Posted on 01/31/2004 3:07:29 PM PST by Kevin Curry
Can conservatives win in November if Bush loses the White House? The easy answer is "No." The thinking answer is quite different. The easy answer overestimates the power of a Democrat president who must work with a Republican-controlled Congress. The thinking answer is that gridlock is often preferable to a government shifting into high gear regardless of whether a Republican or Democrat is at the wheel. And gridlock is always preferable to progressivism, whatever its form.
Liberal nanny state progressivism is a rouged tart wearing a high tight skirt standing on the street corner, who whispers "$20 for a good time." Compassionate conservative progressivism is the wholesome girl next door in a county fair booth that reads, "$20 for a kiss"–only the bargain is even worse, because the government forces you to pay, and someone else gets the good time or the kiss.
Neither form of progressivism is acceptable to a conservative who has better and more profitable things to do with his time and money.
The key to understanding why the thinking answer attaches such small value to a Bush win this November is to understand the paradox of unified control. Common sense suggests that conservatives are best served when Republicans have unified control over the two branches that write the checks, pay the bills, and write and enforce the laws: the executive and the legislative. That was the delirious hope of conservatives, including myself, who cheered in November 2000 as Bush won the White House by the narrowest of margins and the Republican Party won combined control of the Senate and the House in 2002.
But this delirious optimism has turned steadily to dark dismay as Bush recklessly and heedlessly cranked the conservative agenda hard left and smashed it into reefs of trillion-dollar Medicare entitlements, record deficit spending, incumbent criticism-stifling campaign finance reform, illegal alien amnesty-on-the-installment-plan, NEA budget increases and the like.
Where has the Republican co-captain –Congress–been as Bush has pursed this reckless course? Mostly sleeping or meekly assisting. Would a Republican Congress have tolerated these antics from a Democratic president? Absolutely not! Why has a Republican Congress tolerated and even assisted Bush to do this? Because he is a Republican and for no other reason.
Thus, the paradox of unified control: a president can most easily and effectively destroy or compromise the dominant agenda of his own party when his own party controls Congress. Bush has demonstrated the potency of this paradox more powerfully than any president in recent memory–although Clinton had his moments too, as when he supported welfare reform.
Does this mean conservatives should desire a Democrat president when Congress is controlled by Republicans? No. Conservatives should desire a consistently conservative Republican president who with grace and inspiration will lead a Republican-controlled Congress to enact reforms that will prove the clear superiority of the conservative, small government agenda by its fruits. Bush's tax cuts are a wonderful achievement, and have had a powerful stimulating effect on the economy. But imagine how much better the result if he had not set forces in motion to neutralize this achievement by getting his trillion dollar Medicare boondoggle enacted.
Ten steps forward and ten steps back is may be how Republicans dance the "compassionate conservative" foxtrot, but in the end it merely leads us back to the same sorry place we started. It is not an improvement.
When a Republican president compromises the conservative agenda and is enabled to do so by a Republican Congress too dispirited or disorganized to resist, the next best answer might well be for a Democrat to hold the White House. Nothing would steel the courage of a Republican Congress and enliven its spirit more than to face off against a Democrat bent on implementing a liberal agenda.
Any Democrat unfortunate enough to win the White House this year will face the most depressing and daunting task of any Democrat president ever to hold the office. The Iraq War will become his war, and he will be scorned and repudiated if he does not with grace, power, and dignity bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. That means he will have to conduct the war in much the same way that Bush is conducting it now–he will not have the latitude to do much else. If he conducts the war in the manner that Bush is conducting it, his own base will abandon him.
Any Democrat president will also have to choose between spending cuts or raising taxes. If he chooses the latter, he will see his support plummet as the economic recovery sputters and stalls. If he chooses the former, he will dispirit his base supporters. In either case he will strengthen the hand of the Republican controlled-Congress and see Republican strength enhanced in the Senate and House.
If SCOTUS vacancies open up, he will see his nominees scrutinized and resisted with a zeal that can only be expected and carried out by a Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee that has suffered through years of kidney-punches and eye-gouging in judicial appointment hearings by a Democrat minority (it would help immensely if the spineless, Kennedy-appeasing Orrin Hatch were replaced as Committee Chair).
As his frustrations grow, his support plummets, and the Republican Party adds to its numbers in Congress, a Democrat president would be viewed as opportunistic roadkill by zealots in his own party, including and especially the ice-blooded and cruelly-scheming Hillary Clinton. In the run-up to the 2008 election Democrats would be faced with the choice of continuing to support a sure loser in the incumbent or a scheming hard-left alternative in Hillary. The blood-letting in the Democratic Party through the primary season and into the convention would be grievous and appalling, committed in plain view of the American public–who could be expected to vomit both of them out.
That would leave the field open for the Republican presidential candidate to achieve a victory of historic proportions in 2008. With greater Republican strength in Congress, the opportunity would again present itself for this nation to finally achieve the dream of implementing a real and substantial conservative agenda, of actually shrinking government in a large and meaningful way.
The key to achieving that dream, of course, is to carefully select an electable conservative for 2008 who will remain true to the conservative vision and not cause conservatism to fall victim again to the paradox of unified control.
It is not too soon to start looking for that candidate.
Your fondness for determinism has prematurely eliminated another possibility.
