When the People Want Something Bad Enough
It’s been ages since I started reading George Will’s columns. In one of Mr. Will’s writings, he stated that “If the people want something bad enough, and scream loud enough for long enough, eventually the leaders will follow.” The past few years, I’m not certain that applies.
It certainly applied to the immigration debate. People were so upset with that legislation that they melted the Senate switchboard down with a flood of calls.
With Speaker Pelosi and Harry Reid running the show in DC and with the DFL running the legislature in St. Paul, that axiom doesn’t appear to apply anymore. These examples highlight why I think that axiom doesn’t apply:
1) People certainly screamed loudly last summer during the House Oil Party. Speaker Pelosi was adamantly opposed to opening up the OCS because she couldn’t afford to do anything that would give enronmental extremists a reason to stop pouring money into her candidates’ campaigns.
2) People certainly screamed loudly the last two weeks during the debate (I’m using that term loosely.) on the stimulus bill. All their screaming couldn’t prevent the Traitorous Trio from stabbing their House colleagues in the back.
3) On a local level, a House committee defeated Tom Emmer’s Photo ID bill even though the bill draws near-unanimous support from Republicans, majority support from independents and strong support with moderate-to-conservative Democrats.
What this tells me is that we’re at a crossroads, a crossroads that the GOP alphabets in DC and RPM leadership haven’t picked up on. There’s three parts to this crossroads.
One of the crossroads that we’re at deals with communications. If we don’t get more issue-specific, both with our solutions and our attacks, then we’re wasting time and, more importantly, political credibility.
Another crossroads that the GOP finds itself at is that we aren’t instructing people like we used to. Simply put, we’ve spent too much time looking for people who ‘voted right’ rather than finding great conservative minds.
Let’s be clear about this: I’m not advocating abandoning conservatism. Quite the opposite.
What I’m saying is that we’ve worried about how people would vote on a specific set of issues. Instead, I’m advocating we spend more time studying how people reach their positions. Once I know what animates people, I’ll know how to persuade people.
The other crossroads we’re at dovetails with the second crossroads. Specifically, it deals with living out our conservative principles. In the past, we’ve heard the speeches that got us revved up, only to have the politicians disappoint us. What’s needed are people who’ll (a) fight for free market-oriented solutions, (b) fight against high taxes and stifling regulations and unfunded mandates and (c) speak to the needs of the prosperity-makers, aka small businesses.
That means emphasizing intelligent solutions for education and health care problems as well as for taxes, spending and regulations.
Before former Sen. Daschle withdrew his name from consideration as HHS secretary, it was clear that he’d be President Obama’s point person to ‘reform’ health care from a federal standpoint. I recently had a brief Facebook exchange with John Kasich about his vision for Recharge Ohio. His perspective was completely different than Sen. Daschle’s. Rep. Kasich thinks that states should be the testing grounds for reforms. I suspect that that’s because welfare reform was tested in Wisconsin and Massachuesetts before their solutions were first tested at the state level.
The point to all this is simple: If politicians think that they don’t have to listen to us but do have to listen to the special interest groups that fund their campaigns, then it’s time to vote those that don’t listen out of office. That means joining together in reducing Ms. Pelosi’s and Sen. Reid’s power. Their power will be reduced if they’re in the minority or if their majority is slim.
Technorati Tags: Elitism, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Elections, Reforms, John Kasich, Tommy Thompson, Status Quo, Tom Daschle, President Obama
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
February 17th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
But it’s always “the other guy’s” rep or senator that’s at fault, “we can’t afford to lose the one we’ve got ’cause he’s/she’s been there so long”.
Case in point: Arlen Specter who, dressed as a Republican and talking like a Republican in his last primary/regular election cycle, fooled enough of the foolish that he was re-elected in spite of being a bigger jackass than some of his donkey cohorts. I’m not sure that a significant portion of Pennsylvania Republicans even today believe he’s really a donkey.
And that goes for a lot of supposed Republican reps and sens. My own state of Oregon finally got rid of one last year, Gordon Smith. Unfortunately, he was replaced with a moonbat donk, but at least now we can work on getting a real Republican elected without that overgrown weasel squealing how great he’s been for Oregon (at taxpayers’ expense).