So America’s latest round of Choose the Form of the Destructor is over. I must confess that I did feel some genuine pleasure at seeing the Democrats losing so badly in last night’s elections. I shouldn’t have. Not because it’s cruel, or gloating, or poor sportsmanship, or anything like that. I shouldn’t have been pleased because there was very little to be pleased about. The celebration of so many conservatives needs to be tempered by the realities of history. Remember back in the mid-2000’s when the Republicans held all three branches of government? Of course you do. They had the Presidency, majorities in both houses of Congress, and a majority of the Supreme Court was Republican appointed.
Now, do you remember how the size of the government was reduced during those years? Do you remember the great strides they made to end the ongoing slaughter of the unborn? Do you remember how our punitive tax system was reworked? Do you remember how our activist courts were reined in? Do you remember all the epic progress that was made on all the issues that conservatives care about the most?
Neither do I.
Conservatives need to get over this idea that the GOP is our political salvation. Every story about the election has some variation on how Republicans rode a wave of discontent into congress. While it’s great that voters don’t care for the way our government has been run by the Democrats, their loss is not our gain. We are still being governed by Keynesian statists–they just have R’s showing up after their names when they appear on television now. All it means is that we have 2-4 years before those same voters put the Democrats back in because they still don’t care for the way the country is being run.
That is American politics in a nutshell. We have two political parties parties that we hate, and we take turns punishing one by rewarding the other. But the truth is that American citizens are the only ones punished by this ridiculous political cycle. Our deepest political problems are caused by beliefs and principles shared by both parties. American will never have conservative government until conservatives stop being so gleeful about Democrats’ losses and so terrified of their victories.
So once the new congress takes over, have fun watching the Republicans use their new-found power to push for amnesty for illegal aliens and try to score meaningless political points to help their latest slightly-more-practical-than-a-Democrat “moderate” candidate in the upcoming presidential election. In the meantime, the current lame duck congress will use its temporary electoral immunity to accomplish the one thing both parties can agree on: empowering the government at the expense of the people in many and various ways. Ah, bipartisanship.
I hate to say it, but even conservatives have gotten the government we deserve.
