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.
Two-timing me already?
Sheesh, what a fickle pickle you are.
Your motives may be admirable, but your M.O. stinks. You want to change 60 yrs. of liberal/socialist incrementalism in 4 yrs. When you travel from New York To Los Angeles, sometimes you have to get off in Chicago. In spite of what the dims say, President Clinton placed over twice as many Supreme Court and U.S. District Court Judges then Reagan and Bush 1 combined. I have heard arguments for gridlock, and they are insane. The dims just go Judge shopping, find a fellow traveler, and voilla' the Legislature is usurped.!
First come, first served.
In every sense of those words.
Problem is, Bush is creating some of those liberal excesses.
Well, Congressman Billybob pulled me back from the edge. He made a good case that if there is a conservative bone in Dubya's body, that it would manifest in a much more pronounced fashion in the second term. I'm not so sure Bush has those conservative bones, but.... I'm a little more open minded than before.
ALL bets are off if he signs a renewel to the Assault Weapons ban. Bet ya he'd lose a clean 5 million votes by doing that, mine included.
We surely can.I'm glad, too.
I know & FWIW, I think it's downright laughable.
Reagrdless if patrons agree with your rant, I would think it obvious that you aren't a disgruntled Democrat.
But hey, it's easier than debating the points you made and allowing them to stand or fall on their own merit.
Regards Kevin.
Any person claiming to be conservative who is not motivated to keep the Democrats out of power after knowing EXACTLY what they will do with it if given the opportunity, has a real problem with reality. They're either political martyrs, have not been paying attention to what the Democrat candidates have been promising they will do if elected, or are ignoring (or are totally or willfully ignorant of) the history of the last seventy years, or are incredibly dense or insane, or have a morbid desire to toil their lives away in the misery of a Liberal Hell! Any person who would support a third party candidate who has absolutely zero chance of winning even one state or even a single electoral vote is so politically naive and devoid of the brainpower that The Creator so graciously endowed upon them, that it's not even worth wasting pixels on.
And I can tell you, that I probably won't be wasting very many more pixels on people who are coming to FR to trash and bash our candidates and or to trash and bash and drive away the very posters I'm trying to attract. If the intent of third party supporters is to cause as much hell and discontent on our forum and to inflict as much damage to FR as they possibly can, well, I can assure you we will have many fewer third party posters left on FR very soon. The LePur colony can have them. Thank you very much.
It might be different if there was a primary involved. These kind of battles need to take place as part of the process of selecting the best person to run. In this case, there will be no primary. God willing and barring any major disasters, George W. Bush will be the candidate. So it will either be Bush or one of the Democrats that gets elected. No one else stands a snowball's chance in hell. And I've given every person on this web site plenty of advance notice (I've been saying it for the last three years) that FR will NOT be used to help replace Bush with a Democrat. Period. End of story.
Again, if that is your intent, leave now or get yourself banned later. Excessive and repetitive attacks on our candidates or our posters will not be tolerated. Try your luck at DUh or LibertyPost. In presidential politics, they are interchangeable.
That would be lovely, wouldn't it? I can't change 60 yrs. of liberalist/socialist incrementalism in 4 yrs. I can only vote for the people that I believe might.
Getting off in Chicago means never getting to LA, if someone has changed your destination.
How does one stop socialism by voting for those who advance it?
HOT DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hard to believe anyone would admit that, let alone wear it on their sleeve. Enough said.
Good luck with your tax payer paid career.
Why would you say that to somebody trying to earn a living?
We'll after multiple personal attacks by this individual, and then finding out he's compensated by hard working tax payers, I just can't imagine Howlin.
The Man has spoken. Spread it around.
Most Americans are centrist, not far right or far left. Kerry is far left, which is a losing position with the center.
Bush is a center-right president. Conservative on some issues, center on others, liberal on a few.
Kerry is liberal on everything, whether you are talking about taxes, spending, defunding the military and intelligence, abortion, gay marriage, gun rights, or affirmative action.
The media is pushing the idea that Kerry is a centrist, so as to make the general public think him unthreatening, particularly on defense. They are also trying to push the idea that electing the democrat would give us a divided government (gridlock), and are pushing this idea among conservatives that it is preferable.
It is an obvious attemp to manipulate the elctorate through disinformation and propoganda. If the Republicans are divided, it gives the Rats an advantage.
Ask yourself this: if the democrats had all of Congress and the presidency (as they did with Clinton in 1992), how happy would they be to surrender the presidency, even if they still controlled Congress? The answer is obvious....they would consider it a loss.
So why are Republicans and conservatives swallowing this bit of codswallop? The presidency contols foreign policy, cabinet positions, and judicial appointments. We can't afford to lose it.
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