North Dakota Conservatives: If You Don’t Want To Be Held Accountable For Spending, Speak Out

Recently I’ve heard through the political grapevine in North Dakota that some conservative Republican legislators are a little, well, grumpy with me and some of my fellow bloggers/commenters here on Say Anything for painting with too broad of a brush when talking about Republicans presiding over a roughly 60% increase in general fund spending in the state over the last four years. They say that they voted against the spending increases, and voted for tax cuts, and so don’t deserve to be lumped in with the spenders.
I’m sensitive to that complaint. I understand that the minority conservatives in the North Dakota legislature are doing what they can, and that it’s not easy when on fiscal issues they’ve got to fight not just the liberals across the aisle but a lot of people on their side of the aisle as well.
That being said, if these conservatives are so concerned about spending in the state then why aren’t they raising their voices to condemn it? Perhaps they’re getting lumped in with their profligate colleagues because they’re not really making any efforts to draw a distinction.
To that end, I have some advice. Advice that goes beyond letters to the editors, op/eds in the local publications or even writing some posts for this very blog (though those are all good ideas in their own right). My advice would be for conservative legislators to band together to form their own coalition that could act both as a conservative voting bloc within the halls of the legislature but also as a group that could, when their colleagues get carried away, hold press conferences to explain to the press and the public why they’re not on board with getting carried away.
Such measures might just be a good deal more productive than griping about humble, well-meaning conservative bloggers.