The rap against conservatives in Congress is that they are always on the defensive, playing goalie against the liberals and meekly letting the bad guys set the terms of the debate. That rebuke, unhappily, has all too often been deserved.
By slow degrees, however, this situation has been changing. Though their minority status keeps them from scoring many victories (there have been some), conservatives have increasingly grasped the fact that they must develop an offense if they are to have a chance of winning anything. A new and more aggressive breed of rightward lawmakers has been fashioning plans to put their principles to work in the agora, and to provide a mechanism by which conservatives can seize and hold political initiative. This column will try from time to time to monitor the progress of such efforts.
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