Many discussions of deliberative democracy ignore or misunderstand the purposes of the ideal speech situation in Habermas' theory. These purposes are to show the possibility of dissent in actual communication and of supplying a normative standard of social criticism. I elaborate the significance of these purposes and show some of the shortcomings of deliberative theory that ignores them. However, the ideal speech situation fails to supply anything like a strategy for political action under conditions hostile to deliberation. I seek to fill this void by arguing for a limited consequentialism, according to which nondeliberative means are legitimate if and only if they further deliberative goals and do not unnecessarily violate the intrinsic values of public deliberation.