Neither Allan Fung nor Ken Block would claim to be an idealized conservative. The difference between them is this: where Allan Fung doesn’t have fully-conservative positions or has moved to more conservative positions over his political career, he tends towards telling us what the substance of his positions is now (e.g. finding a real limit to the pro-choice position at late-term abortion; having evolved on gun-control), while Ken Block tends towards telling us that a number of issues of importance to conservatives aren’t important enough to merit attention right now (put the “social issues” aside until the economy is fixed; won’t move the needle one iota either way on gun control, etc.).

The area where Ken Block has most directly tried to define his plan, if not himself, as conservative is in the area of making government more efficient. No one doubts that Block is sincere about this, or that he is probably capable of administering government better than it is being administrated now. But, by itself, wanting government to be efficient doesn’t define a conservative position. Gina Raimondo and Angel Taveras sincerely want government to be more efficient too.

The problem is that trying to be “conservative” on fiscal issues, while declaring neutrality on many others, cedes the setting of government goals to liberals. Actively disengaging from other conservative priorities in the name of a total focus on economic efficiency, helps advance (intentionally or not) the liberal, Democratic one-way-ratchet-towards-more-and-bigger-government ideology of governance, because the balance point between a liberalism that believes in expanding government and a “conservatism” that restricts itself to getting government to be more cost-effective at whatever it’s doing is a government that constantly expands, just not at the full-speed-ahead rate that liberals would like.

Conservative voters want Republican leadership willing to support conservative solutions from the outset. And, to bring a legitimate issue up one more time, as their positions on Obamacare showed, Allan Fung is the candidate in this race that is comfortable immediately considering conservative positions on substantive issues, while with Ken Block it seems that liberal solutions have to be tried first and not work as well as promised, before he’s ready to start thinking about whether it’s time to start thinking more conservatively.