The Passion of moderate conservatives

Principled conservatives (i.e. right-wing lunatics) are constantly being entreated by their moderate betters to ‘moderate’ their principle because it is, we are told, only through moderation that electoral success can be achieved.

There are a number of things wrong with this prescription but the one I want to focus on in this post is the fact that conservatives tend to be punished by voters when the liberal policies they have adopted backfire.

A case in point is California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He started out in 2003 campaigning against the corrupt spendthrift Democrat Governor, Gray Davis. Fiscal conservatism was his byword. But after the November, 2005 special election, where a series of propositions he supported were defeated, he ‘moved to the center’ and began governing like a spendthrift liberal. Initially this worked and his popularity improved. Even left-wing actors like Warren Beatty praised him, saying the ‘new’ governator is better than the nasty old one. When Rush Limbaugh criticized him for this move, Schwarzenegger called into the program and gave an ‘ends justify the means’ defence, i.e. jettisoning conservative principles was worth it for the temporal success that it bought him.

And it really did seem like a swell bargain up until about a year ago. But now that California is so broke that it is forced to pay people with IOU’s, I bet it doesn’t seem like a good idea any more.

What RINO’s, mavericks and our own red tories up here in the Dominion of Canada forget is that principles, when they are applied, have consequences. Good principles lead to good policies which have good consequences (like, say, prosperity); just as bad policies inevitably lead to bad consequences (like bankruptcy and economic ruin). As a leader, you are ultimately judged on your results, not how well your ideas initially focus grouped.

Oh...and the best part? All your new allies will desert you the moment the bottom falls out of your program because even liberals don’t want to be associated with failure. But since you belong to a different party from them, this is easy enough to do. Instead of blaming your failure on the liberal policies they recommended you adopt, they would rather cite the fact that you are conservative – “see what happens when you vote conservative”. In other words, the very principles you rejected to ‘move to the center’ will be proclaimed as the cause of your demise.

When a politician loses both the battle of principles and the battle of popularity, he departs the scene utterly alone as a complete failure.

That is the fate of the conservative appeaser.

 

Comments

[McGuire]

The problem with too many conservatives is that they're too principled, to the point where they consider anyone a heretic who does not sync up 100% w/ their particular POV. They tend to focus on the fact that they may disagree w/ a conservative 10-20% of the time instead of seeing that they agree w/ them 80-90% of the time.

Look at the US. If all those GOPer's realize this about John McCain, maybe they wouldn't be stuck w/ Comrade Barack today. Being principled is 1 thing, being an inflexible zealot is another.

[Ted]

Since when is spending more than you take in and acting fiscally irresponsible a liberal policy.

That is the very hallmark of conservative government: Reagan, Bush I, Mulroney, Ernie Eves, Stephen Harper... all of them have demonstrated that conservatives are fiscally irresponsible and fiscally tone deaf. "Borrow and spend" conservatives, all.

[Cincinnatus]

Dear McGuire:

I think your point is well taken. However, because I can't recall a single instance of a right-leaning leader behaving that way, I think it remains a theoretical problem. On the other hand, I see many many conservative leaders behaving like Schwarzenegger.

With regard to conservative voters who were too pure to vote for McCain and so got 'comrade Barack', I also agree this is a legitimate problem. But this is a problem faced by many moderate conservatives who take their right wing for granted. Mulroney did the same thing and inspired the Reform party.

Dear Ted:

For proof that deficit spending is a liberal policy (I mean in theory, not practice), one need only look at the liberal's favourite economist, John Maynard Keynes.

I agree that there is a problem with 'borrow and spend' conservative governments, but as a liberal (I assume you are a liberal (though there is nothing wrong with that!)), who criticizes conservative governments for abandoning conservative principles, I think you help prove my original point that conservative leaders gain nothing by adopting liberal policies.