Beware of platform shrinkers

Platform shrinkers are the mortal enemies of responsible conservative outcomes.

Moderates love to push for platform shrinking – whether issues are literally taken out of the platform or we all agree to ignore them in practice – because platform shrinking = accountability shrinking.

Platform shrinking is a way for closet moderates to push a moderate agenda in conservative clothes.

They say, “Boy I’m conservative like you, and to pass the really important stuff we need to focus like a laser on it. We need to get rid of most of the GOP platform, don’t you agree?”

Conservatives do not.

Platform shrinkers make their case by trying to convince conservatives, a)  that there is simply no time to pass bills on most platform issues, and, b)  that focusing on too many things weakens the most important ones.

The opposite is true on both counts.

First let’s consider the time issue. The legislature files and/or votes on hundreds of bills every time they meet.

Here a few of the bills they had time and energy for:

• HB 1819 – Relating to liability for injuring a trespassing sheep or goat
• HB 174 – Relating to creating American Indian Heritage Day
• HB 295 – Relating to the creation of a commission to study drowsy driving

There is no time shortage as long as there is time for legislation like this.

What about the platform shrinker’s  “dilution of energy and purpose” argument? Does going after too much good legislation make it all weak?

Exactly the opposite.

Suggesting otherwise is like saying a family should put a strict limitation on good deeds to one another and to neighbors, because, if they go around doing too much good, it’ll get diluted.

Good deeds are not a zero sum game. Good begets good. All conservative issues reinforce each other.

Notice that when moral/cultural issues are passing, fiscal discipline is always at its highest ebb. Case in point: the 82^nd Legislature.

Why? Because fiscal restraint is moral restraint. Moral thinking puts people in the proper head space to make good, long term fiscal decisions.

Conversely, selfish thinking makes it easy to spend taxpayer money on fattening government fiefdoms.

This is why the best pro-life session  ever in Texas went with one of the best fiscally disciplined sessions ever.

Rice University’s Mark Jones wrote an article about how the 83^rd legislature was a “purple session in a red state”. With a bonanza of funds, the Rainy Day Fund was raided even more heavily than in the 82^nd Legislature, when funds were scarce, giving big spenders much better leverage to go after the RDF.

In fact, the lobby actively tries to create a sinful, self-serving environment in capitol towns because they know this is the most fertile atmosphere for getting crony legislation passed.

This is also why some of the best, most praiseworthy, and most subversive things conservative legislators can do in capitol towns is bible studies, charity activities, and making their families visible often to remind other legislators of their own familial vows.

In truth, there is a battle for atmosphere in capitol towns that the lobby knows about and fights, and that conservatives need to understand and engage with more.

We see moderate platform shrinking efforts at the state and national levels.

Speaker Straus didn’t allow abortion bills to make it to the floor, though Governor Perry has brought them into the special session. And abortion is the moral/cultural issue that gets the most oxygen of all of them.

Remember when Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels entered the presidential primary race with a big establishment push and quickly called a truce on the social issues to really focus hard on the fiscal issues?

This comment destroyed his candidacy, but the establishment was still able to nominate someone who was just as squishy as Daniels, and maybe even more squishy. This guaranteed us the Establishment Shellshock of 2012, after conservatives had provided the Tea Party Tsunami of 2010.

During the Presidential primary John Boehner was also on TV advocating for getting the “long and confusing” platform onto one piece of paper. He claims nobody has read it, so it needs to get shorter.

This is another scam. The platform is a reference document, not leisure reading. Boehner’s comments make about as much sense as saying the dictionary should be shortened so to be readable in one nice day at the beach.

The truth is, moderates don’t believe in most of the platform, they don’t want to anger the Democrats they need to help them pass bills conviction conservatives won’t vote for, and they need Republican voters to keep voting them into office. For these reasons they’d vastly prefer a tiny, business lobby-only GOP platform.

But the platform is the voter’s leverage point. Shrinking it is about shrinking voter power and nothing else. The platform is the default positions for anyone calling themselves a Republican. Silence on a platform issue is taken by voters as agreement, a reality massively abused by moderates. They fear being asked good questions during primaries on many of platform issues.

In reality, shrinking the platform means allowing crony moderates all the room they need to keep voters from knowing who they are, and it would usher in even more reckless spending, corruption, and immorality than we already do.

Beware of platform shrinkers.

*Thanks to Cahnman over at Cahnman’s Musing for kind words about this piece and for correcting me about who made the infamous “truce on social issues” comment.