….
Stop me if you’ve heard any of these phrases before:
– “I share your principles, but you have to be more pragmatic.”
– “Half a loaf is better than none.”
– “There’s a certain way we do things around here.”
These clichés are uttered so often by those we elect to champion the conservative cause that they qualify as religious mantras. Especially since we all too often accept them as articles of faith ourselves, and then naively go about blaming the Left for everything. Truly, we’ve placed no real expectations on our guys beyond mind-numbingly repeating “anybody but (fill in the blank Democrat)” every election year.
Conservative Review is doing its best to break such a servile paradigm. That’s one of the reasons why the LibertyScore® was created.
Pragmatism is often defined as “doing what works or what’s practical.” However, what’s practical about doing the bidding of your opposition? I could justify this approach if it meant we gave something and then the other guys gave something back in return. But when has the Left given in on anything? When was the last time some grand bargain was cut between Republicans and Democrats that helped advance the conservative cause whatsoever? Has it ever happened?
“But Steve,” some will say, “we need to take an incremental approach.”
Losing slower isn’t incrementalism. It’s just losing.
This is why we should respond to those aforementioned clichés with the following:
– True pragmatism is discovering a practical way to advance your principles. Not giving your opponents almost everything they want, while gaining virtually nothing of significance in return, and then calling it a day.
– If the loaf is a moldy pile bread, who wants 1 percent of it – let alone half?
– If your certain way of doing things doesn’t consistently serve your stated mission, why keep doing things that way?
….
This is the incremental stage we are at now, with frequent reports of Obamacare’s collapse/demise littering the media. These reports claim Obamacare is not working as it was intended, but the exact opposite is true. Obamacare is doing precisely what it was intended to do — systemically destabilize the system so that a single (see that as government) payer option emerges as the only “solution.”
Soon we will arrive at the final stage. America’s single-payer program will be different from European models in that most of us will still receive health insurance through a private company. But that company will be as heavily-regulated as utilities are now, with each of the major insurers given proprietary rights regionally. This way it will have the appearance of private insurance, but it will be government alone setting all the rates/coverages/deductibles/etc.
…..
The vast majority of conservative issue advocacy is “access-based,” where the focus is primarily on having a “seat at the table” within the Republican Party. No matter how wobbly and broken the table may be. In this model, “incrementalism” is defined not by policy advancement but by election outcomes.
Whereas the Right governs to win elections, the Left wins elections to govern.
And now that we see what has become of our country decades after both strategies went into effect, which model do you believe has been more successful?
- Discussion
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The latest in my series examining why conservatives lost the era, and the lessons we must learn to win the future. https://t.co/43qobTKs5i
— Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) September 6, 2016
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