So I got an e-mail yesterday, as I periodically do, from a moderate Republican wondering why we all just can’t get along:

I have no problems with Obama being president, I just prefer McCain’s policies and experience more. I believe we actually have two good choices this election, opposed to the last one. Having said all this, why all the hatred? I know it exists on both sides, but it seems to be more so from the left, possibly because of discrepency in media coverage (SNL, The View, Maher, Garafolo (and just about any entertainer, etc.), it’s just one continued McCain/Palin bashing after another. Are Democrats really this pompous and arrogant? It sickens me to no end. One of these tickets will have the next President and Vice-President, I intend to respect and honor whoever that will be. Why can’t people put aside the partisan behavior? This is what are country has become, and I hate it.

Here’s your little secret of the day: I hate it too.

I hate it too, but Democrats/liberals never chose this playing field. Limbaugh did. Hannity did, Coulter did, O’Reilly did. All that’s happening now is that the left is playing with the same viciousness that the right has long employed. And it takes your moderate conservatives aback.

They’ve been content to benefit from the electoral advantages that the hard-core right-wing rhetoric might have afforded them. Because they’re conservative - well, Ann Coulter’s just joking when she accuses liberals of treason and suggests conversing with them via a baseball bat. When Sean Hannity writes (reads?) a book about delivering us from evil by defeating terrorism, despotism and liberalism - ha ha, well, you know, it’s just hyperbole.

And then the left gets p*ssed off and cranks up its own vitriol machine and these oh-so-moderate Republicans think: Uh-oh. This is getting dangerous.

It is. But what these oh-so-moderate Republicans need to do is reflect upon their own culpability for this nastiness. You don’t tune into Rush for years, then when people like me fire back get all upset because the discourse is being dragged into the gutter. You supported the degredation of the discourse.

And so what I told my correspondennt was, there will be no unilaterial rhetorical disarmament. Frankly, I knock it off when Rush does. And so those oh-so-moderate Republicans who are legitimately tired of all the partisanship damn well better be e-mailing Rush, and Hannity, and the rest of the vitriolic right-wing chorus and demanding that they cool it, too. Because otherwise it’s just hypocrisy, and thin skin.

We see, today, a suggestion that McCain is considering taking both Ayers and Wright “off the table.” No word whether Palin’s taking it off the table; but if so - it’s a start. There can be disarmament; and it would most certainly benefit the country. But this means the right has to holster its pistols, too. And I’ll believe it when I stop hearing it.