For Conservatives To Win, Republicans Must Get Comfortable Using Power

If, as some recent polls suggest, Florida’s popular governor, Ron DeSantis, is able to mount a serious primary challenge to former President Trump, it will be because the governor understands political power is meant to be used. If DeSantis runs and wins, it will be because he persuaded Republican voters that he will be a more effective leader than Trump — not because he repudiated the former president’s policies or followers.

The governor’s appeal is founded on his use of power. In this, he contrasts with the many conservatives who, upon gaining power, tend to be like the dog who caught the car — unsure what to do with it. Of course, this is a feature, not a bug, for many on the right. This more libertarian vision of conservatism insists that we don’t want the vehicle of government to take us where we want to go; we just want it to be smaller, quieter, and less involved in our lives. The credo of this philosophy is Reagan’s jibe that government is the problem, not the solution.

But making this quip into the basis for our politics is a mistake (and one that Reagan himself didn’t make). Conservatives should evaluate and exercise government power prudentially rather than rejecting it as a matter of principle. Some skepticism of government power is wise; our nation’s founders limited government for good reasons, recognizing its potential for incompetence and abuse. But they also established our Constitution in response to the perilous weakness of their prior government. Weighing the risks of an underpowered government against those of an overpowered one is a matter of prudence, as is the right use of that power.

Too many people on the right fear this reliance on prudence. They want bright lines, and they often seek to trace these back to absolute principles. Unfortunately, their attempted precautions against the abuse of power often inspire them to embrace philosophies that are not conservative. For example, the fear of excessive government intervention in the economy has led many on the right to deny the obvious truth that the government must constrain markets and embrace the rhetoric of an unattainable and undesirable libertarian free market ideal instead.

However, conservatism is not based on the ideal of the autonomous, independent adult, whom libertarians treat as the basis for their political system. Conservatives know that atomistic individualism is an anti-human ideal. The autonomous individual is a maimed person who is severed from the dependence, obligations, and relationships integral to genuine human well-being.

Conservatives know the government ought to protect and preserve human flourishing and that it cannot be neutral about what is good. The rule of law under the U.S. Constitution does not require the government to embrace nihilistic relativism. A degree of tolerance and pluralism is necessary for our nation, but they are not the same as neutrality between good and evil. Justice requires that the government act in accordance with objective truths of morality and human nature in order to promote human