Liberals and conservatives agree: Good governance is what we want

At one time the dividing line between "liberals" and "conservatives" was fairly distinct. Not anymore. Many self-defined "liberals" are preaching traditional conservative values while avowedly conservative Republicans are openly challenging the President.

An example of the former is liberal Montana blogger Jay Stevens, who was quoted on PBS "NOW" (9/16/06) as saying: "The only thing I expect from my government is that it obeys the Constitution, balances the budget, and keeps us safe. This government has failed on all three counts...miserably." These words could well have come from a Republican candidate in the campaign preceding the 1994 Gingrich revolution.

An example of the latter is the stalemate in the Senate over the President's wishes to redefine what the CIA can and cannot do during interrogations. Three staunch GOP Senators — McCain, Graham and Warner — are cautioning the White House about advocating methods that stand at odds with the Geneva Convention — methods more commonly associated with dictatorial regimes than modern democracies.

Quite coincidentally, a link to the following article was sent to us by a conservative reader of Vox Verax. Despite our sometime differences, there are also issues on which we agree....

Governing Realities
Where are the conservatives?

By Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online

Conservative Republicans have learned a painful lesson over the last few years. It turns out power isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Republican control of the White House and Congress hasn’t resulted in lights being turned off in Cabinet agencies or enormous garage sales of office furniture. Instead, Uncle Sam is still looking like Marlon Brando at the end of his career: bloated, sweaty, and slow moving. The GOP has become a Brando-like parody of its former self, reading its lines about cutting government without plausibility or passion.

The rub of it, from a conservative perspective, is that Republican control of the House doesn’t equal conservative control. It may not seem that way to liberals who think Joe Lieberman is right wing, but from the vantage point of the conservative movement, GOP dominance has been an enormous disappointment — good judicial appointments and tax cuts not withstanding. Our hopeful joy upon the 1994 takeover of Congress was like finding a new pony by the Christmas tree. Now it’s more like finding it slumped over dead on top of the presents.

The article is here.