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.
William Jefferson Clinton.
Do you realize how much of a political S***STORM that would create. I know of full scale wars that have been started over less.
What was it Buchanan said about two years ago?
"The differences between the two beltway parties are inconsequential".
These two parties have been backslapping each other and bumping belly's for so many years, they've simply merged. Even Ray Charles can see this.
It's nothing but good cop bad cop. Like phony pro-wrestler's throwing each other around in the ring, and afterwards, drinking at the bar together having a good ol belly laugh.
Thankfully, most are becoming wise to this DC sham, and the beltway elite.
You mean when he was stepping out of his Mercedes ? That Pat Buchanan? Do you recall him doing that when he was addressing some US Auto workers yada yada
Lets see, most of the corporations are off shoring jobs as fast as possible, our government punishes our own business owners by regulating and taxing everything they do, while allowing literally millions of foreign people to enter our country illegally, as a matter of routine causing epic fraud, crime, taking jobs, jamming our social services.... 8 out of 10 cars on the road are foreign made....... But dagnabit, Buchanan is some kind a bad guy because he was seen getting out of a Mercedes!
Yeowza!
Yeah,Pat Buchanan, there's a real leader. Maybe he'll let you ride with him.
No problem. I'd be my pleasure. Maybe catch a few Rino konservatives under our wheels.
Best regards.....
Have you seen what the democrats have proposed for addressing the immigration problem? It makes what GWB proposed look like a round up similar to a German one way ticket to Krakow. Now that dozens of House Republicans have said they will not support GWB's Temp Worker Program, the whole thing is probably dead unless Congress adopts Tancredo's plan. Either way, the Democrats have been pushed further to the left.
Do you think it was by accident that the House Republicans announced their refusal to back the Presidents Immigration plan at the same time the democrats released the details of their plan?.......... I don't. Bush proposes an immigration plan that basically has no demands in it, in fact, all he did was ask Congress to debate it and come up with a plan. Then the democrats, who are desperately seeking a way to trash him, devise a plan of their own showing how heartless Bush is to illegal aliens, just today the liberals want to pass a law to make it a crime to label illegals, as illegals. considering that 70% of the country does not agree with amnesty in it's purist form, Bush has kicked the crap out of the democrats once again even before his plan was proposed in the form of a Bill.
Sheesh. Tinfoil comes in many different rolls.
Which is within their rights to do so. You do understand what business is in business for don't you?
Well, I hadn't heard of the guy, and lets just say I was a little more than disgusted by what I found.
You want that ansd don't gives a good XXX damn about anything else.
You worry and cavail about our Southern border and forget that many illegals come through our border with Canada and jump ship at our ports,and some on airplanes and then just dissolve in the crowds. We have an excessive ammount of Chinese ILLEGALS and Russian ILLEGALS and Irish ILLEGALS and ILLEGALS froim the Middle East And Pakistan !
Go vote for Kerry and just shut up already.
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