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DeMint: Principles always come before policies

POSTED May 20, 10:44 AM

South Carolina's Sen. Jim DeMint has a superb piece upon NRO in which he argues that the conservative community in the nation's capital has become imprisoned in the glories of the past, especially of the Reagan years.

DeMint quotes conservative icon William F. Buckley as lamenting this state of affairs in an illuminating interview published during the final months of his life:

"A kind of mental lethargy now exists in my party. We are relying on these brilliant and successful policies of the past to be our principles of today. This is completely backwards. The greatness of conservatism has been an understanding that policies are derivatives of principles. Principles never change, policies do. The trick is finding the correct application of principle-based policies that fit our time.

"In his later years, the late great William F. Buckley Jr. seemed to understand this. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he complained about an American Right that seemed rudderless. 'I think conservatism has become a little bit slothful,' Buckley told The Wall Street Journal.

"The Journal went on to write that Buckley’s private criticisms cut to the core even more; 'Part of it, [Buckley] believed, was that what used to be living ideas had become mummified doctrines to many in the conservative political class.'

"As Buckley once put it, these 'old rigidities' are holding our party back."

Be sure and read the rest of DeMint's piece, which is the first of a series that will appear on NRO in coming days. See especially his analysis of why the conservative effort on Social Security was lost in 2005.