My boss on Capitol Hill was John Ashbrook,
who was proud to be labeled an extremist. Once he
was in a committee meeting with Melvin Laird, who
was then a Republican congressman. Laird was, as
usual, conceding things to Democrats. John said
to the microphone, in a stage whisper, "What
a prostitute!"
Please note that Mr. Laird would someday
lead the department which conservatives worship,
the Department of Defense. Goldwater and all the
others voted to confirm him to the holy post of
Secretary of Defense. Those conservatives would
always insist that he was a "true patriot."
This "true patriot" spent his entire career
giving things away to liberals.
For some reason, conservatives are
always being betrayed.
Odd, isn't it?
After Hubert Humphrey died, someone
in Congress proposed setting up a Humphrey Scholarship.
To make it bipartisan, someone else proposed it
be a Humphrey-Dirksen Memorial Fellowship. On the
House floor, John Ashbrook said, "The people
are not fooled. We are politicians who want to spend
the public's money to honor other politicians
.Everett
Dirksen HAS a memorial. It is called the national
debt!"
Everett Dirksen was not only a respectable
conservative icon, he had also been the father of
the Senate Republican Leader, Howard Baker. But
he had sold out too many times, and John Ashbrook
had to tell the truth about him even after he was
dead.
John and his people -- including me
-- were not popular with respectable conservatives.
We were not nice. We were not "reasonable."
But by being unreasonable extremists, we were able
to accomplish minor miracles.
There are 435 congressmen. The only
way that mass of people can move business through
is by unanimous consent. Everything in the House
requires unanimous consent. Most of the time, unanimous
consent is easy to get. Everybody hates somebody
who holds things up by refusing unanimous consent.
It isn't nice.
But when it comes to the national
welfare, a good extremist is not nice.
In 1977, the situation was desperate.
Carter had taken over the White House in the 1976
election, and the Democrats had control of both
Houses of Congress. A flood of liberal legislation
was on the way, and every bill had extra spending
and other liberal amendments tacked on.
So John and his handful of extremist
buddies would deny unanimous consent until they
got rid of the liberal add-ons. A lot of the stuff
that had been sneaked in during the flood of business
got knocked out. Republican staff hated us. They
gave us endless lectures about how, if we would
just be "reasonable," no one would notice
the bad stuff that went through. If Ashbrook's fanatics
would be reasonable, they moaned, we could all go
home. Ashbrook refused.
We were wildly unpopular, scorned,
insulted, and very, very happy.
This is extremism in action.
Such men as John Ashbrook do not get
elected to leadership positions. Such men do not
get cabinet seats.
We all know that. The conservative
leadership gets along by going along with moderates,
and moderates get along by going along with liberals.
Then we are all upset and mystified
when we get sold out.
When conservatives do the same thing
at the National Republican Convention, the whole
country gets sold out.
Richard Nixon was to his party EXACTLY
what William Jefferson Clinton is to his party:
the Great Trimmer. He was the middle-of-the-road
Republican between Rockefeller on the left and the
Goldwater-Reagan group on the right. But in 1968
and 1972, all the leading respectable conservatives
said, "Nixon is conservative ENOUGH."
So conservatives said they could spare
a few principles to win the election, and they nominated
Nixon. That is exactly the same reason liberals
nominated Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Why did Nixon
and Clinton both turn out to be crooks? It is because
they both went in as professional moderates. Political
moderation is the practice of someone who openly
puts his political goals above principles.
Nixon and Clinton were both elected
to be crooked.
Someone goes in on a crooked platform.
He tells you he puts pragmatism over principle.
When he gets into office, he has no principles.
And Americans are shocked.
The only incredible sentence above
is the last one.
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