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Comment by ctdonath | Hacker News Reader

Yup, the right-wing base is furious. We didn't push for an overwhelming win for Republicans in Congress just to hand the Obama darned near everything he wants. There's a whole lotta people who vote R only because "lesser of two evils"; they'd jump ship to a third party if only a viable strong leader would appear.

Likewise, the Left had the House, Senate, and President and could have passed anything they wanted for two years. Their opportunity was blown too. (Yes, resistance from the opposition could have been overcome.)

Hence the imperative of individual liberty in the US Constitution: grant the government minimal limited powers, leaving the population free to live as they see fit short of actual harm to others.

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> Hence the imperative of individual liberty in the US Constitution: grant the government minimal limited powers, leaving the population free to live as they see fit short of actual harm to others.

There's nobody who actually wants to do that though.

People on the right always make a song and dance about "limited government" but then go on to illegalise abortion, drugs, and pass mountains of pro-corporation (anti-small business) legislation.

I see a lot of "small government" during election but none during terms. Where is this small government candidate? What have they been actually doing to accomplish it? And why is "small government" so often conflated with "small taxes?"

Hence my point about the right-wing base being so mad. Winning candidates spew just enough "small government" rhetoric to get elected, then forget about it when in power.

A major problem is primaries. A slew of would-be candidates vie for the ticket, most of them being actual "small government" types, but the party vote gets split among them ... while a single "centrist"/"large government" candidate appeals to the left/centrist voters of the party, and garners more votes. If 70% of the party really does want "small government", with the 30% remaining wanting a "left/centrist" candidate, and there's 8 primary candidates, and 7 of them split the 70% vote into about 10% each, but the dissenting 30% minority all go for the "should be a Democrat" (aka "Republican In Name Only", aka RINO), then the "large government" candidate wins with 3 times the votes of any competitors. This has happened repeatedly, and is leaving the bulk of the Republican "base" very angry but with no viable alternatives that won't result in the Democrat winning thanks to splitting the vote on the way to replacing the Republican party.

>Likewise, the Left had the House, Senate, and President and could have passed anything they wanted for two years. Their opportunity was blown too. (Yes, resistance from the opposition could have been overcome.)

This is not quite true.

In the 107th Congress, the dems had a tie in the Senate until a Vermont Senator switched from republican to Independent. The republicans controlled both the presidency, Congress, and some would argue also the Supreme Court, during the 108th and 109th Congresses. And in the 110th, the dems held a one seat advantage in the Senate if you count Independent Sen. Bernard Sanders on their side. But the republicans made unprecedented use of the filibuster to obstruct the normal business negating any control. And until 2008, you also had a large number of Blue Dog democrats in the House who were just as likely to vote with the republicans as they were with the democrats. Plus you had a "Democrat" like Lieberman who was a keynote speaker at the republican national convention. He was hardly a reliable vote on the democrats' issues. So no, they may have held a few slim majorities on paper, but they never controlled Congress.

    the Left had the House, Senate, and President and 
    could have passed anything they wanted for two years

You're forgetting about the filibuster. And the Democrats only had a filibuster proof Senate for less than half of only one of those two years. I don't remember the history exactly but I'm guessing that's when they passed Obamacare.

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