There is a natural tendency among those in government to want to "do something" when confronted with a problem. I discussed  this in my original "Doing Something" post, but the logic is simple enough to explain¹. People enter government for many reasons, but mostly because they believe in the ability of the government to "do good"², and their own need to correct the problems they see around them. As a result, they tend to be generally predisposed toward government activism³.

Of course, even if there were no such natural tendency, there is an even stronger tendency among politicians, that is the desire to remain in office.  People present this as a bad thing, as some sort of opportunism, but it need not be seen as such. Think of it this way. If you think you have a good idea, and can do good in office, then you need to stay in office to do good. So, if sometimes that means making concessions to remain in office, ti is the price one pays to be in position to correct bigger problems.

However, that need to stay in office causes politicians to often be more activist than they would be otherwise. When there is a crisis, the tendency of the politicians is to look for a solution, and the tendency for the public is to turn to politicians for an answer. And the pressure is on politicians to find an answer. Think of it this way, what if you announce a problem is not solvable by the state, and then a rival turns up with a brilliant solution. That would pretty quickly lead to you losing your seat. So, whether you believe it is a proper problem for government to solve, the pressure is to find a government solution anyway. And, as the public has grown accustomed to an omnipotent government which is the first recourse whenever a problem arises, they too expect the state to provide an answer⁴. This results in a mutually reinforcing situation, where politicians are afraid to fail to find a government answer and voters are unwilling to accept that the government will not solve a problem. As a result, whenever a crisis arises, it is inevitable that politicians of all political persuasions will try to find a governmental answer.

And that is my topic today, the tendency of conservatives, despite a nominal dedication to small government⁵, to find "an alternative" to a big government liberal proposal. For example, the demands for Republicans to field a "conservative alternative to health care reform" as a response to liberal efforts to nationalize health care or at the least force some sort of "universal coverage" on the nation.

I addressed a specific aspect of this immediately after the election, when some in the Republican party, as predicted ( "Learning Too Much From History", "Winning By Losing? Not A Chance!",  "I Told You So!"), began pushing for a move to the left, arguing that "tax cuts aren't enough" and "Republicans can't be the party of 'No'"⁶.  While not espousing any clear cut philosophy, it was clear that these individuals were pushing for a more "issue oriented" Republican party, basically offering up government solutions in response to Democrat initiatives, distinguishable from the left only in the scope of these big government programs. In other words, a "Big Government Lite" platform, making the political spectrum run not from libertarian to communist, but from moderate liberal to communist. By eliminating any position which opposed the growth of government, we would return to the situation we face from about 1900 until the 1960⁷, where no major political party opposed the unbridled growth of state power. And we all see how well that worked out.

The problem is that the conservatives in government feel the need to respond to any Democrat "initiative", but they take the wrong approach. For example, when the Democrats created a huge stir about the elderly being unable to afford prescription care, the solution was not for conservative to create their own large government prescription plan, the answer would have been to debunk the Democrat's premise. We needed to show that high costs were due to government involvement in medicine, or that the conditions in which the elderly lived were exacerbated by inflation which impoverished those living on a fixed income, as well as the reliance on social security, which makes it more difficult for the elderly to properly prepare for retirement. Not that we can't offer solutions, but we need to offer solutions that involve reducing government, not increasing it. Get government out of the medical realm to make things cheaper, for instance.

The other thing we need to do is, no matter whether it may open us to charges of being "heartless", is to show when the left is taking a handful of cases and blowing them up into a crisis. When they take a dozen poor seniors and make of them a national crisis, for instance, we need to calm down the public, stop the drumbeat of crisis, and defuse the situation before we get saddled with yet more bad legislation intended to stop a "crisis" that never was. Doing so may make us unpopular with the "Oprah's boo club" set, but we never had their vote anyway. Among the more level headed Americans, as we get them more used to looking at political discourse with a critical eye, they will come to respect us for our honesty, and that will stand us in better stead than half-hearted semi-leftist policies pandering to the opposite side.

