Conservatives are frustrated: why doesn’t the Republican Party deliver better results for us? Part of the answer, of course, is that the Republican Party only controls so much of the government, but there remains a lot of resistance in GOP leadership to fighting for conservative priorities. Why?
Conservatives have tended to see this as a problem to be solved my making threats: We’ll primary you! We’ll stay home! Not One Cent! We’ll go third party! In terms of asserting the legitimate supremacy of the voters over their elected representatives, these are healthy impulses. But they can never be a complete solution, because all these ideas are rule by the stick, by fear. And anyone who knows anything about managing or motivating people knows that fear alone has limits.
I submit that, if we want small-government conservatives and social conservatives to have real influence in the Republican Party, we need to go beyond the stick and offer the carrot; go beyond punishment and offer rewards. We need to prove to the leadership of the party that if they do what we want them to do, they will be richly rewarded with the things they value – advancement, re-election, fundraising, a growing caucus. Until we can offer those things, we will always be frustrated by the limits of our influence.
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