If conservative policies are implemented, do we care who implements them?

I wanted Ted Cruz to be president. He certainly has the conservative bona fides – but he is also part of the Most Exclusive Do-Nothing Debate Club On Earth and that association has limited presidents in the past – can’t buck the good ole boys too much or they bite back. They invoke the “why, you used to be one of us, how could you treat your old buddies this way” defense.

Conservative policies cut against government. If government has a natural enemy, it is 21st century conservatism.

The party of government, the Democrats, does not have the same problem. Whatever government expansions a Democrat president wants, every Democrat will line up behind it and salute.

So conservatives always have to fight a two-front battle – the Battle of the Senate Buds and a battle against government (Democrats).

Since the successes of Reagan (in which Democrats underestimated Reagan because they thought he was an “amiable dunce”), the Democrats figured out the game and stopped taking GOP presidents for granted – but Bush I was an insider. Bush II was another insider – Pops was Prezzie, Jebbie was a guv. They both had to fight the Democrats AND their ensconced buds who didn’t really want to rock the boat. By the time Bush II came to office, the Republican Revolution of 1994 had its supply lines cut, and by 1998, Newt Gingrich – the Speaker of the House who engineered the revolution had been deposed.

Maybe government and the House and Senate are just too resistant to change for an insider to bring conservative policies to life. “True conservatives” may not like it, but it is possible that it takes someone like Trump – someone with no limiting alliances in government and who doesn’t give a crap what they think – to get conservative things done.

And there is probably no bigger conservative issue than border security. Even the pretend conservatives in Congress realize they have to pretend to support it to get elected.

I have to give Trump credit for something I didn’t see coming due to my conventional lines of thought – I read today where he is saying, “Fine. We’ll stop separating illegal adults and children – we’ll just immediatley deport anyone who crosses the border illegally (no matter if they say they want asylum). Families can sit together in the same rows on the bus back across the border.”

That takes a big brass set of cohones…but if the Democrats are going to play hardball, Trump appears ready to play.

Just a thought.

I guess we will have to see if Trump’s lack of conservative pedigree and erasable personality can overcome the hate and opposition of purist libertarians (who, like progressives, never seem happy with anything), progressive Democrats and the establishment NeverTrump Republicans.

We’ll have to see if the libertarian and NeverTrump camps on the right are willing to accept conservativism done by someone they hate and not in the way they would do it.

Again, the question is this: as long as we get the policies, should we care who puts them in place?