In short, yes we will get bad press for being true to our conservative principles, but we will get bad press no matter what we do. And if we are objective and sincere in our beliefs, we will lose liberal votes, but we never had liberal votes either. What we will do is regain the respect of sincere conservatives, those whose votes we lose when we try to be "Democrat Lite". So, why on earth would conservatives do anything but stay true to their principles? What do they imagine they gain by acting like liberals⁸?

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1. This was not always the case. During times when government power was minimal there were men who saw government service as a duty, but mainly with the view to preserving the nation and defending individual freedoms. Yes, some still took up government service for personal gain, or prestige, or to expand government power, but my point is that it is not logically necessary that those entering government have activist views, but the current climate makes it almost unavoidable.

2. There have recently been a series of activists of a different sort, those entering government precisely to save the nation FROM government. However, as this requires the entry into government of those who lack faith in government, meaning those who, of necessity, have not groomed themselves for a government career, they are, and will likely always be, a small minority.

3. In many ways this is identical to the pressures which preselect for a left-wing bias in the press, as described in "Some Thoughts on the Media"  (cf.   "The Press Versus The Nation", "Why Are Journalists Special?", "The Media-Obama Suicide Pact",  "An Adversarial Press?", "The Death of Impartial Media", "Strange Priorities", "The Impossibility of Unbiased Reporting"). Those who enter journalism tend to do so to "save the world", and so they tend to be predisposed toward both anti-authoritarianism and utopianism. It is a contradictory set of beliefs, as we can see from the "opposition press" and their kid glove treatment of Obama. But, under most conditions, the contradictions don't show too much, and we get press taking on "big business" and fighting for the government to "do good". That big government is required to "do good" and goes against their anti-authoritarian tendencies rarely occurs to most in the press. (The conflict here is similar to the perspective of the "libertarian left" I mention in "The Failure of Wikipedia", "Copyright as Politics", "Some Libertarian Analogies" and "Revelation From Bottom Feeding". They suffer from the same contradictions.)

4. The general principle here is similar to that explained in  "What We Deserve" and "Special Cases". The same topics are also addressed in "Don't Blame the Politicians", "Why Term Limits Will Fail (And Should)", "First Kill All the Lawyers, Looking Back at Katrina" and "The Single Greatest Weakness". It is also described in "An Analogy For Government".

5. It should come as no surprise than many nominal conservatives are not consistent in their beliefs. I described it quite clearly in "Smaller Government , Fair Weather Friends and Special Cases" , not to mention "Protectionism Right and Left", "Place Blame Fairly, Regardless of Party" and  "Misplaced Blame and A Power Play". I also discussed in greater detail the entire concept of political "pragmatism" in "Pragmatism Revistied, Again", "The Shortcomings of Pragmatism", "Pragmatism Revisited".

6. These arguments can be read in "Conservatives and the "Big Picture"", "The Party of 'No'?", "Activism As The Only Acceptable Position? ", "I Told You So!", "The Big Lie", "The Big Lie Part II", "A Question" and "Don't Panic".

7. The history of the parties can be read in "To Correct Myself", "Inconsistencies in Historical Perspectives", "A Passing Thought", "Depressing Realization", "Misplaced Blame and A Power Play" and "The Political Spectrum".

8. For any "moderates" who think walking the line between left and right wins votes, I suggest they see how much support Specter gets among Democrats. Or check how much support Lieberman got. The left supports politicians so long as they are the farthest left among the available options. Once they are to the right of some other choice, that support evaporates. So what is to be gained by alienating loyal conservatives, while at the same time gaining quite fickle left wing support?

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POSTSCRIPT

Footnote 8 highlights why I was so disappointed with conservatives who abandoned the Republican party over McCain ("One More Reason Not to Sit It Out", "At last", "The Need for Realism",  "A Problem With Certain Conservatives", "Why We Need Adults"). Yes, he was not a perfect choice, but how can we shape the party if we run whenever they disagree with us? If we are as fickle as the left, we will get as much loyalty as the left does. The only way to make candidates value conservative support is by convincing them we are both loyal and willing to reward any tiny steps to the right. Granted, McCain was far from conservative and had even been a bit insulting, but he also made some small concessions tot he right, and likely would ahve made more had he been elected and needed support against congress. Whatever he did, it certainly would have been better than what we now have.