In Washington, Conservatives Are Never Really ‘In Power’
The GOP is always vastly outnumbered in the executive branch's bureaucracy — no matter who is president.
With the end of the Bush administration, and the beginning of the most liberal administration in American history, it is a good time to take stock of what happened over the past eight years.
Conservatives get very frustrated over the failure of Republican administrations in general to change the course of the federal government. They do not understand why an executive branch “controlled” by a Republican president continued to implement liberal policies and regulations. Examples abound over the past eight years — from the Department of Justice’s all-out enforcement of foreign language ballots, to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s refusal to act against companies that engage in reverse racial discrimination on the basis of “diversity,” to the discriminatory awarding of federal contracts on the basis of race that continued in every federal department from Transportation to Commerce.
However, Republicans (much less conservatives) are not really in control of the executive branch even when they occupy the White House, something that most people (especially conservatives outside of Washington) do not fully understand.
Part of the problem can be a failure of presidential leadership. After all, a president’s advisors and political appointees are supposed to carry out what they perceive to be his views and direction. When a Republican president does not make it clear that he expects conservative principles to be followed throughout the executive branch, then no attempt will be made by his political appointees to change liberal policies at the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, or any other federal agency. Even when you have a conservative president, there are a number of other significant reasons why the federal government remains a champion of liberalism. These reasons are inherent in the structure of the executive branch, the employees who make up its ranks, and the occupants of the capitol, both inside and outside of government.
I came to Washington in 2001 to take a career job at the Department of Justice after spending many years in the private sector. I thought I could make a small difference in my particular corner of the executive branch, just like Jimmy Stewart’s character did in Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, one of my favorite movies. After I arrived in Washington, I developed a circle of conservative friends (both career employees and political appointees) who work in other federal departments. We all shared the same frustrations at the inability to get liberal policies changed in the government. Our experiences illustrate some of the reasons that the liberal course of the government did not change during the prior administration, and may never change.
First, most people do not understand the sheer magnitude of the executive branch. There are almost 3 million federal employees, 99 percent of whom are career civil servants over whom the president has virtually no authority. Seventeen states have fewer citizens than the federal government has bureaucrats. There are only a few thousand positions within the federal government that are subject to “noncompetitive appointment,” i.e., positions that the president can fill through political patronage. Among these are 1,137 positions that can be filled by presidential appointment with Senate confirmation; 320 positions subject to presidential appointment without confirmation; and 701 positions in the Senior Executive Service (the top level of managers within the federal ranks) that can be filled by non-career appointments.
As these numbers illustrate, it is the career civil servants who pull the millions of levers of power, not the few political appointees at the top of every agency. It is very difficult for the appointees to even keep track of the policies being implemented by the career staff, much less change them.
This would not be a problem if the career ranks were really filled with nonpartisan individuals (as the New York Times unwaveringly claims) who impartially carried out the policies of the president. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. From the State Department, to the Central Intelligence Agency, to the Department of Justice, and every agency in between, career employees are overwhelmingly partisan liberals, just like in the media and academic worlds. As Richard Perle has eloquently said, when George Bush tried to pull the levers of government, he never realized that they were disconnected from the machinery and the exertion was largely futile. The bureaucracies of these agencies have their own policies and they largely ignored President Bush’s directives and his political appointees, a problem President Obama will not have.
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Hans A. von Spakovsky served for two years as a Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission. His recess appointment ended on December 31, 2007, when the Senate failed to confirm him because of Democratic opposition to his regular nomination over his support of voter ID requirements despite the Supreme Court upholding their constitutionality. Prior to his appointment to the FEC, he spent four years at the Justice Department, the last three as a career Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.
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43 Comments
1. Brian Richard Allen:Well stated. Hear! Hear!
That the feral gummint’s machinery has for so long been the preserve of a massively-corrupt self-annointing, self-appointing, self-perpetuating, self-and-own-culture-loathing un-and-anti-American permanently parasitical sub-species (now into its fifth and sixth generations) is 100% of the reason that America is so deeply in debt — and will likely never recover from its feral bureaucrat-caused and ever-accelerating spiral into tyranny.
