The Grassroots Should Start At The Ground Level

We’ve all heard that saying “he who governs least governs best” and in that vein Mark Steyn broke it down best when he said that government does its work best on the local level. It is too late and I am much too tired to chase down his exact words but he said that the town mayor is much more responsive to the needs to the people in his town than the state governor is to the people in his state for a very simple reason; on the local level, you know where he lives.

On the local level, at least in a smallish town, you are likely to bump in to your local politicians in the grocery store or the PTA meeting. If the mayor pisses you off you can, though I am not explicitly recommending it, knock on his front door. As you travel up the political food chain your chances of getting near the front door greatly diminishes. Which brings me to this at Legal Insurrection:

The states pay, on average, more than 40 percent of the cost of Medicaid, so they bear a significant burden of any expansion of the program to help more low-income Americans. At their annual summer meeting, in Biloxi, Miss., the governors said that their concerns dominated discussion, with striking levels of bipartisan hostility voiced during a closed-door luncheon on the topic on Saturday.

Now if you were to by some total miracle, make it anywhere near you governor’s front door it would most likely result in being fitted first for a pair of handcuffs and secondly, for a straight jacket. None the less, most governors recognize that right now the people who voted them in to office are none to pleased with the current going ons. There is, of course, an exception to every rule, which is currently embodied my my own governor Charlie Crist, who is happy as a pig in shit as he rolls about in stimulus money while raising taxes and fees and every Floridian.

Unlike the delusional good time Charlie, most governors realize that sooner or later they will have to face their constituents and in a show of bipartisanship none of them want to be standing on the unemployment line.

There are a ton of battles to be fought and if conservatives are going to ultimately win the war, it might be wise if we start with the lowest common denominator.