Posted by
Tim Blessing on Saturday, March 15, 2008 7:24:40 PM
Ideas matter in politics to sell to the American People.
George Washington won the Revolutionary War, served as the head of the Constitutional Convention, and as the First President.
His Presidency was painfully Constitutional.
He set all the precedents for future Presidents.
He is an example, but in a way he is irrelevant in a contemporary Capitalist Democracy that is a Superpower.
Ideas are found in books, internet, talk radio, newspapers, magazines, liberal arts colleges, and in foreign nations.
Libertarian Republicans like me do exist as exemplars of new ideas, but we prefer to work within the two party system.
I figure that the voters will not change so I will to a degree.
An example of a Libertarian Republican is the Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina.
He has not been totally successful, but he has made progress in my state.
I would have prefered a man with ideas who had more people skills, but you can't have everything.
Each of us go through changes in our lives.
George W. Bush forced me to confront an issue I had no interest in dealing with as a voter, which is the unending war in Iraq.
That has cost the Republican Party the support of the mainstream voters and has forced a lot of changes on our politics that were not conceivable five years ago.
Bush failed to secure his place in history as Reagan's Disciple and yes there is a book recently published with that title.
Libertarian Republicans have counterparts on the democrat side called Communitarians, but I don't know how far along they are.
Ideas do matter because they drive everything else in politics. The answer is to use them in a positive way.