Freedom loving Somalis, Karen, Australians, the three or four remaining New Zealanders with any brains, Philippinos and Papua New Guineans have a better comprehension of and more in common with the principles and tenets of America’s Founding Law than do the self-and Socialist-Internationale-serving sinister Svengalis, their consiglieres and political apparatchiks the systemically-RICO-racketeering “contractors” (who do all of the actual work) and the Mussolini-modeled modified-Marxist (IE: fascistic) mobbed-up union-gang-member and several million cleverly-cloned clueless clots and other usefully-idiotic sub-67-IQ seat warmers that round up the numbers of those that effectively own operate and control the feral bureaucracy! The Borg.
And, with it, own, operate and control the government of the United States of America. And see to the squandering and/or to the theft of the Scores of Trillions of Dollars of the confiscated wealth of America’s that Frankensteinian monster confiscates from America’s and thus the world’s most creative, innovative, industrious and productive men!
May Almighty God save our beloved fraternal republic and us all from them — and see them all to Hell!
Brian Richard Allen
Jul 3, 2009 - 4:04 am 2. Gary Ogletree:Los Angeles Califobambicated 90028
And the Far Abroad
Hans, if I was the next Prez, I’d put you in charge of hiring the people who do the hiring and put a crack team on how to clean out the liberal entrenchment. A lot of good people worked for Bush, I hope they will be there to help a stronger, more conservative White House next time around. The other big albatross on the American neck seems to be the massive corruption in Congress. New slogan, Take the Parasites out of Public Service.
Jul 3, 2009 - 4:07 am 3. Gracchus:Ain’t it the truth, brother.
Jul 3, 2009 - 4:29 am 4. "progressive"watch:I have a relative who works at DOJ. At a party in D.C. after the election, he proffered that the ascension of Obama made them all “more comfortable” where he worked, but reassured his party guests not to worry, because the (left-leaning) work of the DOJ went on with nary a hitch through the eight years of Bush anyway; he explained that changes of Administration are almost invisible when it comes to the DOJ’s day-to-day labor (what the lefties see as unimpeachable good works).
There really is no answer to this.
Spakovsky states the problem and why it is a problem. The next step is the solution; next is carrying it out.
The answer to can a conservative win inside the beltway? is we conservatives must win.
Jul 3, 2009 - 4:45 am 5. Colin Wilkinson:I have said for years that the most powerful political force in my state(Minnesota) is the bureaucracy. This goes double for the “Federal” bureaucracy. The great Civil Service reform of the 188os is a failure. The Spoils system run by politicians has been replaced by a spoils system run by the bureaucrats themselves. This is one place where the slogan; “The only real reform is repeal!”, is especially true.
Jul 3, 2009 - 6:27 am 6. Jim Baker:Time to dust off some old Sovietology terms:
Apparatus; The bureaucratic organs of State power.
Apparatchik; A member of the bureaucracy.pl apparatchiki
Nomenclatura; the class of the politically connected who receive the benefits of the System.
Not all apparatchiki are members of the nomenclatura.
George Washington Plunkett was right. Civil Service reformed ruined government in America.
This institutionalized big government liberalism is also controlling our K-12 public schools.
Jul 3, 2009 - 6:58 am 7. sheesh:In 1961, the legislature of the state of Wisconsin passed the removal of an 80 year old law that prevented public employees from forming labor unions. Public employees work for the taxpayers, not businesses, and they work in environments where there is no real employment differences between administrators and their workers. The administrators have every incentive to give in to any demands made by a labor union, because anything the labor union can get from the taxpayers is also great for them. This incestuous relationship was thought to be unhealthy for the pocketbooks of the taxpaying citizens and was the reasoning behind the laws preventing public employees from collective bargaining.
Over the next ten years, more than 40 other states followed the ‘lead’ of Wisconsin. Now, two generations later, we have the spectacle of our public schools being taught by the membership of a government labor union. Labor unions, almost by by definition, are populated by big government collectivist liberals. That is why most younger people have never even been exposed to the ideals of our founding fathers. Most will never overcome the bias of their education.
If we need to clean out the liberal bureaucracies, we will have to start with our public schools. Now, will someone please tell me what can be done?
I guess that means you can thank liberals for keeping America safe for the last 8 years. You’re welcome.
