Many independents, with no party to contribute funds or manpower, were daunted by the cost of standing.
David Cameron faced difficult decisions to fight terrorism, Blair said, but warned the cost of standing aside would be far greater.
And how far else are we willing to go, if the point is to persuade the Libyan leadership that the cost of standing by Qaddafi is too high?
On Monday, recognizing the political cost of standing in the way of a middle-class tax cut, they dropped their demand that it be offset with additional, deep spending cuts.
The move from Lincoln Center, he said, whatever it may mean to the company's prestige (little if anything, he thinks), "cuts $10 million annually from the cost of standing still".
Women-only shortlists; networks such as the Fabian Women's Network; Tom Watson's promise of bursaries to help meet the cost of standing for parliament only go so far.
Jayaprakash Narayan of Lok Satta, an electoral-reform lobby group, quotes an estimate of 20m rupees ($440,000) as the cost of standing for election in Bihar.There is some hope that if the new government carries out its promise to introduce the state funding of elections, politics may attract a nicer class of person.
Or was it, rather, a parable about the cost of standing up to authority, of being a whistle-blower like the third servant, who calls his master a "hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown?" Was it about the courage to face down totalitarianism and its rich apparatchiks?
The cost of standing up for controversial results can be devastating to researchers and their families, Dreger makes clear.
