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5/21/14, "If You Like the Political System You Can Keep it," Daniel Horowitz, RedState
"Almost every elected official from both parties either starts out
playing the political game from day one or is quickly sucked into it
upon taking office. Aside from a few flag-waving issues, most
politicians are not motivated to run for office because of core
convictions that burn inside their soul....
And that is exactly what everyone hates about politics. That is why
these elections have had such low turnout. That is why Congress has
such a low approval rating.
This sense of apathy is bipartisan and clearly cuts across all
ideological lines. Yet, a grassroots conservative movement that has,
more or less, been labeled as the Tea Party, is the only faction
dedicated to changing the political system and throwing out the career
politicians.
But it is precisely because they desire not to play the political
game that these candidates are confronted with an almost insurmountable
task. Everybody in the system, including the talking heads and
thumb-sucking pundits, feel threatened by the movement. Every business
interest is motivated to destroy the movement. As such, it is so
difficult to raise enough money for the challenger to define themselves
before they are defined by the incumbent.
It is not very hard to run against the tea party movement. Again, if
politics is an ends to itself, career politicians will make themselves
scarce, never take a stand on a contentious issue, and only put out
carefully-crafted statements through professional staff – statements
that are meaningless. See Mitch McConnell for an example. But the path
of least resistance is always the easiest path to power if that is the
ultimate goal.
As we’ve noted before, these career politicians hide behind slick ads
aired on the backs of special interests money, often promoting a
message antithetical to the one privately espoused in order to obtain
that level of campaign funding in the first place. Hence, the path to
victory is keep the candidate scarce, lie to the voters through the
filter of a high-dollar campaign apparatus, define your opponent with
lies, and celebrate on election night with a speech full of platitudes.
Some of the political class pundits seem to be impressed by this
process, but this is the very system that has helped create a
post-constitutional country. It’s not impressive, it’s immoral.
On the one hand, we’ve made so much progress over the past five years
that establishment candidates, even those universally recognized as
moderates, are forced to run on our platform. This would have never
been the case if not for the constant threat of primary challenges. But
to actually expose these people and raise enough money to throw out the
political class is a long process. It will not happen in one election
cycle, but we must start somewhere. People tend to forget how hard it
is to actually succeed in throwing out an incumbent in a primary. It
has only been done once in the Senate in recent years when Senator
Richard Lugar was downed in Indiana (Mike Lee won in a convention
dynamic).
Seats with no incumbent Republican are not any easier. The
establishment candidates always have exponentially more money and they
run as conservative challengers against the status quo. It’s not that
the conservative choices lost; it’s that they never got on the field.
Thom Tillis was the only candidate in North Carolina up with sustained
penetration media buys. His allies bought him ubiquitous name ID. Greg
Brannon and Mark Harris never cracked 30% in name ID.
In Georgia, David Purdue and Rep. Jack Kingston spent over $5 million
apiece between their campaigns and outside groups. As of the last FEC
filings, Karen Handel – the third-place finisher – spent just over
$700,000. And more importantly, the two establishment candidates ran
away from party leadership and even signed a hard-core pledge against
amnesty and open borders. You spend the most money and run as a
conservative you will always win the primary.
But to what end? That is the unanswered question.
If the ultimate goal is just to win an elected office with no
intention of fulfilling their campaign promises, in other words,
governing like establishment Republicans, their game will come to an end
at some point. You can’t fool the people all the time."
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