Jul 3, 2009 - 7:08 am 8. Strawman:Part of the problem also is that Republicans tend to be delegators and Democrats tend to be micromanagers, so when the new donkey comes in he fires a lot more appointees, and installs a lot more of his own people. Bush was horrible in that regard. He should have fired everybody he could, and replaced them all with Texans.
Instead, he’d replace only the cabinet members, and then wonder why the State Dept., for example, seemed to be running the SoS, rather than the other way around.
It’s instructive to look at how the current administration is riding roughshod over State, and doing boneheaded things like giving the Queen of England an iPod. The way to get around the established departments is to create a shadow government of czars like the Chicago Gang is doing.
Jul 3, 2009 - 7:15 am 9. antaine:Stop sending your kids to public schools. I’ve taught grades PreK-14 in my time, public schools, Catholic schools, and community colleges. The entire public education system disgusts me.
The Left uses the school system to breed the next generation of “progressives,” from K through university. But it’s those formative years that are most important for ideological foundation.
People with conservative values need to make sure that they pass them along to their children…the world will be trying to ideologically snatch their children from them in the process.
It took 90 years for the pendulum to come this far, and it’s still moving. It will take at least another 90 to undo the damage…
Jul 3, 2009 - 7:17 am 10. Bender:Living next to D.C., I’ve applied for jobs in the federal government and met with nothing but total failure.
For a long time I thought that I was the problem, that I was the total loser, notwithstanding outstanding grades and other qualifications.
Eventually I realized that I was not the problem, that people like me simply are rarely hired. There is not a blacklist of individual persons, but there is a blacklist of sorts of types of persons.
Now, in one sense, I was the problem — I was stupid enough to put my experience with pro-life groups and other conservative groups on my resume. Then I was stupid enough to put in my church-related experience. But had I not, then there would be a big hole in my work experience.
There is a cost to maintaining one’s principles and to acting on them.
Jul 3, 2009 - 9:15 am 11. D'oh!:If you don’t believe what this article says, watch how hard the Obama Justice Department works to ignore the implications of the recent Ricci v. DeStafano Supreme Court decision.
Jul 3, 2009 - 9:26 am 12. Anneke:Thank you for confirming what I always suspected. I was working on a Masters in Public Administration. My professors and lecturers (people working in government administration who were brought in to teach) were very supportive, helpful and encouraging to students until they found out that they had conservative leanings. Then, those conservative students were marginalized or advised to pursue other careers. One professor suggested to me that I might be better suited to an MBA because Republicans only like people who are successful in business not ordinary citizens. At that point, I began closely watching my fellow classmates. I noticed that the students who were considered to be prime Public Adminstrator material were not the smartest or talented students but the students more inclined to parrot a professor’s world view (i.e., mindless drones to be absorbed by the bureaucratic machine and never question the leadership).
Jul 3, 2009 - 9:31 am 13. Sheila:Well written and true. I was a recovering liberal when I first joined the federal government years ago, and now as a conservative I wouldn’t be able to tolerate working with the liberal bureaucracy. Part of the problem has been the heavily Jewish makeup of many of the surrounding D.C. suburbs and thus the professional federal workforce – you have illiterate black secretaries and liberal Jewish supervisors – a recipe for failure. Also – any conservatives who move to D.C. with a Republican administration generally move out again once a Democrat gets elected – cost of living and quality of life is so much better elsewhere – while the Democrats and liberals remain at the government trough for life. Thus over the years the whole area has gotten more and more rotten – witness the last election results in Virginia suburbs – and it just keeps spreading.
Jul 3, 2009 - 10:21 am 14. Blarty Blarckleblart:Yeah, the CIA and DOJ are hotbeds of far-left radical liberal extremists.
If you really believe that, I strongly encourage all of you to call your senators and representatives – repeatedly, if necessary – and tell them that. I’ll even give you a short script:
“Hello, my name is _____. I would like to express my outrage at how the CIA and Justice Department, along with every other part of the executive branch, is overrun with rabid leftists. Please address the situation. Thank you.”
Remember to be polite, and to be prepared to give your full name and address. I have a feeling they will want it.
