Sometimes we get so caught up in campaigns or what’s going on in politics at the moment that we lose sight of what’s important and what to do next. In other words, conservatives need to stay focused in order to be politically successful.
With that in mind, here are some political resolutions for conservatives:
Pick Your Battles
Just as liberals won generations of votes by winning battles over Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, conservatives should focus on big picture battles that result in still more victories in the future because they tilt the playing field more in our favor.
It’s a big country out there, with a big government and a multitude of issues that we can all get sidetracked by. Conservatives need to focus on issues that unite us – whether social, fiscal, liberty or security related – and that have the possibility of strengthening our position in the future. But cooperation is the key. Pick your battles…don’t let them pick you.
Coordinate, Coordinate, Coordinate!
In recent years the conservative movement has grown tremendously. Many people have gained valuable experience, and new networks and connections between activists have been created. But what is needed is to leverage that muscle with greater emphasis on sharing information and coordinating activity.
Start a web page listing your endorsements and local candidates’ information and donation links. Start a listing of key dates and locations for Republican Party meetings in your area. Add any important details that people need to know about how the party works and what opportunities are available to get involved. Email it to every conservative you know. Start an online group (use Google, Yahoo, Ning or Facebook) and coordinate with others to decide who wants (or is willing) to do what.
The bottom line is to leverage our muscle by coordinating and focusing on places where that muscle can be overwhelming and have a long term impact, (especially at the local level).
Don’t Be a Cannibal
No matter who you are for in any given race, don’t “go cannibal” on fellow conservatives over who they support. You might win for the moment, but you’ll lose productive relationships in the long run. Every few years campaigns come along like tornadoes and divide so many conservatives against one another and then they’re gone, but many times the personal divisions remain. We need to make it a mission to avoid that – and call out the campaigns that encourage it for their own interests.
Whoever the Republican nominee is in any election, they will never be perfect and will probably take a lot of “maintenance” from a policy standpoint. But as a movement, conservatives are much better prepared to deal with such politicians than in years past, so long as we avoid division, coordinate and present a united front – at every level.
Focus on the Republican Party
Ronald Reagan used to say that “personnel is policy”, and it’s no different when it comes to the people who comprise the GOP’s party structure, or those who run and get elected to public office under the Republican banner.
It’s great to have conservatives start their own local groups, protest and be heard, but it’s even better when those same folks also make an effort to influence the Republican Party by joining local precinct organizations, run for precinct office, run for delegate to county (or district) conventions, county office, state delegate spots and so on. Get involved and volunteer to serve on committees. Local party organizations are usually borderline desperate for volunteers. If you’re willing, and you’ve got a pulse, then you’re usually welcome.
The more conservatives who show up, get involved and network with one-another, the fewer problems we will have with the “establishment” when it comes to pushing a conservative agenda.
Get Local
Remember, the presidency isn’t everything, and neither is Congress. Who do you think ends up running for Congress anyway? It’s usually the guy (or gal) who has already served on a school board, city or county council. If you want to have a long-term impact on the upper levels of politics, then you need to have a long-term approach to influencing who’s playing at that level to begin with. And that means you need to get local.
The local levels are important in their own right, (you pay property taxes, right?), but they also serve as the farm team for the big leagues. Don’t ignore them. Plus, races at that level have the benefit of being easier to influence. A little money and organization in these races goes a long way.
A coordinated effort by conservative activists to let other conservatives know who they have endorsed and where to send money can have a bigger impact on Joe Smith for school board than it ever could on Suzzie Smith for Congress.
Hold them Accountable
Conservatives now have a better understanding of how to take political matters into their own hands. They have better access to the tools that can connect them with one another, to organize and become more effective – which is exactly why the elites are so concerned.
We need to use those strengths to hold those in elected office accountable for what they do (or don’t do). Watch them. Attend meetings. Meet with them. Offer to work with them when you can. Let them know about your concerns (and the concerns of others like yourself). Let people know what you find out, or what’s going on – and how they can contact them and have an impact. “Adopt” an elected official and make a project out of them.
Self preservation is an instinct that runs deep – especially for politicians – and conservatives need to take full advantage of it.
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The experience that conservatives have gained, the connections that have been made and the techniques that have been learned can pay big dividends.
Adopt one of these resolutions and get busy!
Celebrating Independence and Separation of Powers
No matter what your side of the political divide, the fact is that the fortunes of politics will ebb and flow, but in the end it is in everyone’s best interests that political power be divided. More to the point, the very reason that our Constitution separates power is to prevent its arbitrary use. Specifically, executive power, since it resides in one individual.
It’s a pretty important thing. We fought a war over it.
But lately the news is regularly filled with the latest blustery statements from Obama about how “if Congress doesn’t act”, he will, along with edicts that fail to show any clear constitutional or congressional authority.
Obama repeatedly says that he only takes unilateral executive action because “Congress chooses to do nothing”. But choosing to “do nothing” is itself a choice. It means that a large enough group of people wanting to do “something” does not yet exist. In other words, the real problem is that they don’t want to do what Obama wants to do. Therein lies the problem.
If a president can re-interpret laws or apply them as he chooses, then what’s the purpose of having laws? What’s the purpose of a pretense of the separation of powers and having a legislative branch to make law? The reality is that lawmaking in a representative republic involves compromise and trade-offs among various factions of society to get a majority to eventually agree on a final product. Otherwise, people see the laws as lacking legitimacy because society has no “buy-in”.
Of course the boundaries between executive and legislative power are always in tension, but Obama has come to find the boundaries inconvenient, so he simply ignores them. He wants to take shortcuts. Someone should remind him that he resigned his “law-making” gig several years ago in order to run for his current “faithfully executing the laws” job.
The Supreme Court has sent him a few hints, thirteen unanimous ones since 2012 to be exact, the most recent regarding his abuse of presidential recess appointments and his claim that he gets to decide when the US Senate is actually in session. By the way, “unanimous” includes both of the Justices that were appointed by Obama.
But there are actually people among us not named Obama who believe that the presidency should be stronger.
Believe it or not, the New York Times’ ersatz conservative David Brooks actually suggested that we needed to “make the executive branch more powerful” in order to make the federal government more effective. He claimed that, because our political leaders can’t reach conclusions, we should give more power to the executive branch, since bureaucrats “are more sheltered from the interest groups than congressional officials”; have “more specialized knowledge”; are “removed from excessive partisanship” and would have more latitude to “respond to their own screw-ups”.
Oh, really? Anyone even remotely familiar with any news related to the IRS, Obamacare, Solyndra, the Veterans Administration, or any number of other executive branch scandals would know that this is just so much piffle.
The problem is not that the President doesn’t have enough power, but that Washington has far too much power – and covets even more.
Among the key elements of our political system are stability and predictability. People can have relative certainty about tomorrow being free from capricious radical changes because some bureaucrat woke up on the wrong side of the bed, or decided that he needed to do a favor for a political patron, or create some new political advantage for his president via-a-vi the opposition.
But that level of confidence is eroding. The more powerful the presidency becomes – no matter who is president – the higher the stakes will be in every election, along with matching levels of vitriol and odds of radical change and instability.
There’s a name for such places. They’re called “banana republics”.
Those who want to strengthen the presidency are really just people who are tired of not getting their way through the regular political process. But the fact is that, in order to protect liberty, our political system was intentionally designed to move slow and require broad support to get anything done. It’s a feature, not a bug.
Don’t like it? There are plenty of countries with an autocratic El Presidente who will be happy to accommodate.
We don’t need to become one of them.