Conservatives don't usually have enough votes to have things go their way. One problem is the disavowal of the 11th Commandment, and the more or less constant bickering between conservatives who fall out with each other and sometimes take their ball and go home instead of supporting the party candidate.Tic Tac wrote:Like father like son. Neither was much of a conservative.
That old practical political scientist, Lyndon Johnson, often put it this way: "When you have the votes, they do things your way. When they have the votes, you do things their way." It's just that simple.
Rarely have conservatives had the voting power to have things done their way. Candidates try to appeal to conservatives, and it is easy to do, but governing thereafter is difficult, because conservatives go back to their circular firing squads instead of all getting on board and getting at least some of the things done.
W was a good example. He nominated some of the finest conservative lawyers in the country to the Federal Courts, but many of them never even got a vote, because the Republican Senators, 1 short of a majority, couldn't muscle the Schumers, Kennedys, Durbins and Leahys to get a vote. Come on, man!
W had been successful as a Governor because he got Dems to go along with some of his ideas and went with some of theirs. DC doesn't work like that, he found out. He didn't really have the votes to be insisting on everything his way either.
It is nearly impossible to be a true conservative fiscally since re-election depends so much on pork. Even your conservative supporters want their pork, are addicted to federal largess. A candidate who promised sincerely to slash Federal spending and meant it wouldn't last a term. Nobody would help him since they all depend on pork to keep support, one way or the other.
The battle over large government has been lost, a long time ago. We are never going back to the government of Calvin Coolidge, who I have come to admire as the finest President of the 20th Century for his fiscal frugality, abhorrence of debt and sensible management of limited Federal power. The people do not want it, no matter how "right" many of us believe it to be.
