I’ll preface my explanation with a comparison. The phrase "imperfect analogy" is too generous for this one, but I’ll run with it for the moment on the assumption that everyone understands that there are important ways in which it doesn’t work. So, with that in mind: one question I remember getting asked a lot when I lived with Protestants was, "Helen, what would you do if the Pope told you to [pick your favorite ridiculous thought experiment]?" The cheap answer (the one I gave to anyone who was clearly asking the question for the sake of snark) is, "Yes, bad loyalty is bad, but I’d prefer to risk bad loyalty than live in a world with no loyalty, i.e. a world where all relationships are (ugh!) contractual." In this case, though, I’ll make a more aggressive response: a backdrop of implicit loyalty makes good-faith argument easier.
Conor, Larison, and Sullivan all seem to prefer negotiations in which both sides understand that either of them could walk away from the table at any time. My experience with that attitude is that it inevitably infuses the negotiation with mutual suspicion, craven bargaining, and unapologetic self-interest.
I think one could easily say that it's just the case that negotiations have this character, whether one finds it to be desirable or not. One might still think those loyalties and attachments are good, or useful, but one should be honest about what that means. In Helen's example, loyalty to the Pope is more important than producing the 'correct' answer to [ridiculous thought experiment]. That's a perfectly defensible hierarchy of values, but there is a sense in which you've chosen that hierarchy and not some other, and I think it's healthy to recognize that.
Now, of course, there's a difference between being legitimately alienated or disenchanted by politics (I find it harder to be motivated this year than 2004, for a variety of reasons), and using that disenchantment as a threat, with the promise that, should the party fail to comply with one's desired policies, one will sit out. That is to say, there is legitimate critique, and illegitimate, and it's a useful skill to be able to separate the two. It is also not entirely clear that conservative--or leftist--critics of their respective parties engage in enough self-examination with respect to their motives. (But then, as Plato likes to remind us, very few people ever do that properly)
Point two:
The moral here is that some people think that keeping any and all disagreement on the table deepens friendship; I think that’s true for most kinds of disagreement (my friends are the ones I trust to slap me in the face when I need it, for instance), but in cases like my friend’s hypothetical, it cheapens it. Friendship, like loyalty, entails responsibilities, and you need to know what you’re getting into when you start calling yourself a friend. Or a conservative.
Surely, though, there exists some modus vivendi option between supporting a friend's political convictions no matter what, and choosing to not be friends with them because of those convictions. Friendships run on lots of different dimensions, and not all of them map onto politics.
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