Keeping the Goals in View

Occasionally I find tactics masquerading as strategy, and it never fails to warm the collar.

Take Bruce Bartlett's piece at Politico, for instance. If conservatives ever want to gain power again, they'll give up their clearly ineffectual hopes to reduce and/or roll back entitlement programs.

And what, I ask, will conservatives do once they regain power? They'll argue for nothing more than a responsible way to raise the money the government is going to spend anyway? This makes it sound like public opinion is utterly immovable on the question of spending, and that the only thing policymakers have any control over is how to raise the cash.

This is not--and never has been--the case. That entitlements are extremely hard to change is a fact; that they don't usually get scrapped is a reality. But recognizing those things in a tactical way--for instance, understanding that it will take a lot of argument and a large number of elections to accomplish the ultimate aims--is very different than resigning the goal for the purpose of getting elected.

Getting elected is not--or rather, should not--be the goal of any politician, conservative or otherwise. It is a means to a policy end. Nothing more. When we change the goals to gain, regain, or retain power, we turn the ideal of representative republicanism on its head.

Oh well. I suppose we'll just have to adapt to that too.

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