User:RadicalPizza/Conviction politics

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Conviction politics is the practice of campaigning based on a politician's own fundamental values or ideas rather than attempting to represent an existing consensus or simply take positions that are popular in polls.

On the right, the term has been adopted by politicians like Margaret Thatcher, who declared, "I am not a consensus politician. I am a conviction politician" in 1979, a few months before her election as prime minister. On the left, other politicians have also been elected on "conviction" campaigns.

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Thatcher, like her contemporary Ronald Reagan in the United States, argued that her leadership should be a time for big, bold changes, grounded in the central principles of her ideology. "It was not a set of policies cobbled together from minute to minute, begged, borrowed or stolen from other people," she said while describing her government. "It was successful because it was based on clear, firmly-held principles." A devout Methodist, she further defended the principles as being grounded in the Christian Bible: "I believe that by taking together these key elements from the Old and New Testaments, we gain a view of the universe, a proper attitude to work and principles to shape economic and social life. We are told we must work and use our talents to create wealth."

Her thinking on the subject was influenced by Keith Joseph, sometimes considered the "intellectual leader" of modern British conservatism and the man Thatcher called "my closest political friend." Joseph had developed an intellectual critique of the reigning postwar and Keynesian consensus and criticized the "consensus politics" that continued to promote it.

In 2007, the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown announced he too was "a conviction politician" after private talks with Thatcher in a 10 Downing Street visit. He was criticised for the gaffe as being inappropriate for a Labour Party politician to identify with the 81-year-old former Conservative prime minister.

In the US, Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone was a major proponent of conviction politics from the left, promoting peace, environmental and labor protections, and health care. After Wellstone's death in 2002, his longtime aide and campaign manager, Jeff Blodgett, founded Wellstone Action, which promotes conviction politics through education and training.

Virginia Representative Tom Perriello explicitly ran his successful campaign based on "conviction politics." He argued that a politician who acts on principle is more trustworthy than one that acts on electability, and decried pandering to voters.