{"id":2004,"date":"2008-01-22T07:54:57","date_gmt":"2008-01-22T12:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2004"},"modified":"2008-01-22T07:54:57","modified_gmt":"2008-01-22T12:54:57","slug":"teaching-them-a-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2004","title":{"rendered":"Teaching Them A Lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t quote Glen Reynolds much – everyone reads him anyway – but on reading and hearing from all the Republicans who want to “teach the party a lesson” if the nominate the wrong guy, this bit struck home<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Some people think it’s time to teach the party a lesson. Fine, but I thought 2006 was supposed to do that. Did they learn anything? Seems to me that things are about what they were when I put up my pre-mortem post that had Limbaugh exercised. (For that matter, did losing in 2000 and 2004 improve the Democrats? What, exactly, have they learned that led to the Hillary\/Edwards\/Obama offering? Are political parties capable of really learning?)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A couple of points here:<\/p>\n

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  1. Parties don’t learn “lessons”.\u00a0 Minnesota’s GOP should be a great lesson for all of you who think that abstaining from voting is going to do you, the party or the country any <\/em>good at all; the reverses in ’04 and ’06 caused the MNGOP to panic and revert (in many quarters) to the “moderate”, Sturdevant-approved\u00a0 party of the bad old days.\u00a0 Remember – parties have long memories, as long as those of the people who show up and do all the work.\u00a0 And conservatism is still, in many ways, an insurgency in the GOP, especially in Minnesota.\u00a0 Staying home from the election because, say, Mark Kennedy voted for ethanol subsidies, or because Mitt Romney flip-flopped (even in the right direction<\/em>!) on abortion, teaches one lesson; conservatives are flighty and unreliable when it comes to election time.<\/li>\n
  2. And don’t get started about third parties.\u00a0 I say this as someone who left the GOP in 1994, outraged at the party’s sellout on the ’94 Crime Bill.\u00a0 I joined the big-L Libertarians for four years.\u00a0 It was great<\/em>.\u00a0 I got to hang out with a lot of people who believed all the right things<\/em>!\u00a0 Of course, they – we – had the luxury of ideological purity precisely because <\/em>we never had to govern anything; we never had to put our ideas into the scrum of actually having to run <\/em>anything or represent a district that had elected us via a plurality.\u00a0 Just a convention that had endorsed us unanimously.\u00a0 You think starting a third party “sends a message?”\u00a0 Remember Pat Buchanan?\u00a0 Remember the effect he <\/em>had in 2000?\u00a0 Me either.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So is the lesson “fall in line behind the party?”\u00a0 Hell no.\u00a0 Get pissed.\u00a0 Get angry as hell.\u00a0 Do something radical, and show up at the Caucuses, two weeks from tonight<\/em>.\u00a0 Find your precinct – here <\/a>or here <\/a>– and stand up for your guy or gal.\u00a0 I’ll be there, and I’ll fighting like hell<\/em> to do a bunch of things:<\/p>\n