In states where Bush could be expected to do very well (>55% of the vote), voters wishing to put a shot across his bows could vote third-party with a clear conscience, a) to keep the state more competitive and b) to build third-party politics for the future. Those wanting to make it more competitive in this way would be voting strategically......something Karl Rove certainly couldn't complain about, as a strategist himself.
| 1998 was the year of the Impeachment. I think aggravated Rats signed on at that time with the intention of reappearing if Impeachment was successful, or failing that, if later there were a Republican president. They didn't know for sure, but planned on the contingency. In my everyday life, I run across many people, most of whom are either centrist Republicans or centrist conservatives. There is no way that these people are representative of conservatives.
|
But it is hard to believe that a whole bunch of conservatives signed up in 1998 and then for some reason only post during elections.
What...don't these people care about government at any other time?
Plus, moderators will tell you that there have indeed been sleeper accounts here. Just ask them.
Heck, if he doesn't do what I want, I'll just fight harder! After all, wisdom is doing the consistant thing no matter what the results.
Say he banned all assault weapons. Well, that would just make me strive more mightily to get him elected, cuz then he'd have a chance to reverse himself later. Makes sense?
Anyways, back on the team.
And the downside is ???
Were you aware that Kevin Curry has been banned and can't defend himself?
That's the extent of it, including the thinly-veiled references to Post #712. Many of the folks rejoicing in this thread are the same who would rather post insults and bait people than respond point-for-point to an argument. Those folks are as guilty as many of the banned for inciting flamefests, but for whatever reason it's tolerated.
I have seen poster after poster make case and point as to why certain Bush Administration policies lately have gone awry and are dead wrong -- yet the points are rarely debated on merit with Bush-supporters. ONLY further accusations lack of integrity and treason to the "Party" -- GOP that is.
Some debate the arguments on their merit - many do not. Hopefully this will change...
onyx: Surely you recognize that tossing perjoratives of that sort around this forum incites other people into flaming you, and in some cases gets them tossed off the forum. After all, "Bush hater" is little different from "Bushbot", except in who it's directed toward. Right? Or is getting people tossed the point of your exercise?
Jim: posters like this person are inciting others into making comments that get them banned. If your goal is to have a more civil forum in which we can openly work toward a Bush reelection, can you at least convince these folks to tone their rhetoric down? It's difficult to expect others to sit meekly by while they're personally insulted, yet a response in kind will get them banned.
I understand your preoccupation with the numbers aspect of it, and yes, that's where the strategists will look, because that is what their problem is, to get to majority.
But the voters have a completely different problem, and that's what I was addressing. The voters' problem is accountability to the public within the Party, for following the Party line. Representative George Nethercutt, for example, broke his promise that he made under the Contract with America to term-limit himself, back when he so laudably upset Tom Foley. The voters should have had a chance to retire him (via the primary) without voting in a 'Rat. England does this regularly with votes of confidence.
The key here is that by refusing to stage primaries regularly, the Parties get away with murder when they flout their own platforms or support bad or incorrigible candidates like Wilbur Mills, Phil Crane, Barney Frank and Slick Willie.
That is not my intent at all, neither is it to march in lock step. I don't think criticism, politely and respectfully rendered, is bashing and trashing. Perhaps others do.
Here is an interesting example, from just today's Manchester, NH, Union Leader. Now I think there are few people who have followed to any extent the Union Leader over the years who would say it is anything other than reliably and consistently conservative. It often spars editorially with the Boston Globe and the liberal Concord Monitor, among others. Here is today's lead editorial.
"Money-burning Bush: How to make a one-term President
PRESIDENT BUSH is trying to buy the 2004 election. It isn't going to work. He needs to get smart about spending, and now.
Conservatives predicted that the $400 billion price tag on the President's Medicare prescription drug bill was underestimated. Last week they were proved right as it was revealed that the plan will cost at least $540 billion — a third larger than projected.
Conservatives predicted that the federal deficit would increase dramatically without spending cuts. Last week they were proved right as the Congressional Budget Office projected a $100 billion increase in the deficit, and the White House revealed that the President's new budget will peg the deficit at $520 billion — a $145 billion increase over last year.
It is incredible that come this fall, Americans may have to vote for a Democrat to get a President who will curb federal spending and shrink the federal deficit. Yes, the Democrats promise the moon, but this President promises Mars.
President Bush is supposed to release a federal budget today that curbs federal spending. We'll believe it when we see it. He's promised to control spending before. But in the past month he has proposed a Mars exploration program estimated to cost $170 billion (and sure to cost more) as well as numerous small spending hikes such as increasing funding for the National Endowment for the Arts by $18 million.
We'd much rather the NEA fund Shakespeare (which it does) than freaky performance artists (which it used to). But the bottom line is that it shouldn't exist in the first place. If Americans want to fund art, they will go to plays, watch movies, attend concerts, and buy paintings. They don't need the federal government to do that for them.
There is precious little that Americans truly need the federal government to do. This President claimed to understand that. But his actions show that either he doesn't understand, or he was lying."
Now, were I to post this editorial from a reliably conservative source, were I to say I am quite in agreement with it, does that make me a "BushBasher"?
With all due respect to you...and I mean that, not just as a throwaway term...I respect enormously what you have done - while I understand the passions that grow hot in politics and in life, if we cannot honestly speak our minds, discuss, and learn, then what is the point?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.