Beck Says: All Political Parties Care About is Getting Elected; I say: So what? [Reader Post]

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One of the critical mantras against the two major political parties, particularly the Republicans, that has gotten louder recently is “all they care about is getting elected.” Glenn Beck repeated this several times on his radio show today.

I say: So what?

Not only that, I say: That’s the way it’s supposed to be. Concern for one’s job status or career often is — or should be — a powerful incentive to listen closely to what the boss wants. This is true whether the boss is the department manager, head coach, First Sergeant or the American People.

The brilliance of our constitutional form of government, and its integration with the economic freedom of capitalism, is that it works with, not at odds with, human nature. It doesn’t indulge in the Progressive lunacy that most people do most everything mostly altruistically (or should, or should be forced to). Rather, the Constitution uses elected officials’ natural desire for power to tether them to the source of that power, the People. This granting and withholding of power by the People through elections is the only way to control the acts of government and hold elected officials accountable.

In the present struggle that is the American People v. the Marxist agenda of the Obama administration, for example, the real problem is not that politicians “care only about getting re-elected..” It’s that politicians don’t care *enough* about getting re-elected. If every Democrat cared more about saving his own political skin by actually listening to his constituents rather than walking the Progressive political plank for President Obama, Obama/Reid/Pelosi care would have been dead-as-a-doornail long ago. Thrown on, as I believe a wise man said once, the “ash heap of history.”

But instead, for reasons not necessary to go into here, many politicians care so little about getting re-elected that they are doubling, tripling and quadrupling down on pushing an abhorrent, anti-America agenda that they know very well is political suicide. This is a constitutional disaster.

We need to accept and encourage the idea that elected officials should care deeply about being elected, re-elected, and having their party in the majority. This brilliant play on human nature is the source of the People’s practical power. With that power comes responsibility. In short, the responsibility to make it abundantly clear what is acceptable job performance and what will lead to termination.

This is effective, however, only when politicians care, and quite deeply, about getting re-elected and about helping their party get elected in the future. It takes two phenomenon for our system to work as the Founders envisioned: (1) politicians must care deeply about their own and their party’s political future, AND (this is what tethers the Representatives to the represented) (2) politicians must receive sufficient job counseling from the American People.

When President Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, many in the conservative movement raised the type of hell that no one had raised in a long time, on any issue. Bush pulled the nomination. Not only that, the grassroots outrage gave Bush political cover to reach for a much stronger nominee than he’d gone for the first time. In other words, the Constitutional tethering of the natural desire for continued political power to the source of that power, the People, worked. And it worked because the People did not respond to the exercise of power with relative silence. They talked back. At volumes that made them impossible to ignore (see (1) above).

We need to stop the fantasy and anti-constitutional thinking that looks at the acts of government in a vacuum, as if the problem is solely what officials and what parties — what They, rather than us —- do or do not “stand for.” It’s good and necessary to have and discuss principles. But this discussion can unwittingly become the Liberal “but he has or does not have good intentions” blather, just by a different name.

Regardless of principles or intentions, if the job is not getting done correctly — including the job of representing constituents in Congress— the employee must be fired. That is where the focus of political accountability must be. Grousing that “the only thing pols care about is getting re-elected” is counterproductive. Again, concern for one’s career and job status (even if that concern is motivated by underlying altruism or the sincere desire to serve) is the only mechanism we have for influencing government and holding pols and future pols accountable.

So don’t knock it. Encourage it. And quit wasting a bunch of time jawboning on the motivations of politicians when all that counts for our country is results. (Please don’t confuse what I am saying here about evaluating motivations with evaluating character. Those are two different things.)

Cut to this morning on Mike & Mike In the Morning on ESPN radio. The discussion was about evaluating a player based on Combine skills versus how he actually plays the game. No contest. What matters is what a player produces on the field, which includes how well he integrates his skills with the overall game plan and the standards of conduct set by the boss, the coach. We applaud a player who works hard to do what Coach says simply because he wants to make the team. Let’s not denigrate the same helpful — and Constitutionally important — impulse when it comes to politicians.

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In the Totalitarian Systems of government from history, the will of the people is ignored: instead the latest talking point of the Progressive Socialists is employed, “the people are too stupid to realize what is best for them. We know what is best for them.”

This has become the Death Rattle of the Democrat Party: they actually believe that by installing policy and government that the people have rejected, that at some point in the future we will see that Socialism was the correct option and we will be forever grateful to their arrogant and omnipotent attitudes. It is like a drowning man grasping at straws and will probably lead to the demise of the Democrat Party as we know it; and hopefully, to the creation of an alternative party that is more conducive to a representative Republic.

Nice article by the way with a different view, well done!

Knowing Beck, I suspect his point was along the lines of Obama et al saying anything to get elected and then disregarding the good of the electorate or the will of the electorate in favor of ideological goals. Perhaps he was bemoaning earmarks and pork spending chasing reelection. Without context, it’s difficult to evaluate the discussion.

Maybe the founding fathers gave us the vote to protect us from such snotty, selfish little pseudo-intellectuals like the crop currently trying to take freedoms away. God bless the common folks for their gift of showing these nincompoops what the toe of a boot is for.

“SO WHAT” IS RIGHT

Glenn Beck is as nutty as any Lefty.

Drama Queen Beck Shows His True Colors on Scott Brown

http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/02/glenn-beck-performer-and-provocateur.html

And he’s a lot more dangerous because he is able to fool so many people into thinking he’s a “Conservative” when he is not even close.

I’m sure that Obama want’s to be re-elected as evidenced by his willingness to tell any lie necessary to dupe the populace as to his true nature and intentions.

Either these politicians are stupid beyond belief, knowing that their lies are typically on video, they continue to say anything that they believe to be politically expedient regardless of its veracity, or they are simply pathological.

I remember a SOTU speech by Clinton where he promised everything under the sun to so many different groups that you’d have to be brain dead not to recognize the blantant pandering in quest of voter approval and impossibility of the promises coming to pass.

Maybe we need a law where an elected official that knowingly lies to the public in any way shape or form is guilty of perjury and subject to removal from office and prison time. I know when I was a kid, a lie to my parents would invoke great punishments, and so I refrained from such prevarications.

So GOP enforcers, which is it, a “big tent” or “a big government tent.” that you want???
http://www.jbs.org/health-care-freedom-blog/5957-proposed-dietary-supplement-regulatory-bill-

Once a RINO always a RINO? or is it really RACINO (Republicans are conservative in name only)?

Oh, I know before you even type it, they (you) are the lessor of two evils, people like me are to blame for the advance of socialism (LMAO), etc., etc.,