Jul 3, 2009 - 11:18 am 15. Blarty Blarckleblart:Not like Mr. von Spakovsky has an axe to grind or anything:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/spakovsky-letter/?resultpage=1&
Jul 3, 2009 - 11:42 am 16. shoey:you will all service the SEIU, resistance is futile.
Jul 3, 2009 - 11:56 am 17. Jack Jolis:Blarty Blarckleblart’s pathetic attempt at sarcasm turns out to be completely misplaced. As it happens, the CIA and DOJ are indeed, (and have been for some time, now), “hotbeds of far-left radical liberal extremists”.
And anyone with first-hand experience in or with those bodies will confirm that this is so. (Including the liberals involved themselves, who are proud of their successful “march through the institutions”).
The quasi-permanently embedded cadre of lefty/statist bureaucrats are formidable forces in both — probably still only a strong plurality in the Agency, but certainly a majority of the time-servers at Justice.
Jul 3, 2009 - 12:01 pm 18. Blarty Blarckleblart:17 Jack
So you’ll be using my script, then?
Jul 3, 2009 - 12:15 pm 19. antaine:Jim Baker above hit the nail on the head. Most of my liberal friends (which is almost all of them) have leftist philosophy so ingrained from 16+ years of formal “education” that any questioning of that philopsophy seems to them like utter nonsense.
For instance, tell them that there is scientific evidence out there that our effect on our changing climate may indeed be negligible and what we’re looking at is the result of natural cycles in the Earth and the sun and they will tell you that not only didn’t they hear that, but it “obviously” can’t be true. Manmade global cooli- I mean warmi- I mean “climate change” is a self-evident “fact.”
Why?
Well, they’ve been told so since the third grade. And ironically, the message has changed in the last generation from cooling to warming (when I was in school) to the current term “change” – and they don’t see anything wrong with that.
And I don’t even put to them that the changing message is evidence that the scientists don’t know what the hell they’re doing…I merely suggest that the shifting means there’s stuff they still haven’t figured out and introduces the possibility of a margin of error.
I even put to one of my science teachers that the entire system for neighborhood recycling may do more environmental harm than good. Her reply? “Well, it’s important to do *some*thing.”
Nope…no room for conflicting evidence or independent thought, just pass the Kool-Aid and tell me what to think.
Jul 3, 2009 - 12:39 pm 20. Jack Jolis:Wha?
Your attempts at sarcasm, (if that’s what your post #18 is meant to be), have gone from fatuously ill-informed, to positively incomprehensible.
Are you now going to put into practice the hilarious advice of Mrs. Hillary Macbeth Clinton when she counselled “and I thought, you know, we are in just so many deep holes that everybody had better grab a shovel and start digging out.”
Sounds like a good plan, Blarckleblart, get on it…..
Jul 3, 2009 - 12:50 pm 21. Blarty Blarckleblart:Your attempts at sarcasm, (if that’s what your post #18 is meant to be), have gone from fatuously ill-informed, to positively incomprehensible.
“So you’ll be using my script, then?” refers to the script I provided in my previous post. It will be helpful for you when you call your elected representatives to air your grievances.
Jul 3, 2009 - 1:23 pm 22. myth buster:sheesh, the military is not liberal. 60% of the enlisted members and almost 90% of the officers in the military are registered Republican.
Jul 3, 2009 - 1:30 pm 23. John:This article is a excellent example of why the only rational course of action for Republicans is to eliminate unconstitutional bureaucracies (which shouldn’t even exist) such, as the Department of Education; just as Ronald Reagan advocated and Ron Paul has spent his career trying to do.
This article could also be titled: How ‘moderates’ compromise and guarantee liberal victory by trying to ‘fix’ the mess instead of joining conservatives in restoring the Constitution.
Jul 3, 2009 - 4:34 pm 24. Kim:19. antaine:
“I even put to one of my science teachers that the entire system for neighborhood recycling may do more environmental harm than good. Her reply? ‘Well, it’s important to do *some*thing.’ ”
Recycling isn’t economical, it wastes our most limited resource — our time.
But recycling is extremely important as a behavior modification technique. It’s a repeated action that makes the environmental message ever-present, and deeply ingrained. The mnemonic effect of recycling is similar to the role played by regular prayer in propagating a religion. You can’t believe in something that you don’t first remember.
