Muzzles & Masks

I don't want to gratuitously knock Ryan Sager, even if he is a Rudy Giuliani backer, because he did yeoman work recently in highlighting the stand for free speech taken by Senator George Allen (R-VA):

"Republicans do not need, and should not attempt, to muzzle their opponents."

Nancy Pelosi? Harry Reid? Howard Dean?

Try Senator George Allen (R-VA), presumed 2008 presidential candidate, in a laudable attempt to return the Republican Party to its historic role as opponent of political-speech regulation. While Newt Gingrich has been railing against 2002's McCain-Feingold legislation in recent months, Allen's attack on the GOP's current effort to regulate so-called 527 groups - independent organizations banned from coordinating with candidates or parties - makes him the first top-tier '08 candidate to come out swinging against campaign-finance "reform."

Three huzzahs for Senator Allen. As Sager goes on to argue, this will put him in very good graces with the GOP base when the 2008 primaries draw nigh. Plus it's the constitutional thing to do.

However, I can't quite countenance Sager's next graf:

Whether it's enough to force a serious confrontation on the issue between status quo politicians such as Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Bill Frist and the fed-up conservative base remains to be seen. But it's at least a start. And where the various candidates line up on the issue over the next year and a half will tell Republican primary voters quite a lot about who's on board with Karl Rove's vision of a permanent, principle-less majority and who's ready to ready to rethink the mistakes of the last five-plus years. [emphasis added]

That is, to be charitable, a gross mischaracterization of Karl Rove's "vision." And anybody who thinks that George W. Bush is bereft of principles has been in a coma for the past half-decade.

But apart from that, I guess it has to be reiterated once more: If you're not in the majority, you can't accomplish anything. Having read Sager's work for a while now, I get the distinct impression that he would rather the GOP be ideologically pure and in the minority than accept the inevitable philosophical dilution that comes with a majority governing coalition. For that matter, to a very large degree he erects a faciley false choice between "principles" and power. The two are not necessary opposites, and to the degree that they do clash it is at the behest of ideologues like Sager whose philosophical piety leads to a propensity for partisan fratricide.

Mistakes there have indeed been over the course of the second Bush presidency. But they won't be fixed by throwing our own bums out.

If I were Senator (and, God willing, eventually President) Allen, I'd be watching my back against such fair-weather support.