The Biblical book of Esther tells an insightful story about Haman, the equivalent of Persia’s prime minister in 500 B.C. Haman demanded that all who were beneath him bow in reverence. But Mordechai, a prominent Jew who “sat in the king’s court,” refused to bow down before Haman. When Haman found out that Mordechai was a Jew, he set out to kill all of the Jews in the kingdom.

But Mordechai asked Queen Esther to appear before the king, uninvited, in order to plea for his people’s survival. An uninvited intrusion was punishable by death. The queen responded to the prospect by saying, “If I perish, I perish.” Ultimately, it was her selflessness that saved the Jews. The king had Haman hanged in gallows that had been intended for Mordechai.

Like many politicians to follow him, Haman demanded unquestioning reverence. And he found, like many to follow him, that it led to revolt rather than to respect. This lesson has been repeated often enough in history that it should have been by now imbued upon our collective consciousness.

Yet it remains one of the most common reasons for the downfall of leaders. We should be reminded it of it in light of Colin Powell’s continued complaints that the Republican Party is “getting smaller and smaller” at the expense of more moderate members.

Similarly, the liberal Bob Shrum delighted in a column last month, “In politics, the smaller a party gets, the more small-minded it becomes. With only 24 percent of voters identifying themselves as Republicans, the GOP is being miniaturized.” In Shrum’s assessment, the problem is that there are too many conservatives in the party, and too few who realize what Powell explained. “Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less.”

Powell and Shrum are advocating for the same end on the basis of two different principles. For Powell, it is that politicians, in order to be successful, must place their own popularity on a pedestal, and pursue it as an end in itself, one for which principles may and should be sacrificed. For Shrum, it is that liberalism is the mandate of the American people.

Both believe the Republican Party should move to the left. But if the two gentlemen were correct, the Republican Party would find itself still holding a majority.

Powell’s philosophy has already governed the party for the better part of a decade. In attempting to become popular, politicians such as John McCain sacrificed swaths of the conservative platform from global warming to fiscal conservatism.

The party made it a goal to attain adoration as an end in itself. A corollary effect was an application of Shrum’s suggestion that it become more liberal. And in the process, party members who objected to the transformation were ridiculed or sent into exile for not revering their leaders over their principles.

What Shrum failed to mention in citing the statistic that only 24 percent of voters affiliate with the Republican Party is that only 37 percent (according to Pew) affiliate with the Democratic Party, and 32 percent as independents.

The numbers do not suggest a sweeping mandate for an increase in government. The number of those affiliating with the Republican Party has declined over the past year, even in the face of its advocacy for more government and its persecution of those who objected. Conservatism has not harmed the Republican Party.

Nor has there been any sort of failure to help its more moderate members; Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) complained a couple of months ago that the National Republican Senatorial Committee was supporting Republicans who had voted for the Obama bailout – Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Arlen Specter – but not others who were more deserving of support, such as Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK) or Jim DeMint (R-SC).

In contrast, the Senate Democratic leadership’s conferral of junior status upon Arlen Specter illustrates their determination to maintain their (successful) party’s ideological coherence.

The Republican Party has rewarded those who did what it took to get elected and actively tried to be more “mainstream.” It has punished and sought to be rid of those who tried to govern as individuals. Ironically, governing as individuals is exactly what most mainstream Americans would do if they were elected.

The Republican Party does not need to focus on becoming more liberal, or even on being popular. What it must do is remember that leaders are rarely adored, but rather only tolerated. The current president is precariously close to forgetting the same lesson; the Republican Party would do well not to be associated with it when the American public once again grows weary of demands for unearned veneration.

I was overjoyed with John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin for vice-president. She has spent her entire political career taking down what she herself has dubbed “good old boys.” It was within that struggle that Palin’s personality found its definition, and it is exactly why she is the best candidate that either party has put forward in decades.

Anyone who has been very involved in politics knows immediately what “good old boys” describes; it refers to men who, by virtue of gray hair and accumulated wealth, appear respectable and are therefore granted power. Unfortunately, it is exactly their lack of virtue that defines them as good old “boys.”

To anyone who has had the unfortunate experience of dealing with such people, it should be obvious that Palin would not fit in with them. There would be some immediate aspersion cast upon her because she is a woman, yes, but that would be one of her smaller problems.

Larger problems would arise because of her attitude. She too readily speaks her mind without first understanding the “structure” of things. She doesn’t know who has been around or for how long. Worse yet, she probably doesn’t even know how much money they have.

Unbelievably, she probably doesn’t care about those things as much as she cares about ideas. While she’s talking about abortion or corruption in government, the “good old boys” would be staring blankly at her and wondering who invited this moron to their club. (The “club,” of course, is a local city council meeting or some similar body of government.) They’ll scoff at her as being someone who doesn’t understand that politics is all about money and connections, and that any so-called “corruption” is simply the creative use of those things.

Imagine their surprise and anger when this naïve, idealistic blowhard actually runs against them and wins.