Jul 3, 2009 - 4:36 pm 25. ReConUSMC:This fully explains Bush’s enemies in The EPA , Justice Dept. Pentagon , FBI , State Dept. and The CIA .
They All leaked enough Secrets and the countless Top Secret Memos to Float the Huge Carrier
The Ronald Reagan . Not to mention the far left Liberal Nut that went to see about
Yellow Cake was a anti’s Bush man as was his CIA Wife that got him the Gig …. to Lie !
The NY Times and Washington Post Outed Top secrets that Hurt this Country badly about every 3 Months
as did The CIA not by accident !
Jul 3, 2009 - 5:23 pm 26. Shef Rogers:And here I thought conservatives were against “victim” culture and self-pity. That’s all you guys write these days!
Jul 3, 2009 - 5:38 pm 27. ajacksonian:The problem is beyond just political outlook, but goes to the interior nature of the bureaucracy itself. Culturally Agencies consist of sub-components: Directorates, Divisions, Sections, Offices. Each of these sub-groups has their own interior ‘turf’ or ‘territory’ to defend inside their part of the Agency. That creates an atmosphere intra-Agency where it is difficult to coordinate activities even between Offices in the same Section, not to speak of Offices between Sections or Directorates. Turf is defended by the number of slots, resources and other parts of the budget that each gets, and that then becomes part of an escalating system of justification for larger budgetary outlays, mostly revolving around staff slots. Any attempt to change the structures results in bureaucratic in-fighting as any threat to any component that would remove staff via improvements in bureaucratic efficiency is resisted as it would tend to draw down resource commitment to that component.
This all goes before the harsh in-fighting between personnel who attempt to undermine each other whenver a change is set to take place, and everything that can be used, including anonymous tips to an IG on spurious accusations or multiple insubstantiated EEO complaints, all of which need to be investigated, happens.
Now imagine trying to do that exact, same thing between Agencies or between the groups represented in the Cabinet.
No President, No Cabinet member, and not even Congress can do much about this without an agreement between the Legislative and Executive to remove large parts of the bureaucracy.
There are ways a President can act to immediately shake up the system: fire all the Senior Executive/INTEL Service. The SES/SIS members are contract hires, not Government Service hires, and can be T4C (Terminated For Convenience of the Government). These are appointment jobs from the Executive Branch to attempt to control the bureaucracy, but that has proven to be ineffective over time. That removes an entire intermediary swath of the bureaucracy and then puts the secondary Government Service personnel who usually hold the #2 slots in a tough position: their job performance is then done directly from the Cabinet level or the President. Any employee can get a very poor performance appraisal and be demoted on that, and the next in line brought in… which makes for a very nasty hot seat as one UNSAT starts to ruin your career, especially from the Cabinet level or President. You don’t get an appeal on those.
Reform can happen, but the entire system needs to be seriously dismantled just to get some effectiveness into the government’s Executive Branch. Presidents are generally too timid to do anything like this as it is the hardest, nastiest and most effective way to wield the power that is ONLY in the Executive Branch. Thus, instead of true reduction and streamlining, you get ‘reform and oversight’ which means more bureaucracy, more wasted time, more fights for resources, more in-fighting, ad nauseum.
I don’t have to call my Congresscritter on that.
I served on a number of government groups that looked at how the Agency I was in operated and asked for recommendations on how to change. My last one ran to about 20 pages, that from an Advanced R&D component. The amount of time and energy wasted in government is phenomenal, ranging from 65% efficiency for the best Agency to 45% efficiency for the worst, with the majority falling between 50-55%. All private concerns, as an average, fall at 80% efficiency for effective use of time and limiting time wasted… the other 20%. And every time you want a ‘reform’ or additional ‘oversight’ by another layer of bureaucracy, that efficiency rating drops further.
That goes far beyond the mere political part of things, which is bad enough.
That is your hard earned tax money going to waste on a huge scale, before you even get to Congressional pet projects… and those cost far more than the money involved in them, too…
Jul 3, 2009 - 6:08 pm 28. whyyeseyec:Nothing short of eliminating whole gov`n agencies with the stroke of a pen can solve the problems we find ourselves in. That isn`t going to happen so it appears all is lost……….
