I reached a personal goal this week.  Not exactly the way I wanted to reach it, but I reached it nonetheless.

More on that in a moment.

As I was hanging out on my third (behind kingsjester.wordpress.com and genehoyas.com) favorite Conservative website, hotair.com, this week, I noticed something:

Conservative Americans are divided and yet, united, at the same time.

We’re divided by 2 things.

1.  Definition – There are Americans out there identifying themselves as Conservatives, who are as far from being a Conservative, as President Barack Hussein Obama is from being a Southern Baptist.

Now, some of them believe if you only agree ideologically with one of the three criteria President Ronald Reagan presented as the three-legged stool of Conservatism (Fiscal, Social, and National Defense), then you’re a Conservative.

These folks proclaim themselves Fiscal Conservatives.  In reality, they are either Moderates or Liberals.

From behind the anonymity of a computer screen, these self-righteous “Conservatives” have labeled Reagan Conservatives “True” Conservatives, meaning it as the ultimate derision, brought about by an over-estimation of their own intellect and political astuteness.

What completely blows their minds, is when you confront them with the fact, per Gallup, that 75% of Americans proclaim Christianity, and 92% of Americans believe in God, because, it turns out, that a lot of these “Fiscal” Conservatives actually seem to have something in common with Karl Marx:  They view religion as “the opiate of the masses”, something which is beneath their gargantuan intellects.

They are a bitter bunch, as a whole.

2.  Conservatives are divided by geographical region.  A lot of these before-mentioned “Fiscal” Conservatives seem to live up in the Northeast or out West.

Gallup.com has released a survey ranking the states as to how Conservative they are:

Mississippi remains the most conservative state in the union, and, along with Utah, Wyoming, and Alabama, is one of four states with 50% or more of its population identifying as conservative. At the other end of the ideological spectrum, 40% District of Columbia residents and 30% of Massachusetts residents identify as liberal; all other states have a liberal population of 26% or less.

As has been the case in recent years, Americans overall are significantly more likely to identify as conservative than as liberal. Forty percent of more than 218,000 adults 18 and older interviewed in Gallup tracking in 2011 said they were conservative, 36% were moderate, and 21% liberal. Only in the District of Columbia and Massachusetts did liberals outnumber conservatives.

Politics in America today varies widely across the states and regions of the country, and ideology is no exception. Mississippi and Massachusetts are the two states that provide the most extreme contrast, with 53% of Mississippians identifying as conservative and 11% identifying as liberal, while 29% of Massachusetts residents are conservative and 30% are liberal.

More generally, the 10 most conservative states in 2011 were in the South (Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee), the Midwest (Oklahoma and Nebraska), and the West (Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho). None were on the East or West Coast.

By contrast, all of the 11 most liberal states in 2011 were coastal — the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut in the East, and Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and California in the West.

…America remains a conservative nation, at least as measured by the ideological labels Americans choose to use to identify themselves. Residents of all states of the union except for Massachusetts and the District of Columbia are more likely to identify as conservative than as liberal, and in every state except D.C., residents are also more likely to say they are moderate than liberal. The general distribution of ideology across the states follows traditional red-blue distinctions, with liberals most highly represented on the East and West Coasts, while conservatives dominate in Southern, Midwestern, and Western states.

So, how are Conservatives united?

We all want Barack Hussein Obama to become an ex-president as soon as possible.  We share a common bond:  We are the American Majority:

Political ideology in the U.S. held steady in 2011, with 40% of Americans continuing to describe their views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This marks the third straight year that conservatives have outnumbered moderates, after more than a decade in which moderates mainly tied or outnumbered conservatives.

The percentage of Americans calling themselves “moderate” has gradually diminished in the U.S. since it was 43% in 1992. That is the year Gallup started routinely measuring ideology with the current question. It fell to 39% in 2002 and has been 35% since 2010. At the same time, the country became more politically polarized, with the percentages of Americans calling themselves either “conservative” or “liberal” each increasing.

Gallup measures political ideology by asking Americans to say whether their political views are very conservative, conservative, moderate, liberal, or very liberal. Relatively few Americans identify with either extreme on this scale, although 2 in 10 Republicans self-identify as very conservative — double the proportion of Democrats calling themselves very liberal.

Hanging out on the Internet, one can become burnt-out and extremely depressed.  There are a lot of nattering nimrods of negativity out there, claiming to fly the banner of Conservatism.

Just as you do in your real life, spend your cyber life hanging out with people who lift you up.

If Conservatives stick to Conservative principles, lift each other up, and keep our eyes on the prize, 2012 is going to be a great year.

Now, about that personal goal I mentioned earlier.  When I married my bride in July of 2009 I weighed 254 lbs.  As of today, after losing my final 5 lbs this week due to a bout of bronchitis, I weigh 210 lbs, my collegiate weight (at 53 years old), a goal which I set for myself when I began to lose weight in January of 2010.  There was no secret to it.  I backed away from the table, ate more grilled chicken, and used the stairs.  Here are a couple of before and after pictures:

As Conservatives, we need to set a goal of sending Obama back to Chicago.  Because, no matter how lousy the Republican candidates are, every single one of them is better than the present occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC.