We true conservatives love to tie ourselves in knots over the lily-livered RINOs, that seem to betray our movement every time we turn around, by compromising with the socialist Democrats. Here's Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator ritually damning Karl Rove and all "Republican socialists" to hell and back again.
But meanwhile, those "centrists" helped the Dems pass their liberal agenda in the Congresses of 2007-2010.
But what about the spineless RINOs in Congress like Speaker Boehner that recently spouted off against the conservative Tea Party groups?
Look. The whole point of a legislature is to compromise with the other side. You get together, do a little horse-trading, and out comes a sausage. The remarkable thing about the Obama years is how little legislative compromise took place. When the Dems had a solid majority they rammed their stuff through without Republican votes. And since 2010 they have proceeded with high-profile standoffs like the Debt Ceiling of 2011, the Fiscal Cliff of late 2012, and the Government Shutdown of October 2013. Yet when Rep. Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Murray (D-WA) were tasked with a budget solution for the next two years they quickly came up with a compromise that split Dem-Rep differences down the middle.
Guess what: When you leave people alone they will usually cooperate and compromise. Why? Because that's the most successful way to operate. Robert Axelrod proved it in The Evolution of Cooperation. The most successful way to deal with other people is demonstrated by an iterative Prisoners Dilemma game. The most successful strategy, called "TIT FOR TAT", cooperates on the first move and then echoes the "opponent's" move thereafter. If the opponent "defects" (refuses to cooperate) then TIT FOR TAT defects on the next move. If the opponent cooperates, then TIT FOR TAT cooperates on the next move.
Axelrod calls the TIT FOR TAT strategy: cooperative -- because offering to cooperate on the first move, "provocable" -- because it punishes bad behavior immediately, and nice -- because it forgives immediately a defector that returns to cooperation. It all comes down to four rules:
Guess what: the TIT FOR TAT strategy worked in the trenches in World War I when the opposing sides tried not to kill each other in between battles.
We conservatives should not expect our congressional leaders to be in the forefront of the ideological wars; that's not their job. Culture war is the job of the activist groups. Compromise, given the reality of the present correlation of forces, is the job of the legislators.
But how in the world can we ever expect to win against the liberals? Here we must turn to the late Andrew Breitbart who said that politics is downstream from culture. First you must win the culture; then you can win at politics.
And that is conservatives' Big Problem. We seem to be eternally playing catchup in the culture wars, getting defined as narrow-minded bigots by the cultural big-shots in the media and the activist attack dogs like GLAAD.
But how can we ever win against the big battalions of the liberals? Well, it's not so much a question of big battalions as big ideas. It means persuading, and in particular, persuading women: that abortion is cruel and kills little babies, that a sexual free-for-all hurts women and children, that no-fault divorce hurts women and children most of all. And that big government, always and everywhere, means force and compulsion that must inevitably reach into every woman's home and tell her what to think and do, how to raise her children, or else.
Obamacare, anyone?
There will always be RINOs and compromisers that seem to be selling the activists out. But the solution is not to beat up the RINOs but change the culture so that the natural place for compromisers to compromise is towards the conservative position rather than the liberal position.
Yeah, I know. Changing the culture is hard.
Karl Rove (i.e., architect of the American Crossroads SuperPAC), the Chamber of Commerce, and the Washington GOP Establishment have declared war on the Reaganite conservative base of the Republican Party.What's the problem? Well, according to the Wall Street Journal,
Welcome to the 2014 election.
major donors and advocacy groups, such as the Chamber of Commerce and American Crossroads, are preparing an aggressive effort to groom and support more centrist Republican candidates for Congress in 2014’s midterm elections.Actually the Democrats did a similar thing in their successful mid-term effort in 2006. They recruited a bunch of centrist-looking candidates in swing districts and ended up winning 31 seats in the House. Many of those centrist candidates got shown the door in the 2010 elections, sacrificed to the god of Obamacare.
But meanwhile, those "centrists" helped the Dems pass their liberal agenda in the Congresses of 2007-2010.
But what about the spineless RINOs in Congress like Speaker Boehner that recently spouted off against the conservative Tea Party groups?
Look. The whole point of a legislature is to compromise with the other side. You get together, do a little horse-trading, and out comes a sausage. The remarkable thing about the Obama years is how little legislative compromise took place. When the Dems had a solid majority they rammed their stuff through without Republican votes. And since 2010 they have proceeded with high-profile standoffs like the Debt Ceiling of 2011, the Fiscal Cliff of late 2012, and the Government Shutdown of October 2013. Yet when Rep. Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Murray (D-WA) were tasked with a budget solution for the next two years they quickly came up with a compromise that split Dem-Rep differences down the middle.
Guess what: When you leave people alone they will usually cooperate and compromise. Why? Because that's the most successful way to operate. Robert Axelrod proved it in The Evolution of Cooperation. The most successful way to deal with other people is demonstrated by an iterative Prisoners Dilemma game. The most successful strategy, called "TIT FOR TAT", cooperates on the first move and then echoes the "opponent's" move thereafter. If the opponent "defects" (refuses to cooperate) then TIT FOR TAT defects on the next move. If the opponent cooperates, then TIT FOR TAT cooperates on the next move.
Axelrod calls the TIT FOR TAT strategy: cooperative -- because offering to cooperate on the first move, "provocable" -- because it punishes bad behavior immediately, and nice -- because it forgives immediately a defector that returns to cooperation. It all comes down to four rules:
- Don't be envious.
- Don't be the first to defect.
- Reciprocate both cooperation and defection.
- Don't be too clever.
Guess what: the TIT FOR TAT strategy worked in the trenches in World War I when the opposing sides tried not to kill each other in between battles.
We conservatives should not expect our congressional leaders to be in the forefront of the ideological wars; that's not their job. Culture war is the job of the activist groups. Compromise, given the reality of the present correlation of forces, is the job of the legislators.
But how in the world can we ever expect to win against the liberals? Here we must turn to the late Andrew Breitbart who said that politics is downstream from culture. First you must win the culture; then you can win at politics.
And that is conservatives' Big Problem. We seem to be eternally playing catchup in the culture wars, getting defined as narrow-minded bigots by the cultural big-shots in the media and the activist attack dogs like GLAAD.
But how can we ever win against the big battalions of the liberals? Well, it's not so much a question of big battalions as big ideas. It means persuading, and in particular, persuading women: that abortion is cruel and kills little babies, that a sexual free-for-all hurts women and children, that no-fault divorce hurts women and children most of all. And that big government, always and everywhere, means force and compulsion that must inevitably reach into every woman's home and tell her what to think and do, how to raise her children, or else.
Obamacare, anyone?
There will always be RINOs and compromisers that seem to be selling the activists out. But the solution is not to beat up the RINOs but change the culture so that the natural place for compromisers to compromise is towards the conservative position rather than the liberal position.
Yeah, I know. Changing the culture is hard.
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