Reply #7: Read George Will [View All]

[zipplewrath]

He's one of the few that might give you some honest answers, although even he has a tendency for blather. Near as I can sort out the conservatives want a "small" government because they want a powerful government. They want to give it alot of power, and then limit the size to limit the reach. A small government has to pick an choose where and when to use its power. The way Will puts it, liberals are more concerned about fairness than freedom. Conservatives are more concerned about freedom than fairness. I don't agree, but that's one way of describing their point of view. A way I find to look at it is to realize that many of the people who today call themselves conservatives, would have been "anti-federalists" at the time of the Constitution's authoring.

And in the end, much of the discomfort between the "fiscal" conservatives and the "social" conservatives is that they didn't like each others core issues, but they weren't all that concerned about them either. And that is where you find much of the conflict you describe. Applying the fiscal conservative rhetoric to the social conservatives issues as well as the reverse.

What is far more telling to me is that once in power, no one ever chooses to govern "conservatively". Not Reagan, either Bush, not Nixon, etc. Heck, Huckabee couldn't do it as Governor. Once they have to govern they all abandon much of their rhetoric. It reminds me of the Taurus/Accord statistic. Some years back the two cars competed every year for the largest sales. Taurus frequently won, but alot had to do with fleet sales. But none the less, the cars were very similar. And really, neither of them were particularly "sexy" or a stand out. They were basic transportation. Not the worst, but certainly not the most innovative or "idealistic" in any manner. Pragmatism won out in the car buying decision a very large part of the time. Governing is no different. Once in power and actually responsible for governing, pragmatism is the key to any kind of success. Dogged idealism will get ya in trouble every time.