Conservative Euphoria

eu·pho·ria noun yü-ˈfȯr-ē-ə

: a feeling of well-being or elation

Examples of EUPHORIA

The initial euphoria following their victory in the election has now subsided.

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Sure, we all know the complete craziness that descends upon us this time of year. And anyone who’s been watching cable news also of course knows about the presidential primaries that promise to spoil many a New Year’s Eve in snowy states like Iowa and New Hampshire. I’m not even going to talk purely about those.

Because of what else I’m seeing, I started thinking this month about writing a little piece called “The Balkanization of American Politics”. But that phrase has been so overused as to become mind-numbingly boring and ultimately meaningless.

Yet a phenomenon I first heard of while I was training in the tiny, former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia is exactly what’s happening right now.

Now Macedonia, like many of the former Iron Curtain countries, has been finding their way and “transitioning” to functional democracy for twenty years. And part of their journey has been figuring out how to “do” direct representation, choosing and electing Members of Parliament from their many regional and ethnic voting blocs. A friend in the capital city of Skopje was the first to term it what it was, cycle to cycle, calling it “euphoria voting”.

I laughed.

“Euphoria voting”, in a place where unemployment is 42% every day, seemed counter-intuitive to say the least. But my friend was on to something: every four years, all the brand-new-to-democracy, first-time candidates promised the moon: full employment, investment, minority rights.

Hope—and change—rode high in the hearts and minds of regular citizens. (Sound familiar?) Newly franchised voters believed in even the most outrageous platforms and campaign claims. The freshly engaged country–students, pensioners, you name it–was in an absolute state of euphoria.

Election Day came and went. Politicians who had led exciting rallies and got thousands of ballots cast failed to deliver a new dawn for a troubled nation. And then a politically naïve electorate, upon realizing that there were no silver bullet solutions to their deeply ingrained social and economic problems, lost faith.

Four years later—at the end of terms, voters unceremoniously dumped the entire Parliament. They unelected each and every member, putting in another entire bunch that no doubt had been making campaign hay from the broken promises of their predecessors. And so the cycle continued.

Again, any of this ring a bell?

I find it funny that we, as one of the world’s longest continuously functioning democratic countries, are now fully in the grip of “euphoria voting”. Look at the congressional elections of 2006. The presidential election of 2008. The emergence of Ron Paul and the liberty movement. The Tea Party. The mid-term elections of 2010. Occupy Wall Street.

Even the typically staid, Republican presidential contest has become a complete, mad scramble of a horserace. Temporary surges, flashes in the pan, and the ever-shifting scrutiny and loyalty of a newly empowered conservative grassroots as they search for a true champion have totally upended the most carefully laid plans of establishmentarians and D.C. operatives. This ain’t your daddy’s primary.

These roiling waves of unrest across the American electorate aren’t stopping, at least anytime soon. And while a situation as described in Peter Schweizer’s new book Throw Them All Out probably isn’t ideal (like it or not, some semblance of institutional knowledge is probably good), more euphoria in each and every election cycle should be a goal we’re constantly working on.

Why should the average congressional election return 98% of incumbents to their gerrymandered, protected seats? Even the watershed elections of 1994, 2006 and 2010 only lowered that number down into the 80th percentile. Don’t you think your “representatives” (many times much more focused on committee chairmanships and national leadership tracks) should fear for their re-election every two years?

What if we as free market, fiscally conservative activists and leaders could get that number down closer to 50% every election cycle?

What kind of power do you think that would confer upon you in a candidate’s district? What if you organized your fellow “fed-up” citizens, month in and year out and focused on replacing the ruling class that makes so many decisions that directly affect your freedom? And then, if your replacements don’t hold up their end of the bargain, keeping them accountable and replacing them?

Think of the great feelings of accomplishment, of success against all odds, of stemming the tide of socialism’s and statism’s growth we shared just over a year ago. And then think of what we could really do if we sustain this momentum, taking our newfound knowledge of how the system works locally and nationally into 2012?

It’s time for an even bigger dose of euphoria in the way we choose our government.