3/30/2005 10:44:00 AM|||Joe|||Looking at the comments for this entry over on Nod to Nothing, something finally clicked for me.

Well, I shouldn't say that it finally clicked. I mean, it's something we all know instinctively: Most politicians are liars and opportunists. It's just that my perspective just changed slightly. Let me try to explain.

I've been wondering what all this weird behavior from Republicans is about. A lot of currently-serving Republicans were elected on a conservative platform. In fact, most of them were elected on the exact same unimaginative conservative platform.

But they're not really acting like conservatives. Not in fiscal or governing terms.

See, until just now I assumed they were all being opportunists now, betraying their conservative ideals to pander to their constituents. And there may be some truth to that.

But maybe that's looking at it the wrong way. Maybe most of these people never really were any sort of idealists at all. Conservatism gets easy votes these days. Being a team player gets allies in government. So when they're running for (re)election, they pull out the conservative playbook and rattle off the same garbage which is rarely embodied in practice. They win, go back to Washington and do whatever DeLay or Frist tell them to.

Like I said, this may seem completely obvious to everyone, but I guess I kind of believed these politicians when I disagreed with them. And while I certainly don't mind that they're not fanatically clinging to ultra-conservative beliefs, I don't like the particular concessions they're making. I'd prefer that they go easy on the social nonsense and tighten up the more reasonable economic practices.|||111220944277165513|||Political Idealogy