Thread by @Doc_0

Great @MarkSteynOnline column about how conservatives who win elections just end up keeping the seats warm until society-destroying left-wingers take power again:

steynonline.com/11359/keeping-…

Let me take a stab at explaining the persistence of this sad phenomenon...

@MarkSteynOnline As Steyn likes to put it: "When Republicans win, they're in office; when Democrats win, they're in power."

A big difference between the two is having the infrastructure to exercise power. You won the election, you've got juice, but you need transmission lines and transformers.

@MarkSteynOnline In addition to their other problems - timidity in the face of media assaults, prioritizing deliverable political goods to big donors over keeping promises to voters, disdain for their base that grows once they're in D.C. - Republicans lack the infrastructure for power.

@MarkSteynOnline There's something about the conservative mindset in most Western nations that makes conservatives underestimate the importance of building a durable system to transmit and sustain power. They don't appreciate how much effort it takes to build one.

@MarkSteynOnline Look what happens when the Left wins elections. They have detailed plans ready to go, and an army of bureaucrats, activists, and media organizations chomping at the bit to implement them. A vast media and academic support system keeps their ideas alive when they're not in power.

@MarkSteynOnline The Left has lavishly funded institutions to keep its operatives fed, watered, and rested for the next crack at power. They have activist networks on standby for everything from street theater to political violence. They reward operatives who make big plays, even if they fail.

@MarkSteynOnline Someone remarked a while back that the Left has machinery that can rehabilitate literal terrorists and turn them into "respectable" university professors and lecturers. They have an immense legal-academic-media system that protects their operatives.

@MarkSteynOnline The Left spend decades carefully building a permanent bureaucracy nobody gets to vote against. When they win elections, those mighty legions of eternal government warriors are ready and eager to serve. When the Right wins, as with Trump, the legions undermine everything they do.

@MarkSteynOnline Left-wing organizations put a great deal of effort into capturing government agencies. Left-wing operatives bounce effortlessly from think-tank to government office and back again. If a GOP administration fires a lefty bureaucrat, the orgs hire him until he can return to power.

@MarkSteynOnline There's just nothing resembling that infrastructure for power on the Right, not in America or in any other Western nation that springs to mind. The Right has think tanks and activists, but they aren't fused with POWER, networked with bureaucracy, the way the Left does it.

@MarkSteynOnline Of course conservatives will never get the adoring media coverage lavished on lefty administrations, but it's more than that. The Right doesn't build or cultivate the infrastructure needed to wield power and influence the media. They don't put on dog-and-pony shows like the Left.

@MarkSteynOnline And the Western Right never seems to put much effort into building a bureaucratic footprint that will outlive their administrations. Supreme Court justices are about as good as it gets, and you'll notice GOP picks are much more likely to be disappointing than lockstep Dem picks.

@MarkSteynOnline That's the infrastructure problem again. Dems have machinery that coughs up left-wing ideological robots for the Supreme Court. There's rarely much doubt about how they'll vote on big issues. The Right has to push shaky nominees past howling lefty mobs and hope they get lucky.

@MarkSteynOnline As for the rest of the bureaucracy, the Right has nothing like the army of Obama loyalists that sprang into action while Hillary Clinton was still hiding in her hotel room and refusing to give her concession speech. Natsec, law enforcement, intel - all weaponized by Dems.

@MarkSteynOnline And now the Left is pushing hard into the last bits of the military bureaucracy that once seemed favorable to conservatives. You've got the brass declaring war on pronouns and naming global warming as the adversary it expects to face on the battlefield.

@MarkSteynOnline This cannot be turned around quickly. The Left didn't build its vast infrastructure of power in a day, or a single year, and it wasn't cheap. The Right needs to get started building its own, pronto, or it will always be in office, never in power. /end