Companies made money and were beholden to stockholders; it was understandable if they tried to “cover their ass,” people told me. But the government was paid to protect people, so one could expect much more of them.

He's trying to drum home the fact that his brand of Republican conservatism is popular in Maryland.

The neo-conservatives, who are closely linked to the neo-corporatists, are rather different. They claim to be conservatives, when everything they stand for is a rejection of conservatism. They claim to present an alternate social model, when they are little more than the courtiers of the corporatist movement. Their agitation is filled with the bitterness and cynicism typical of courtiers who scramble for crumbs at the banquet tables of real power, but are always denied a proper chair.

If you're a liberal, anything you say is protected. If you're a conservative, anything you say is hateful.

Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals

What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried