I think the GOP judicial strategy for the last 3 decades and the prominence of fights over SSM put the lie to the idea that social conservatives were quiet members of the coalition in the past.https://twitter.com/DouthatNYT/status/1134651785094881281 …
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But the reality is that outside those narrow ranges, conservatives would prefer to debate the esoteric question of who is truly conservative than do the yeoman’s work of learning to master the state.
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At every level of the conservative movement, we are abundant in commentary but not in core competencies of governance. That’s the root of this whole debate: inability to formulate an actual coherent plan of government.
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Nature abhors a vacuum, and so you get this weird thing where Catholic integralista try to claim the Trumpian mantle to entirely uncertain ends. But it’s all litigated at a very high volume.
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So to expand on this let me give you an anecdote. I did the Koch Associate Program (KAP). KAP recruits like 100 right-leaning or libertarian young professionals every year and subsidizes their placement in right-leaning orgs.
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It also requires the participants to gather for one day a week for management training. But here’s the reality. Most placed people were in fundraising. Probably less than 25% of us were in any role where we were actually touching policy questions.
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And of those, the vast majority were at orgs that did a lot of online publication and very little actual policy work. There was literally no effort at any level to train these cohorts *to actually be in government*.
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Gajillions of dollars are spent each year on this program to incubate rightist talent. Like 90% of it is spent on philosophical discussions of Hayek, donor correspondence, or “management training” using models that you can’t implement in nonprofits.
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KAP is one example of the ridiculous structuring of right wing talent management. But it just blows my mind that so many internships have “reading lists” that include literally zero texts offering practical accounts of actual governance.
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Young conservatives are recruited, paid, and socially pressured to believe that the best thing they can do for the movement is send donor emails, read a sophomore philosophy curriculum, and go to happy hours to complain about the libs.
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Now look, I’m sure the left has a lot of dysfunction too. OTOH, many lefty folks get their big break actually working in government, or actually helping organize popular movements. And culturally, their orgs prioritize being good at government.
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Now look I get it: conservatives want to reduce the size of the state. But you don’t go boar-hunting without a spear. You don’t step into the arena without training. Conservatives envision this all-consuming state that crushes liberty and then assume a reading list will beat it.
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What conservative talent management programs should actually do is use their resources to push young rightists to develop specialties in actual areas of governance. As Federalist Soc did for the judiciary, so we must do for the whole state.
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We should be training young conservatives not to right the beast commentary essay but to be able to walk into a DHHS office on day 1 of a new administration and accomplish the conservative administration’s objectives.
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Instead we have a situation where the Trump Adminisyration has the worst losing record in court of any President ever.... and the vast majority of his defeats... Are due to noncompliance with the ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURE ACT. It’s just plain old fashion incompetence, folks.
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The Trump Admin is NOT mostly losing cases due to like equal protection or some ideological thing, but because the Admin’s staff is so phenomenally bad at their jobs that they can’t manage to write a basic regulation without screwing up the legally required process.
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This is largely because the Trump Administration has refused to hire 1) anyone who ever said anything not awesome about Trump, 2) anyone who doesn’t fit exactly with their ideology. 1) is stupid. But 2) actually makes sense. Problem is, that bench ain’t deep!
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You cannot win a war without mid-level officers. You cannot run a government, heck you cannot SHRINK a government, without competent officials.
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The question we should encourage young right-leaning folks to ask themselves is: next time we win, is there ANY actual function of government I would be competent to step in and run? What specific function? And what do I think should be done with it?
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I would like to note that in my tenure at USDA, I successfully identified multiple errors in regulatory implementation. When fixed, in my time at USDA, I and one other colleague together prevented over $350 million in unjustified spending over my 3.5 years.
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I’m real darn proud of that. And that’s just stuff I know I can take credit for. I was on several advisory bodies as well where I cannot take credit for all outcomes. But in general, I looked for ways to not spend taxpayer money frivolously, and succeeded in a grand scale.
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But that can only happen if there are conservatives actually learning the skills of government, the institutional jujitsu of the state, and using that mastery to *make a difference.* Oh, a colleague and I also killed 2 big trade disputes before they left the building.
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Which is to say: having passionate conservatives in government can make a difference. We should tell young conservatives that! And also IMHO I should have gotten a bounty for finding the excess spending and correcting it.
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End of conversation
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