Advice we could do Without

Consider the irony of The New York Times – or other liberal institutions – purporting to speak in the best interests of the Republican Party. The GOP, the Gray (or, more appropriately, the azure) Lady opines, should reject the present candidates for Senate and, instead, offer the NJ electorate a candidate in the finest tradition of "moderates" like Cliff Case.

"After eight years of failed right-wing Republican policies," the editors huff, "New Jersey Republicans owe their voters a viable moderate choice."

Hmm. Right wing policies? Neither this administration nor this Congress have been notable for pursuing any "right wing" policies. Indeed, one of the great mysteries of life centers on why the left hates George Bush so much, given that, on spending/size of government issues, he’s got his feet firmly in their camp. Not any kind of conservative, Bush spent like a drunken sailor and, abetted by a Republican Congress (which no longer felt obliged to act like conservatives once Bill Clinton left town), created huge new entitlement programs while bloating every sector of government in most "un-right wing" ways. He recently joined with the Democrats to support a budget-busting "stimulus" bill – using borrowed money for handouts – which puts the lie to any "fiscal responsibility" contentions by either party. Bush’s record ought to be at least as palatable to the Left as was that of Bill Clinton; only conservatives have the right to object to Bush’s policies.

Faithful readers – both of them – know that I have a problem with the word "moderate", as it lacks any discernable meaning. The one reliable prediction one can make about a "moderate" is that she will be wrong at least half the time. Besides, The Times describes Frank Lautenberg as a "moderate". Given that he and his cerulean colleague, Robert Menendez, were just named the most liberal tandem in the entire US Senate, it appears that nothing less than a Stalinist warrants a Times description as a leftist.

Thomas Paine, speaking of "moderation", opined:

"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice."

The left considers "moderation in principle" – pro-freedom principle anyway – a virtue; naturally, they encourage Republican candidates untethered by such hoary constraints.

What would be the point of a two party system if the only "choices" presented were leftists and leftists-lite? I attained the mature, responsible age of 18 in 1976 and cast my first US Senatorial primary vote against Cliff Case in 1978 – precisely because he was such an off-the-charts liberal. Jeff Bell, his primary opponent, sent out a mail piece bearing a simple issues chart. On each issue – from building the B-1 to abortion – Case was Times-certified Politically Correct – which is to say wrong – on every single one. Had Case won the primary, Bill Bradley would have been, by far, the better choice for any conservative.

The New Jersey electorate will clearly be a tough nut for conservatives to crack for the foreseeable future; too many folks here read The Times for other than comic relief.

But, perhaps, just maybe, the electorate will finally start putting the pieces together: vote for liberals, get dysfunctional – and astonishingly expensive – government.

The polls, by substantial margins, indicate that the public is fed up with high property taxes, high income taxes, high sales taxes, absurd public employee benefits, outrageous spending, and crushing debt, all of which are the inevitable consequences of voting for Democrats. Or, more accurately, for liberals, as not a few Republicans – of precisely the stripe The Times endorses – cause similar problems.

Tom Kean, for instance, who registers approval from The Times, more than doubled the size of state government in eight short years – a record even McGreevey/Codey/Corzine couldn’t match – and left his successor, the hapless Jim Florio, to pick up the pieces – and take the blame. It’s a measure of just how bad things have become in NJ, under both leftist Democrats and leftist Republicans, that a quasi-Socialist like Jon Corzine sounds almost responsible (recently) by comparison.

No, my friends, the NJGOP should NOT offer the voters a leftist ‘alternative’ to a leftist Democrat; it should offer the people a clear choice. It’s possible -- even likely -- that the electorate here in NJ will reject a true Republican message of individual freedom and individual responsibility – akin to that offered by (of all people) George McGovern in the WSJ the other day (referenced in my previous post), so what? Frank Lautenberg’s policies would be every bit as objectionable and destructive were he a Republican, because the leftist policies, not the Party label, matter.

If the people prefer to live in a socialist dystopia, that’s their call. But there exists absolutely no reason for the Republican Party to assist them in their efforts to consign themselves to economic hell. Better to stand on the sidelines advocating "change" and cheerleading for a better, freer country than to permit a lust for power to corrupt one’s principles. At some point, even the most thickheaded folks will have to conclude that if they want less extensive, less expensive government, they will have to turn to conservatives. And, if they don’t, those who remain behind to pick up the ever increasing tab deserve what they get. (As Mark Twain put it, ‘good and hard’.)

Republican politicians, like physicians, exist not to tell the people that which they want to hear, but to tell then that which they need to hear. After that, it’s the people’s choice. The people may choose to ignore their political well-being just as they possess the right to neglect their physical health. They can listen to the easy-sounding advice of leftist political quacks – the inevitable result of which is the steady erosion of liberty and the deterioration of the economy – or the more sober, albeit often less cheery advice of conservatives.

If the electorate is looking for "easy", they will choose the leftist every time, with his gauzy, soothing promises of guarantees: universal everything, paid for, if at all, by someone else. It’s snake oil: it sounds great, akin to the "lose weight without dieting or exercise" scams, but it not only fails to cure the underlying problems, it worsens them.

Freedom works better than any alternative system, but one thing it isn’t, is easy. It requires individual responsibility and abjuring the temptation to take that which belongs to others. It means doing for yourself, or doing without. It means that one may always ask for help, but may never properly demand it. Freedom means the right to be left alone to pursue happiness as one sees fit but involves the reciprocal obligation to leave others alone to pursue happiness according to their own, peculiar fashion.

Leftists hate freedom because it produces unequal results and they don’t trust the people to ensure that their neighbors don’t starve. Leftists define compassion as a willingness to spend other people’s money on expensive governmental employees administering costly programs. But forcing the electorate to choose between a liberal Democrat and a liberal Republican, what incentive exists to pick the latter?

If power means everything, and principle nothing, picking some reassuring, mealy-mouthed "moderate" who refuses to address the actual threats to freedom might conceivably eke out an electoral victory. But to what end? The problems facing NJ – and the country – result from a surfeit of government. To solve those problems, government must shrink. Substantially. Power for its own sake serves no purpose; has the fact that George Bush has an ‘R’ after his name made him any less of a fiscal menace?

Our founding fathers were precisely the sort of pro-freedom radicals The Times excoriates. Our country needs a new birth of freedom, delivering it from the creeping socialism which has done so much to destroy the quality of life in New Jersey. Put simply, not even a nation as wealthy as the US can afford the government the left desires. Just as the people of NJ are slowly coming to understand that a quality life for anyone other than governmental employees depends upon keeping government small and inexpensive, so, too, the people of the US will come to that realization, too. The GOP should be tireless in its educational efforts, insisting upon the Common Sense of the proposition that freedom produces the greatest good for the greatest number.

Better to lose elections until then, championing the right, than win them by contributing to the problem.