During the 2010 elections, controversy erupted in the Delaware Republican primary for US Senate. The establishment candidate Michael Castle was challenged by Tea Party favorite Christine O’Donnell. Castle was the going away favorite to win the seat for the Republicans but when O’Donnell defeated him in the primary she was unable to beat the Democrat and the Republicans lost the seat. Establishment experts like former Bush advisor Carl Rove predicted this would happen and they were upset.
I bring this up to point out that most politico gurus want to win the seat regardless of what the candidate stands for and it is this idea I want to examine further. If you are a newly elected official it will not be long before you face your first real dilemma. A situation will arise where your personal beliefs will be in conflict with what your constituents believe. At that point you can either follow your heart and risk not being reelected or go with the crowd and be reelected or you can resign. In most cases the choice is to go with the crowd. The reasoning behind this is that if you are reelected you can have time to bring the crowd around to your way of thinking but if you are not reelected you lose the power that comes with office to make changes.
What happens over time is that you move the crowd slightly in your direction and the crowd moves you a good deal in their direction. The long term result is after many years you have moved so far away from where you started that you no longer have any strong personal convictions. You are always getting reelected but you are just going along to get along. All your bright eyed bushy tailed idealism is long gone and you are just another politician.
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