Running on Empty

WHEN Peter Fitzgerald takes Carol Moseley-Braun’s Illinois Senate seat next year, he will become one of the dozen or so most conservative members in that chamber. Fitzgerald is a taxcutter and a pro-lifer who makes no exception for rape or incest. As a state senator, he has had to fight Illinois’s moderate Republican establishment, whose hand-picked candidate he defeated in the Senate primary.

So in the last month of the fall campaign, Fitzgerald ran ads trumpeting his support for .. . the Brady Bill, the assault-weapons ban, and the Department of Education. He almost certainly opposes each of these privately, of course. And his concessions were, in a sense, harmless, as Congress is unlikely to revisit any of these issues soon. But when a politician like Fitzgerald accepts that it is impractical to fight for these issues, it means that they aren’t just on the back burner; they are in deep freeze.

About the Author

Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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WHEN Peter Fitzgerald takes Carol Moseley-Braun’s Illinois Senate seat next year, he will become one of the dozen or so most conservative members in that chamber. Fitzgerald is a taxcutter and a pro-lifer who makes no exception for rape or incest. As a state senator, he has had to fight Illinois’s moderate Republican establishment, whose hand-picked candidate he defeated in the Senate primary.

So in the last month of the fall campaign, Fitzgerald ran ads trumpeting his support for .. . the Brady Bill, the assault-weapons ban, and the Department of Education. He almost certainly opposes each of these privately, of course. And his concessions were, in a sense, harmless, as Congress is unlikely to revisit any of these issues soon. But when a politician like Fitzgerald accepts that it is impractical to fight for these issues, it means that they aren’t just on the back burner; they are in deep freeze.