1. At least I no longer have to defend "big government conservatism." I always thought big government conservatism was both a contradiction in terms and a terrible idea, but there was a tendency to support it because Bush was ours and the Democrats were criticizing him.
The idea behind big government conservatism was to use big government, the federal government, to pursue conservative goals. The problem is that the first conservative goal is limited government. For a conservative, process is as important, if not more important, than policy because our protection is ultimately in process.
"No Child Left Behind" is a good example of big government conservatism. When Democrats and liberals attacked it, I would defend it, even though the whole thing was wrong. The federal government does not need to, and should not be involved in, setting policies and rules for elementary schools and high schools. That is for the state to dos. But the federal government should not be financing elementary and high schools, either. That, too, is for the states.
There may be a few states that do not have enough money for their schools, but that is not true for most states. Take Illinois, for example. Illinois is rich enough to give its schools the money they need. If the voters in Illinois will not pay the taxes to do that, then that is their decision. It is a bad decision, but democracy is about letting people make bad decisions.
2. Now we can really attack earmarks. Before the election, there were Republicans who claimed they had to do earmarks, and all those other spending programs, so they could get elected, so they could do good. The problem was they spent so much time getting reelected that they never seemed to get around to doing good. It was always, if we can just reelected, then we do good. But the good never seemed to come. Now we can go back to principle, instead of pork.
3. I am sorry to see Ken Mehlman leaving as Chairman of the Republican National Committee. Ken Mehlman’s running of Bush’s campaign in 2004 set a new standard for the use of volunteers and getting out the vote. As I have argued elsewhere, it was Ken Mehlman’s volunteer-based, computer-driven get-out-the-vote effort in 2004 that turned a narrow Electoral College victory into a broad popular vote mandate. The fact Bush and too many Republicans in Congress wasted that mandate is not Mehlman’s fault, and it should not detract from his accomplishment.
Mehlman brought these same techniques and ideas to the RNC. Once again, the fact Republicans lost in 2006 was not Mehlman’s fault or the fault of his ideas. I hope the Republicans continue to use Mehlman’s ideas. Too often ideas are not used as effectively after their architect leaves. If that happens to the Republicans, we will truly miss Ken Mehlman.
4. Now the race for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination begins in earnest. The leading candidate is probably John McCain. Even though Senator McCain is an attractive candidate who says all the right things on so many issues for conservatives, I cannot support him – because of his stand on the First Amendment. Senator McCain says he prefers clean government to "quote First Amendment rights." I say you cannot know if your government is clean without your First Amendment rights. This goes back to my point about conservatives favoring process over policy. Our First Amendment rights are an essential part of the process that protects us.
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