There's blood in the water. Republicans are licking their chops. But these very lucky partisans had better think very clearly and carefully in the coming months. Things have changed. The dynamic is tentative, fragile and fortunes can turn on a dime. The calculation for politicians has changed, too. People are empowered like never before. And they're watching.
Scott Brown is what many might call a RINO. I know, I know. He may help America dodge a legislative bullet in Obamacare. And, of course, for Massachusetts, beggars can't be choosers. Still, we must be leery of stuff like this, from Senator-elect Brown: "In Massachusetts, I support the 2006 healthcare law that was successful in expanding coverage, but I also recognize that the state must now turn its attention to controlling costs." The Massachusetts healthcare plan is the last thing Congress should emulate. (So tread softly, Scott. Or should I say "don't tread.")
Unlike 2000-2006, principles have to come first. Otherwise, the independents and RINO hunters will find you and take shots. If you come into office with an incumbent-mentality - cozying up to special interests and building bridges to nowhere - they will call you out. They will cool your ambitions in the icy waters of truth. Why? People are tired of the 'lesser of evils mentality', for what has it gotten us?
Also, the old calculation was a system that rewarded crony capitalism: i.e. if you ensured that regulations, subsidies and pork projects benefited supplicants in your district, more than likely, you'd keep power. Then, occasionally, you'd get to do something idealistic that would obscure the dirty deals that really kept you in office. Not any more. The Democrats are learning a very difficult lesson about a very different age.
Your job will be to cap spending, reduce the debt and pass regulatory review to begin stripping out the perverse incentive systems both your party and the Dems have woven for your respective benefit. These systems pick winners and losers. They are destroying competition and thus our economy. Indeed, the special interest state is destroying our very institutions.
It used to be that the logic of collective action was such that the costs of organization favored special interests. It was too costly to organize taxpayers and people of principle, being so many people with so little access to information and means to organize. But technology has lowered those costs. They're organizing now. They're RINO hunters and they're coming to your district. When they arrive, they'll hold your feet to freedom's fire. So if you have anything else in mind but something like First Principles, your time in power will be short. If you're the product of some old-boy network and ran in order to serve that network, they'll find out. Your political life may be but an asterisk in the New Book of Purgation.
There are armies - mad as hornets - carrying flashlights, too. They are bringing to light your practices. They are coming armed with ideas and principles. So again, the calculation has changed. The blood you smell in the water by 2012 could be an elephant's.
Your new motto is "Principles First." Don't like it? To succeed, you will serve principle slavishly. Not self, not career, not power, not the crony-capitalist complex your party helped the Democrats to build (and that Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress have perfected). You will serve principle. Your job will be to free the American people, American free enterprise and renew that contract with America.
Otherwise, your career may be a one-term proposition. Why? Because you'll be temped to cozy up to the special interests in your state. But these unholy alliances won't keep you safe. You may try to hide behind the moralistic rhetoric of this issue or that, but it does not trump principle. Your elections and reelections will depend on navigating the waters between the Scylla of special interests and the Charybdis of the RINO hunters and tea-partiers. Either way, term limits will be imposed from without. Welcome to 2010.