Jul 3, 2009 - 7:44 pm 29. Jericho:This is just one more reason I am a monarchist. Prepare yourself. The King is coming. ps. He did not promise you freedom in this world, but freedom in Him.
Jul 3, 2009 - 11:13 pm 30. Mike W.:I find that, at least within the Defense Department, there are a *lot* of Republican career federal employees, even here in New England where I work as a federal employee too… I think this problem of socialist careerists must in most of the other Departments (the ones that, unfortunately, affect our lives as citizens taxpayers).
Jul 4, 2009 - 7:09 am 31. Shef Rogers:Mike, Mike, Mike, are you serious? The Defense Department is hands down the most corrupt and wasteful of all Federal agencies. And why am I not surprised that you, like so many brave champions of free enterprise, turn out to be a career bureaucrat, making a living off those taxpayers you champion?
Jul 4, 2009 - 8:46 am 32. steve:It won’t matter, the usa has 2 yrs left at best, once it collapses its done. These people won’t have jobs and its game over. Its already starting in california now. Just enjoy the ride while you can.
Jul 4, 2009 - 12:02 pm 33. Andrew:This 4th of July we should all take some time to think about how vigorously our Founding Fathers are rolling around in their graves. The monstrosity that is our government (federal, state, local) is not what was intended when this country was created. You can blame career politicians or bureaucrats all you want, but the fact of the matter is this: we voted those bozoz into office and then failed to hold them accountable for their actions. Only an informed and active populace can control a republic, otherwise the natural tendencies of human nature take control and beging to rot away the framework of the Constitution until there is nothing left but a hollow shell of its former self. The road to redemption for this country will be a difficult one and I fear that it may indeed be too late; the changes that are necessary to restore our once proud republic will be unpopular on both sides of the political aisle becuase both parties have become corrupted with the desire for power.
Even when a conservative is in office the people that elected him/her generally fail to keep tabs on what they are doing while in office and usually vote them back in for re-election regardless of what they did or did not do. The blame lies with us, the American people, who have become fat, lazy and decadent. In another generation or two there may not be an America left that’s worth saving if we keep going down this road.
Jul 4, 2009 - 3:17 pm 34. hector:Sheesh, #7 says: “I guess that means you can thank liberals for keeping America safe for the last 8 years. You’re welcome.”
A very interesting comment, and maybe even worth thinking about. But why stop at the last eight years? Go back further to learn the effect of so many liberals working overtime to push their perceived agenda. When terrorism began showing up as a regular occurrence, in the early 70’s, it was a new phenomenon in terms of aircraft hijackings, Olympic mass murder, and so on. And, as time wore on, and the liberal presence in the federal bureaucracy began growing, terrorist acts became more widespread, but still the US was relatively untouched except for airplanes and ships. In the 90’s, when the Clintons did everything possible to infest the entire bureaucracy with their lackeys, terrorism in and against the US flowered unchecked. The WTC, USS Cole, embassies in several countries, diplomats murdered, Americans kidnapped. Finally, the influence of the bureaucratic liberals was being felt, and their fondest desires fulfilled.
By 2000, enough people had connected the dots that a concerted effort of true Americans in the bureaucracy were able to learn of the conspiracy of liberals like Sheesh and a mindset to protect the country began to grow, not because of, but in spite of liberals in the Federal Bureaucracy. Although those like Sheesh – and who knows, maybe even Sheesh – had their great success on 9/11, that marked the beginning of the effort.
Nice try Sheesh.
Jul 4, 2009 - 4:22 pm 35. Willys:All federal gubmint employment below the immediate cabinet administration level should be apportioned among the fifty seven states according to population. Management of those agencies should be rotated among the states each five years. Moving expenses not included as a perk.
Jul 4, 2009 - 6:54 pm 36. Mark in Texas:Here is my modest proposal and one that you can even get the Democrats to adopt enthusiastically.
Make every federal job at the level of GS-9 or higher exempt from Civil Service protection. The President does not have to fire those people and, in fact, would often be well advised to keep most of them in place in order to keep competent people operating the government. However, people in any sort of management position will serve at the pleasure of the President and can be fired if their opposition to his policies displease him.
