In Who Else Wants a Conservative Republican Party, we explored the meaning of "winning" as it regards politics and concluded that even when the Republican Party wins, we the conservative voters still ultimately lose ... because they grow the government anyway.
So knowing as we do, that there's no magic in party affiliation, how do we go about electing conservative politicians? Do we go third-party? Matt at the Conservative Hideout 2.0, answered the question this way:
Breaking away from the Republican Party plays into the hands of the left. With resistance to them split, they can ram whatever socialist legislation they want down our throats. We would not have the power to stop them. We barely do now. They will take over health care, regulate talk radio out of existence, regulate the Internet, raise taxes to impossibly high rates, create a debt that will enslave out children, pass environmental regulations that would kill American industry and jobs, and ruin this great nation, perhaps permanently.
The fact is this; we need a well established and funded party hierarchy to achieve our goals. Starting a new party, even if successful, would take years to accomplish-years that we do not have.
What follows is not a critique of Matt's opinion, but rather a further exploration of the third-party idea. Would going third-party really help the left? In the short-run maybe, but in the long-term, it would work against them. Trust the markets.
Why is it that we continue getting more and more left-leaning Republican policians?
One reason is because the current political environment rewards left-leaning behavior. When a "moderate" Republican like McCain gets tons of support from the electorate, the RNC receives market signals that tell them you approve of John McCain! Even if you don't like McCain, only voting for him to "beat the Democrats," you still sent the political market a message of approval for "moderate" John McCain.
Think about it Like This:
A politician has to earn your vote in the same way a store has to earn your business. The store offers products you like, at prices you agree with, so you support that store by shopping there (voting with your dollars).
Politicians have to do the same thing. They must work on meeting your needs (shrinking government, lowering taxes, etc.) to earn your vote.
Let's say our store sells car tires and you've been buying your tires there for a long time, but you haven't been happy with their quality lately. What do you do? You buy your tires somewhere else!
By taking your business to a new store, you send the owner of the previous store a market signal of disapproval. Now the owner is aware he must offer higher-quality tires, otherwise continue to lose sales. It's a win-win.
Now think about what would happen if everyone just stayed "loyal" to the guy with lower-quality tires, instead of shopping at a new store ...
The market signals received by the owner shows positive demand for low-quality tires. Based on this information, he then expands his inventory of low-quality tires (instead of stocking higher-quality tires his customers really want). So thanks to the "loyalty" of his customers, he's now stuck with an inventory of tires nobody wants, and his customers still can't buy the tires they need. A lose-lose.
"We the people" need to change the market incentives for politicians. Just like the store owner learned through loss to stock higher-quality tires, so too does the Republican Party, need to learn to "stock" good politicians.
Politicians will cease growing government only when it becomes unprofitable for them to do so. I like the way Albert Jay Nock put it:
“It occurred to me then, how little important it is to destroy a government, in comparison with destroying the prestige of government.”
Next up, How to Elect a Conservative.
I like the construction of your ideas, your parallelisms were spot on. Very intelligent.
I don't understand why a classical liberal would want a conservative Republican Party. This is probably because I am an Australian and don't know much about American politics. I would have thought that a conservative Republican Party would have little regard for classical liberal principles and would tend to favour big government, foreign military adventures etc.
Winton,
I understand your confusion. I get a little confused about it all myself, so that's why I've been writing posts about "What is a Conservative?"
Prior to the turn of the 20th century, people who held the Declaration of Independence dear, and fought to keep the government limited, were considered "liberals." But the progressive movement hi-jacked the name to make it easier to sell their government programs.
Our country really began to change under the Woodrow Wilson administration, but by the time of FDR and the New Deal, the opposition (the original liberals) became known as "conservatives." This was a very brief history of it all.
The Republican Party is supposedly "conservative," but for the past 100 years they've been nothing but progressive-lite. So the 2 words, Republican and conservative, are not synonymous.
The "old right," as it's now called, consisted of many types of conservatives and libertarians. It's only today that they seem so far apart.