For a woman without any special amount of speaking ability (I found her reminiscent of my mother), I found Palin unexpectedly inspirational. And it was because I didn’t need to have her story narrated to me to know what it was; every fiber of the woman’s being screamed that we not only agreed on common issues, we had the same understanding of human nature. Forget about politics. 

In a time when too many in her party’s leadership do not understand or care about what it means when the rest of us say that the party has lost its way, Palin has been a godsend. The September 4th issue of Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) emphasized this in a front page article about where the Republican Party went wrong.

It quoted former House Majority Leader Tom Delay, who “denied that [the party] had lost its way” under his tenure. He “rejected criticisms that the party had gone overboard on spending.”

(DeLay declared in 2005 that Republicans had achieved an “ongoing victory” against federal pork. “After 11 years of Republican majority we've pared it down pretty good," he said. This was in spite of the fact that the president had just proposed a total budget for 2005 of $2.4 trillion, up from Bill Clinton’s proposed budget of $1.9 trillion for 2001. The current president’s last proposal was for a budget of $3.1 trillion in 2009.)

“We don’t have the organization” to win, IBD quoted DeLay as saying. “For us to regain our majority will take five to ten years.”

How does a party that holds the presidency and, until 2006, held fifty-five seats in the United States Senate need more organization? Unfortunately, the story didn’t quote DeLay getting to that part. Rather than taking responsibility, DeLay laid his failings as a leader at the feet of his followers. How absurd.

Palin’s running mate is not ideal, but this election is the best and perhaps only means to putting a normal American in the White House. There have been a few fatalistic columns written since Palin’s nomination lamenting that she will no longer be an idealist by the time McCain has left office. Perhaps, but adherents to that belief have only one option left. That is to find a cave and barricade its entrance, because there literally is no hope left for them.

The rest of us will fight for Sarah Palin’s success. The more we see the contrast between her and the self-serving good old boys who have spent past decades destroying our political system, the more unquestionable it becomes that the latter group must be absolutely obliterated and blotted out of our history. If we succeed in this, Americans will see the dawn of something that they can believe in again.

The Republican establishment has spent many of its recent days bemoaning the idealistic rhetoric of Barack Obama, complaining that it is neither realistic nor substantive. They say that navigating the dark sea of politics requires a harsh captain who has had any unrealistic sense of optimism bludgeoned out of him, and who idealizes nothing greater than his own survival.

Though it may be the case that such people are better at winning elections, they do not help their parties. To use the anecdote of what is motivating me, I can see one good quality to both John McCain and Barack Obama. McCain’s quality is that if he’s elected president, he will wear down and die within four years. Obama’s quality is that, according to Hillary, he will be shot before his second term. Within this context, I expect to have a more pleasant election day.

But it speaks to a basic problem, which is that for the Republican Party, John McCain is not going to grow its base. Even if he is elected president, he is only going to perpetuate the Republican tradition of failure through victory. Republicans have won seven of the ten past presidential elections, yet they have presided over nothing but increases in spending and growth in government. Liberals have lost elections, but they have not lost the battles.

That distinction has been apparent for decades. In his 1952 campaign, Dwight Eisenhower promised to balance the budget and reduce federal expenditures to $60 billion by 1955. By 1957, he was submitting a record peacetime budget of $71 billion.

The result was John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960.

In that year, 22,000 people contributed $9.7 million to Kennedy’s campaign, while 44,000 contributed $10 million to Richard Nixon’s. Kennedy attracted corporate interests; Nixon attracted a handful of people from the middle-class.

But in 1964, over one million people contributed to Barry Goldwater’s campaign. Why? “In the final analysis,” wrote Robert Novak the year after, “Rockefeller and Scranton lost [the Republican nomination] because they had nothing to offer the people but themselves. Goldwater had a moral philosophy that stirred enough people to the heights of enthusiasm so that the nomination was his.”

Last year’s Republican field saw a similar fundraising trend. Ron Paul was the only Republican to increase his fundraising in every quarter. In the year’s last three months, he raised $19.95 million—more than any other candidate in his party.

Candidates who hold sincere “moral philosophies” motivate people who are unused to seeing politicians fight for the things they believe in. Those candidates have a harder time making it through elections, because morals often offend voters. But in perpetuating the feeling that a belief is worth fighting for, these candidates ignite something that lasts for years after they have departed from the limelight.

By refusing to compromise their principles, Democrats have been able to sustain an energetic base that has maintained a laser-like focus on their goals. Republicans, on the other hand, have not attracted principled leaders, because theirs has not been a party of principle.

What Republicans have instead is an agglomeration of the emotionally-damaged, people who want nothing more than the security of being in an organization. They need the sense of approval that comes with winning. They are parasites who live a symbiotic relationship with “The Party.” Few things would be more devastating to them than losing the approval of others. That approval, of course, comes from winning elections.

So they say that electoral success requires our acceptance of a tradition characterized by compromise, of playing it safe, and doing what it takes to get elected.

Meanwhile Obama, ranked by the National Journal as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, has virtually steamrolled his way through half a presidential election. “Idealists can’t win,” indeed.