Posted on 01/26/2008 5:57:27 AM PST by fightinJAG
[snip]
On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, "I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party. It's going to change it forever, be the end of it!"
This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Backatcha.
I agree when you say “had conservatism been proven to work, it would’ve won converts.” But the problem I see is: what is the problem here? The chicken or the egg?
If there were more conservatives, more conservatism would have been tried and, therefore, more would have been proven to work.
When Bush tried to appoint Myers to the Supreme Court, for example, conservatives piped up in large numbers. However one recalls the narrative from there, the basic fact is that conservatives in the grassroots made a huge difference to the outcome on the Supreme Court.
But there wasn’t one other issue on which conservatives were able to have a similar effect-—mainly because the numbers weren’t there on any one issue. (Just like conservatives were not, or for some reason did not, raise one of the more conservative candidates out of the bottom tier in the presidential race.)
That said, it seems to me, in the above scenario, that it’s also important that the one time conservatives were able to directly influence the outcome of a political act (the appointment of Supreme Court justices), it was critical that there was one person-—the President-—on whom to focus conservative wrath-—as opposed to on many congresscritters.
When one person is making the nomination, and that one person is taking the heat, and that one person is able to say to his party and the opposing party, “this act is demanded by my base and they fought me over it, they will surely fight you,” well, clarity happens.
When you start talking about the grassroots trying to herd the cats of Congress, however, the chance of bringing enough pressure to bear on the right center of gravity is infinitely smaller.
If conservatives want any chance of influencing a president like Bush was influenced in the Myers situation, they should focus on getting a president elected out of their party, regardless.
Bottom line: (1) there don’t seem to be enough conservatives; and (2) the influence of conservatives has been decreased to the extent there has been an increase in the “my way or the highway” mentality (because this works against sufficient numbers of conservatives coalescing around an issue/candidate).
Great post!
Another great post, one that requires a lot of thought. It would explain McCain’s rise in the Republican party: strong foreign policy but weak domestic one.
Not even close to true.
The Congress set that all up, and 80% of it is from entitlement spending that has been locked in since before they came on board.
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