All you have to do to raise firestorm on these threads is to praise Newt Gingrich and offer him up as presidential timber. Yet he is by your standard the only man who contrived a way to nationalize a by- election and reversing decades of history and place Republicans in power who would act conservatively, again by your standard. Thereafter, these Republicans, under Gingrich's leadership, put through all but one of the provisions of the contract with America. Gingrich took the Congress to the point of twice shutting down the federal government. He forced balance budgets of the Clinton administration and the reform of welfare.
And yet Republicans by the bushel basket full deserted Gingrich and to this day they turn their face away from the contract with America. Do you recall how so many people got nervous when Clinton contrived to blame the government shutdown on the Republicans? Do you recall how Republicans turned on Gingrich after the media distorted Gingrich's anger over being mistreated on Air Force One? Gingrich was assaulted by bogus ethics charges and many Republicans shamefully deserted him. His marital indiscretions did not include perjury as did Bill Clinton's whom he criticized for the crimes he committed. Yet many many conservatives will have no further truck with them because of his adultery.
I read FReepers on these threads say they will not trust Gingrich because he is not a reliable conservative. He has done many things which destress me as well. Just today I understand he endorsed the Republican House candidate in New York State in exchange for her written commitment not to raise taxes. I think he was wrong, as was George Bush, when Gingrich pandered to Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, just as George Bush pandered to Teddy Kennedy.
Yet I will not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. We are all of us born in original sin. We are not going to find the perfect conservative, even considering Ronald Reagan, this side of the cross. We must make do by modeling the clay we are given. To indignantly and loudly abandon all efforts to sort out the good from the bad and the better from the worse is to succumb to cynicism which, while it offers certain short-term psychological empty calories, leaves the world vulnerable to the unscrupulous.
My point is that it is not entirely a one-sided problem. If our Republican politicians are untrustworthy, we Republicans ourselves are at best fickle. We ask our politicians to fall on their swords for conservative principle, but we abandon them at the slightest whiff of scandal when the media succeeds in undermining them.
There is some truth in the axiom that people get the kind of government they deserve.
