INDEED: “You fight an election with the politicians you have.”
No, you fight an election over the principles you hold. When you are reduced to fighting an election with whatever politicians come to hand, you are admitting you - and your party - no longer have principles, and that you are merely engaged in a squabble for power at any cost.
UPDATE: Glenn responds :
Hmm. I’m sympathetic to this in the abstract, but by the time we get to an election those principles are embodied — however imperfectly — by the politicians who are actually running.
“However imperfectly” is the rat in the woodpile here. If the party’s nominee has a history of espousing principles that are antithetical to the nominal principles of the party - if, for instance, Hillary Clinton were to somehow be nominated as the GOP candidate in order to oppose Obama - how, then, would you justify a vote for that candidate as a vote for the nominal principles of the party?
The GOP isn’t going to nominate Hillary Clinton - but it will nominate somebody a lot closer to her in some ways than was previously considered possible. And nominating somebody more, rather than less, like her is the mantra of that wing of the GOP that advocates disregarding the traditionally conservative principles of the party in favor of a vote (and power) hunt among center and left-leaning “independents.” In other words, victory at any cost, principles included.
UPDATE: The original quote is from William Kristol, who also adds:
So the conservative commentariat should take a deep breath, be a bit less judgmental about these individuals–and realize that there is not likely to be a second Reagan.
Mike Hendrix responds :
There most certainly isn’t — not so long as people like Kristol are willing to sell out conservative/Constitutionalist principle to vote for the GOP, no matter how much elbow grease its overlords expend on polishing up the same old RINO turds, anyway.
Yep, exactly my thought as well.
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Glenn also mentioned this:
Well, in the sense that we haven’t had a noticeable upheaval along beerhall putsch or kristallnacht lines, no, I guess it hasn’t. On the other hand, we’re all talking about nationalized health care as more a matter of when, not if — and it wasn’t that way as little as twenty years ago. That has to count as a victory for the statists no matter how you slice it, seems to me. A big one.
A smaller but no less telling one: lots of friends of mine here in NC were going out last night to a new bar being opened by some musician friends of mine. It’s a no-smoking bar.
In flavor country. Home of the Marlboro man.
When it comes, it won’t be wearing a fright wig, floppy shoes and a clown nose, and it will be vewwwy vewwwy quiet. Also slow, one little step at a time.
Assuming that because there is no watershed event to point to as the Moment Everything Changed, it therefore will not happen (or that its hot breath isn’t already on our necks, at least) might be comforting. But it ain’t helping, I don’t think. Next time you buckle up for safety — or pay your taxes, or try to get permission to own a handgun from one of our larger municipalities — it might be worth mulling over a bit.
I think what Glenn was talking about was the little turd about a “fascist tyranny” dropped by one of our usual leftard trolls, Smilodon. The only kind of fascist tyranny I’m worried about is the Liberal Fascist variety.
One outrageous sleight-of-hand I noticed in Kristol’s column was the bit about Huckabee, who is after all pro-life and pro-gun so how can he not be a conservative? Uh, Bill, you just listed the sum total of Huckabee’s conservative credentials, haven’t you? The rest is all a mishmash of big-government populism, if I may coin a term.
I’m a conservative who just turned 60. I started working for Goldwater in high school in George Romney’s Michigan. The Republican party then and now has been controlled by the chamber of commerce types in each city or town where I have lived or been active. These are the same sort of people who manage businesses by contributing money to both parties and avoiding any controversy that might lose business. They are “managers” with no real principles at all.
When conservatives are upset enough to turn out in large numbers (as they were in the Carter and Clinton periods) the managers bend with the prevailing winds and back conservatives, then when the storm passes they go back to backing their own again.
The problem is that conservatives are not willing or able to stomach the year after year political routine that the regular party politican/managers actually seem to enjoy. So once the excitement ends, the conservatives go away and the managers are still doing what they have been doing all along. And nothing changes.
This is pretty depressing. On the other hand, I imagine the Democrats are run the same way. So it is providing inertia to the overall political process -which is probably a good thing from a conservative point of view. Especially since most of the proposed changes in my lifetime have been bad ones.
“However imperfectly” is indeed the issue, and one that has to be decided by each of us when the time comes. Do the imperfections outweigh the good points of the candidate, in practice? There’re principles, and then there’s government, and those two things are mostly opposites. The goal, I think, has to be the best government we can acheive, with the possiblities that are before us. You and Glenn both make good points.
However, I’m not sure those you decry are in fact motivated by “victory at any cost, principles included”. No, I suspect they actually agree with the center and left-leaning folks. They like big government and government coercion just fine, so long as the end sought is one they approve of. “Compassionate” “conservatism”, if you will.
