{"id":21542,"date":"2011-08-02T06:40:52","date_gmt":"2011-08-02T11:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=21542"},"modified":"2014-10-23T11:03:49","modified_gmt":"2014-10-23T16:03:49","slug":"the-principle-conundrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=21542","title":{"rendered":"The Principle Conundrum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in 1994, I left the GOP; I was angry that they&#8217;d caved in to Clinton on the 1994 Crime Bill. \u00a0I joined the Libertarian Party.<\/p>\n<p>I came back to the GOP in 1998. \u00a0It wasn&#8217;t that I didn&#8217;t agree with the Libertarians, at least in the broad outlines. \u00a0It was that the Libertarians had no chance of ever governing anything &#8211; and no idea how to effect any governance even if they <em>did <\/em>\u00a0manage to win an election.<\/p>\n<p>Rock-ribbed principle is a great thing; it drives movements that move mountains. \u00a0But once that movement gets into office, those same people have to work with other people who believe very different things.<\/p>\n<p>And it&#8217;s there that the hard part begins; upholding one&#8217;s princples, <em>and <\/em>meeting people who also got elected to office, to uphold very different prinicples, halfway to do the job of running a government.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is, there is no way for <em>anyone <\/em>to remain absolutely pure to principle, if by that you mean &#8220;never play ball, on any level, with the opposition&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s how you get all the influence of a Libertarian Party.<\/p>\n<p>Gary Gross\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.looktruenorth.com\/elections\/us-congress\/17292-return-of-the-stupid-party-healing-the-wounds.html\">writes over at <em>True North<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Apparently, some TEA Party organizations are slamming people like Col. Alan West for being RINOs. That\u2019s led to Col. West defending himself on Laura Ingraham\u2019s show this morning. Bully for him and bully for Ms. Laura for her steadfast support for Col. West. Here\u2019s the tape of their conversation:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Go ahead and listen.<\/p>\n<p>And remember &#8211; if you win you have to govern. \u00a0If you can&#8217;t govern, you won&#8217;t win again.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, that doesn&#8217;t mean you have to ditch your principles to govern; it <em>does <\/em>mean you should bargain them at the highest price possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in 1994, I left the GOP; I was angry that they&#8217;d caved in to Clinton on the 1994 Crime Bill. \u00a0I joined the Libertarian Party. I came back to the GOP in 1998. \u00a0It wasn&#8217;t that I didn&#8217;t agree with the Libertarians, at least in the broad outlines. \u00a0It was that the Libertarians had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[319],"class_list":["post-21542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","tag-the-big-l"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21542"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48399,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21542\/revisions\/48399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}