Democrats will be happy to go along with this change because, as the White House travel office scandal demonstrated, Democrats have an endless need to place political supporters into government jobs. They will fire competent government professionals who have been life long Democrats in order to replace them with people who worked on the President’s campaign. It is not the job of Republicans to save Democrats from their most self destructive impulses.
Jul 4, 2009 - 7:10 pm 37. Jim Baker:Sheesh,
Jul 6, 2009 - 8:49 am 38. Roderick Reilly:Are you a government bureaucrat? Did you help keep me safe? Should I be thanking you? Or, thinking yourself a liberal, do you just like to speak for liberal government bureaucrats?
I’m pleased to see this article. The Washington bureaucracy views Republican administrations and Comgresses as occupiers, and Democratic ones as liberators.
It’s worse than that: Republicans are too stupid to realize that their adversaries hold the levers of power in most institutions outside of government as well. To compound the delusion, both sides of the ideological divide overstate the power of conservative advances when they do happen. America has not been America for a century now, at least not in the governing philosophy that we celebrate. Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were quite clear about the fact that they wanted to abandon the mindset and structure desired by The Founders. Both of these “progressives” expressed annoyance with the inconvenience of Constitutional restrictions (as has our current President), and had said so quite clearly and boldly in writing and in speeches. They were much more honest and open about their dismissal of the “old America” than today’s crop of “liberals.”
No one alive today has lived under anything but big government — at least at the federal level. Sadly, those of us who detest big government pine for one of two things: the smaller version of big government we knew from our younger days (when we had a a high degree of independence and individual freedom), and some semi-mythical past we’ve never actually experienced. We now have, and will get more of, collossal government — a step or two up from the huge government that was growing — get this — while Republicans were in power.
This underlying default state of big government can be compared to the Earth’s crust. The back-and-forth policies of conservative vs. liberal governance is equivalent to the peaks and valleys of the Earth’s surface landscape — never as high or as low as the underlying crust is deep. When Obama supporters like Huffingtonpost celebrated an “end to laisez-faire economics,” it was to laugh. We haven’t had “laissez-faire” economics in over a century. The Reagan years were not conservative years as many on the right think, but merely a couple of speed bumps on the progressivist highway.
Jul 6, 2009 - 3:54 pm 39. BC:Ummm, you guys don’t really do your homework, do you?
Jul 11, 2009 - 5:24 am 40. Robert:I never had any idea just how large our government had become. The fact that there are 3 million plus employees is a testament to just how bloated the federal government really is. We need real cahnge but given the information in your article I am not even sure if its possible much less where to begin. Thanks for the inside information. I will do my best to pass it along. I think educating the willing is a place to begin.
Jul 11, 2009 - 12:01 pm 41. 4BetterLiving:The United States Marine Corps. The last grand institution of these Unites States. For God, country and corps. Semper Fidelis.
Jul 13, 2009 - 10:55 am 42. annoyedman:So when do we hoist the Jolly Roger? I hate it, but if there is no realistic probability of reforming the bureaucracy, then I see no end game which does not include violent revolution. Do we avoid that at all costs, submitting ourselves to the inevitable tyranny of a “democratic socialist ‘republic,’” or do we prepare for the worst by continuing to arm ourselves while it is still legally and practically possible, hoping that it never becomes necessary?
WWJD? (What Would Jefferson Do?)
I want my son’s America to be peaceful, prosperous, and above all, free. Conservatism is the only rational way to achieve those goals. If things continue down the path they are currently on, my son will never know what could have been. Who will stand for our sons and daughters? Personally, I’ve lost hope for peace. If what Hans A. von Spakovsky says is true, then sooner or later, all conservatives will have to make the fateful decision to either knuckle under or resist by whatever means possible – because ANY kind of personal accommodation to the increasing tyranny of liberalism is to effectually surrender to it.
Jul 19, 2009 - 9:26 am 43. Bigofascist:“…restrictive voter identification laws….” Oh, like a picture ID?? Oh, yes, that’s highly restrictive and intimidating. Just proves the point. ACORN—how many incidents of voter fraud in the last election?
Sep 14, 2009 - 7:50 am