Post a Comment On: Internal Monologue

Andrew Sullivan posts a reader’s email about how small government conservatives flush their political capital down the toilet:
By continuing to vote for Republicans for no other reason than they are not Democrats, fiscal and small government conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. The Republican party will never respond to the concerns of fiscal and small government conservatives because they don’t have to. No matter what they do or how they betray their values, Republicans have the votes of the majority of this group.I totally agree. Fiscal and small government conservatives should be solidly Democratic, or form their own party. One has only to point to the budget and growth of government numbers during the Clinton administration and compare them to those of the Bush administration to see which party stands for fiscal responsibility. (Though you could also make the argument that it is divided government that keeps the bloat down. Even so, fiscal conservatives should then throw some of their weight the Democrats way to ensure that this happens.) Imagine the political power that fiscal conservatives would gain if they as a group publicly stated that they were watching both parties, and whichever one performed better on this issue would get their support in 2006 and 2008.

I would argue that pro-choice groups like Planned Parenthood and NARAL do the exact same thing when they support Lieberman. If there’s no penalty for Lieberman when he votes for cloture on Alito, why shouldn’t he take the opportunity to earn some suck-up points with the Bush administration? Once politicians feel they can safely ignore you, your cause is dead in the water. And nothing gives politicians the freedom to ignore you like mindlessly supporting the same party despite its utter contempt for your principles (fiscal conservatives and the Republican party) or mindlessly supporting incumbents despite their undermining of your agenda (as PP & NARAL do with Lieberman). Above all, politicians must get the message that there is a price to pay for spurning your agenda. Because they certainly get a message from the Bush administration that there’s a price to pay for spurning Bush’s agenda: the right-wing smear machine calls you a cowardly traitor. If there’s nothing pushing from the other side, why be surprised when politicians cave? You must be the spine you wish politicians had.

It’s sad that the voices speaking out for things I believe in (fiscal responsibility, a woman’s control over her own body) seem so politically inept that they can’t play a simple game of tit-for-tat.

I usually vote Democrat down the line, so I might be guilty of the same sort of unwavering support that makes politicians complacent. But I try to vary my (small) contributions depending on whether a candidate is actually doing something about issues I care about or not. And I will support a primary challenger like Lamont if the incumbent (Lieberman, in this case) thinks that embracing Bush (literally and figuratively) is something a Democrat should be doing right now. In my small way, I’m trying to let Democratic politicians know that drifting ever rightward in a weak attempt to “triangulate” against radical Republicans (who aren’t interested in compromise and simply move further to the right) is a losing proposition. It’s bad for the country, and it’s bad for them if a progressive primary challenger shows up.