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.
You need to not speak in cliches. Thinking ,instead of emoting ,might be nice, too.It'll be liberating, I promise.
Cute quip, but kind of juvenile
You, suggesting anyone is juvenile, particularly in light of you Contsipation Party fantasy,is a lot like Hitler calling Himmler anti-semetic. You want instant gratification at your alleged age? C'mon, that kind of thinking is for teenagers and Leftists. Which one are you?
My Contsipation party? Aren't big words troublesome?
Hitler? LOL!
And what is anti-semetic? I'm anti a few things, but never heard of that one.
You want instant gratification at your alleged age? C'mon, that kind of thinking is for teenagers and Leftists. Which one are you?
How juvenile. Get yourself a spell checker junior.
In answer to your last request, I used the one here on FR.In answer to your first ,little man,you take the top prize of the day for snot nosed, prepubescent behavior.What happened, didn't wear your CVC when the hatches fell on you? That's the only explanation I can find for your less than room temperature intellect. That ,or you're a basic whining malcontent . Cordially,
Rational thought being chief among them. Til later,little man. Cordially,
Best I part company with you, for your own good.
I have never donated more money to Republican candidates than I have this election cycle. I am even directly and actively assisting (10 to 20 hours a week) a Republican hopeful in his House campaign. I would be willing to bet that not one of the Bush-supporters here have donated one tenth as much in money or time on behalf of the Republican Party as I have over the past three or four months.
I see the salvation of conservative principles to lie in an invigorated Republican majority in Congress--not in a "compassionate conservative" Bush presidency.
I would much rather have four years of gridlock courtesy of an invigorated Republican majority in Congress than four more years of record-breaking deficit spending and social welfare transfer payments courtesy of Karl Rove and George W. Bush.
As well it should because if the party ceases to represent them, then they should part. More and more, Republican, does not mean conservative but moderate liberal. Down with the two party system!
I contest your award. I think it belongs to you.
That was clear.
Rush-Like Reichhhh Rips Moderates
January 29, 2004
Our old buddy Robert B. Reich-h-h-h is back, and he's got a new op-ed that sounds like I wrote it. He rips moderates! He rips moderates as not standing for anything. He rips moderates as a bunch of people you can't count on.
Reich agrees with me that moderates are sort of gutless, hangers-on, who wait until the last minute to decide where to go. Reich says that the notion that the Democrats need these moderates is killing the Democrats. He really, for him, fires both barrels.
You can hear me read from this piece in the audio link below. He's exactly right on how catering to moderates is not how you build a movement. Now, he's wrong on which movement needs to be built here. Liberalism needs to be torn down doorjamb by doorjamb; the mansion needs to be smasharooed. But give Reich credit. He wants liberalism to come back and he understands that you don't build a movement on moderates! You don't build a movement on independents! You don't build a movement on people who don't have opinions about anything. You don't build a movement on people who don't have the guts to have opinions on anything. You don't build a movement on people who are trying to make other people like them. You don't build a movement on people who sit around and wait to find out what the majority of other people think and then go that way. And that's what the liberals are doing!
The liberals are ripe to be nuked, ladies and gentlemen! The libs have lost their whole movement. They have archaic antiques as their leaders. And Reich can see it.
Except that now we learn that the alternative minimum tax is set to take a big bite out of middle class family incomes. Bush's tax cuts are a fraud, which we'll find out in April, and that will be the end of the Bush presidency.
I'm writing in McClintock.
Sheesh. Yeah, right. And then we'd be doomed to suffer under twenty to forty more years of judicial activism long after your Clinton clone dwarf is gone. Judges live a long time. Liberal judicial decisions live forever. I nominate your quote as the DUh troll quote of the day.
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