Which is why maybe we need a new party rather than arguing amongst the old. Let them keep their:
McCain-Feingold
McCain-Kennedy
Border fence that never gets built
Cozy relationships with the Saudis
Etc., etc.
One thought about an American Conservative Party: Even if it only wielded a consistent ten percent of the electorate in an organized manner, it would be the sort of minority balance-of-power that neither party could win without. Thus conservatives might actually find themselves being wooed by both parties as they enact their policies - a somewhat unusual position for cons to find themselves in.
Are you sure about that? Think back to Carole Roberts counting ballots on National TV in 2000. A really big chunk of faith in the integrity of public institutions went up in smoke right about then; the “goodwill” entry on the National balance sheet went to red ink overnight.
An American Conservative ten percent would be written off, if not actively attacked, by the Democrats as the Dems now stand because too much of the party is viscerally anti-conservative. The Republicans would have to have that vote, and maybe would have to accustom themselves to pursuing it, instead of assuming it as they do now. Works for me.
In theory the “practical politics” or Kristol and Hansen sound great. But it was this “practical politics” that gave us GWB. Which in turn cost us Congress in a landslide in 06 (if you forgot the GOP got its a*s kicked but good) and will cost us the White House (no matter who is the candidate for either party) in 08.
In the real world “practical politcs” only works in the short run. The short run for the GOP was 00 - 04; it ended with a painful hangover in 06. Like collectivism and booze (as a drinker for decades I can vouch for the fact that the buzz does stop). The higher the high the worse the hangover. If the GOP did not learn its lesson in 06 (and it seems they did not!) they may learn it this year. Or the party leaders may just have a death wish, who knows.?!@#%!?
Well wait,we had a conservative candidate didn’t we? It’s just that not enough Republicans voted for him. So we can’t say “we go to war with the politicians we have” because an actual conservative lost. We threw away an actual conservative to bank on McCain, who the media tells us is a conservative except that he’s just not on so many important issues.
The problem here is that I don’t even know what Republicans stand for now. McCain is missing half the planks of the conservative platform and Huckabee… as far as he can tell he’s only got 1 or 2 planks total. And being pro-life is a completely worthless plank for the president to have because once you are picking outcome based judges then you are treading dangerously away from a conservative judiciary and towards a different kind of judicial activism that is just as stupid as the one the Dems are pushing. If the Republican party doesn’t stand for anything, then what’s the point?
I’ll probably vote for McCain over Obama the surrender monkey, and vote actively against Huck no matter who the Dem is, other than that I’m probably not going to vote for anyone.
McCain keeps bringing up his years as a POW. I will not vote for a Manchurian Candidate. Now I wonder, when will one of his opponents bring that up? He was in their hands long enough for programming.
Actually, Bill, what would happen is the exact same thing that happened in 1992: The two left parties would govern on who gets the most of 90% of the electorate, and the 10% would be ignored by both sides.
Actually, SDN, what happened in 1992 is that the two majors dodged a huge bullet. Perot could have won the White House that year.
Sure, Bill, they just “got lucky” that Perot, like Ron Paul, was unstable enough to shoot himself in the foot. Of course, if the candidate isn’t obliging enough to provide them with the material they need, they’ll just make sh*t up, like they did with Fred being lazy, and use their stadium sound system sized megaphone to repeat it to the vast majority of the voters who’ve never heard the word blogosphere.
Rather than starting a third political party, we’d be far better off spending our money to buy out a major media conglomerate so we’d have our own megaphone.
SDN,
I like the idea. Do you have $50 billion I can borrow? Failing that loan, I for one am willing to help start another party. ‘Conservative’ still has some social conservative (religious populist) meanings, How about The American Libery Party ALP for short?
Re Mike’s pinpointing of Glenn’s “…In response to some of Bill’s commenters, let me note a couple of less-sour things. First, people have been predicting America’s imminent decline into fascism for my entire lifetime, and so far it hasn’t happened..”.
Glenn needs to read some history. It took the Roman empire 300 years to crash and burn. And remnants still lived on in Europe and Eastern Europe as well as Turkey for centuries. It’s the story of the boiling frog. We’re dead as a free people. We just haven’t acknowledged it yet. Glenn’s a moderate so he never will.
Feel free to start your own movement, SDN. That’s the joy of the internet age. Entry costs are much lower than they used to be.
Start the fund raising drive. I might even cough up a few bucks. Especially since our drive to take over the GOP for Fred really didn’t work out so well.