Regardless, you still have to choose to let some things go and be in power or be out in the wilderness.
Yes, I noted that specific areas of compromise may be a good idea. I just don't think the problem is largely one of lack of compromise or that compromising more will lead to either more political power for the Republicans, or better results for the country.
You know my politics. If the GOP turns me off so utterly I can only rarely hold my nose and vote for one, I don't see how it can hope to get a majority.
If the GOP made a certain specific set of compromises it would be more likely to get your vote and the votes of people similar to you (while turning off other people, hard to figure the net change here), but look at the type of compromises it does tend to make. I think if you examine its actual compromises, you get a net overall policy position that turns you off even more. You still get the social conservatism (even if on many issues its just lip service), and you add "compassionate conservatism" which means you get "we can add huge amounts of social spending and run large deficits too".
The real world compromises aren't with libertarians as much as they are with big government Democrats. It seems you lose the one part you might like (resistance to new areas of responsibility and power for government), while gaining very little or nothing in the parts you don't like.
If the two major parties where the Libertarian Party and the Republican Party, than I would want them to compromise more (getting more support for freedom and limited government from the GOP, and a check on rocking the boat too quickly with the ideas of the Libertarians), but the two parties are the Republicans and the Democrats.
Sure there are some areas you would want the Republicans to be more like Democrats on (abortion, defense of marriage act, generally social policy issues), but they are probably less likely to compromise here, and the compromise will often have less impact (no matter what the Republicans do or so on abortion its not likely to become much more restricted any time soon, and even the Democrats are largely against recognizing and supporting gay marriage, at least on the federal level, but also in many states). In these areas either the Democrats have been winning, or they haven't been consistently against the socially conservative position, depending on the particular issue. So additional compromise doesn't move actually policy very strongly or rapidly. But if the Republicans compromise on new social spending, than it probably only drives the Dems to spend even more to show that they are "more compassionate" than the Republicans, and even if it doesn't drive the Dems more to the left, you still can get rapid major change. The Dems won on medical care reform, but lets assume they had a few less votes, would you have wanted the Republicans to compromise and give the Dems 95% of what they wanted? |
