this newsletter missive. My hope is to 1) encourage the reading of the actual piece rather than the snippet above, and 2) make the conversation there a little livelier. So if you want to comment on this, go read the piece and comment there.

P.S. If you like the piece, you should sign up for free, and consider being a paid member. Currently, the new podcast is available only to paid members. Depending on how it progresses, I may change that, but once I institute a call-in feature I definitely plan to restrict that to paid members. I have also launched an open comment thread for subscribers where you can feel a little freer to speak your mind while knowing that the other participants have some skin in the game and are less likely to be insulting drive-bys. I’m more likely to see comments there than here because I get emails when people comment, so if you have questions for me to ask in a semi-private environment (it is still the Internet, after all), that’s a good option until I figure out how to have occasional live chats and such. We’d love to have you join the community.