What the Republicans Can Teach
I have a piece in November's Commentary on U.K. lessons for American conservatives. This week in The Spectator, I offer a companion essay: What the Conservatives can learn from Republicans. Here's lesson 4:
Don’t disdain small ball.
Small ball is a strategy in baseball. Instead of attempting the big home run, a small ball coach encourages his players to hit singles and move methodically around the bases. President Bush famously preferred Babe Ruth’s style of play: ‘I swing big, with everything I’ve got. I hit big or I miss big.’
Again and again the president swung big: amnesty for illegal aliens, privatisation of Social Security accounts, Medicare reform, a sweeping energy plan, and of course the war in Iraq. Sometimes he hit big: tax cuts, education reform. But more often he struck out. At the end of it all — what enduring conservative accomplishments did the president bequeath? Especially after his tax cuts expire in 2010?
Compare that record to one small technical change forced by conservatives in Congress in 1980: requiring every new federal regulation to pass a cost-benefit analysis test. That one small boring technical change, still in force three decades later, has probably killed more misguided initiatives than all presidential vetoes combined.
Gordon Brown and Tony Blair understood this trick well. Their most left-wing actions were always buried in the fine print. Learn from your opponents’ best moves as well as from your friends’ mistakes!