Posted on 05/06/2009 12:04:00 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
This week’s defection of Sen. Arlen Specter to the Democrats predictably set off another round of factional flame wars within the Republican party. The mutual finger-pointing is well-known by now. So-called “moderates” or “reformers” claim the GOP has drifted rightward, or that it is now dominated by a social conervativism toxic to the larger body politic. Social conservatives respond that such critics are unprincipled, that the 2008 presidential nominee, Maverick-y reformer John McCain, was a big loser, and so on. We have heard it all before.
The debate was clarified for me by an exchange at Instapundit. Glenn Reynolds correctly noted that the social con agenda is, if anything, less strident than it was in the 1980s. Reader Neil Sorens responded that “the change in perception is that with fiscal conservatism abandoned, the only distinguishing characteristic of the Republican Party is now social conservatism.”
That perception may well be reflected in how voters saw the presidential candidates in 2008, placing Mike Huckabee as the most conservative candidate, despite his progressive-populist pitch on a number of economic issues. Voters placed Huckabee right next to then-Pres. Bush, and rightly so.
After all, Bush was the biggest spending president since Lyndon B. Johnson, arguably even bigger, and the biggest since Nixon after excluding defense spending. The No Child Left Behind act, the 2002 farm bill, the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit, the 2005 highway bill — the list of big spending bills goes on and on. As Nick Gillespie summarized in January:
If increases in government spending matter, then Mr. Bush is worse than any president in recent history. During his first four years in office — a period during which his party controlled Congress — he added a whopping $345 billion (in constant dollars) to the federal budget. The only other presidential term that comes close? Mr. Bush’s second term. As of November 2008, he had added at least an additional $287 billion on top of that (and the months since then will add significantly to the bill). To put that in perspective, consider that the spendthrift LBJ added a mere $223 billion in total additional outlays in his one full term.
If spending under Mr. Bush was a disaster, regulation was even worse. The number of pages in the Federal Registry is a rough proxy for the swollen expanse of the regulatory state. In 2001, some 64,438 pages of regulations were added to it. In 2007, more than 78,000 new pages were added. Worse still, argues the Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy, Mr. Bush is the unparalleled master of “economically significant regulations” that cost the economy more than $100 million a year. Since 2001, he jacked that number by more than 70%. Since June 2008 alone, he introduced more than 100 economically significant regulations.
Specter was comfortable with all of this, as a true RINO; he voted for the trillion-dollar “stimulus” giveaway, just as he voted to water down the Bush tax cuts. One of his chief defenders, Sen. Olympia Snowe, stabbed House GOP moderates in the back by voting for the stimulus.
However, beyond the stimulus, the fact remains that most of the big-government items of the Bush Administration had substantial support from a Republican House and a Republican (or evenly-split) Senate.
That mindset can be found outside Congress, too. For example, “reformer” pundit David Frum — who called the Specter defection a “catastrophe” — also found the GOP opposition to the ginormous stimulus bill “brain dead.” He thinks the biggest expansion of an entitlement program since Johnson was the key to Bush’s reelection in 2004, though Democrats regained their traditional advantages on Medicare and education not long after the drug benefit and No Child Left Behind. He advocates a carbon tax that not even Democrats will openly advocate (hence their cap-and-trade boondoggle). Frum’s books make clear that he has resigned himself to an ever-growing government, which renders him particularly ill-suited to influence those who would at least like to resist it.
Similarly, Christine Todd Whitman can pen an NYT op-ed preaching fiscal restraint and less government interference in our everyday lives — but where has she been on these issues in this century? It’s a piece that could just as easily have been written by Rudy Giuliani, or any of the rest of the usual suspects. The case of Kal-fohr-nya Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also comes to mind.
At root, the real problem the Snowes, Frums and Whitmans of the world have is that social cons actually advocate and vote their principles on social issues. If the GOP is in danger of being seen as ideologically narrow and too identified with social issues, it is in no small part because its supposedly “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” wing generally has been socially liberal and not fiscally conservative. Having abandoned the core principles on which Republicans are supposed to agree, they would like the social cons to dump the remainder of their principles as well.
It is one thing to be a moderate or a centrist or a reformer. It is another thing to be a Republican In Name Only. Such people have no standing to dictate where everyone else sits on the party bus, let alone drive it.
The “blue-blood” and “country club” Republicans who love John McCain and think he’s the party’s future should remember a very important thing: McCain is a pro-lifer. McCain’s pro-life voting record is stronger than his tax cut voting record.
Then surely the RINO’s can provide several examples of where the democrats have “moderated” their positions? On taxes? On Iraq? On national security? On defense spending? On fiscal responsibility? On gun control? On education? On abortion? On allowing judicial nominees an up or down vote when the other party is in power? On and on and on?
Run the RINOs out of town on a rail.
Moderation worked out real well in 2006 and 2008. The Democrats win because they keep their base happy by not selling them so completely down the river like the GOP does with conservatives. If you don’t have your base, you don’t have the election.
Well said, thanks. I am pretty active in my local GOP.
Lots of people bitch, both on this site and in real life, about the GOP’s lack of direction, conservative principles, etc.
Well, the ship ain’t gonna right itself! People need to get off their asses, stop being such keyboard commandos and DO SOMETHING.
If you want things to change, you have to be willing to do some of the heavy lifting that goes along with it.
Shouting “RINO, RINO, RINO!” all the time and posting bombastic, yet pointless vanities won’t cut it.
Neither will the “regional conventions” that some on FR have pushed. I saw the pictures from one, and I swear, there were more people at my county GOP convention.
I saw the best minds of my party destroyed by
dumbness, barking hysterical nonsense,
dragging themselves through the Georgetown streets at dawn
looking for a Starbucks fix,
swell-headed pundits burning for the precious heavenly
connection to the starry cocktail party dynamo in the
invitations of Noonan,
who pompous and catty and gimlet-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural coolness of
Watergate condos floating across the top of the city
contemplating "Face the Nation"...
You have to understand the nature of the Republican 'leader' class. They are almost always, uneducated, unread and uncomfortable in philosophy or political ideas. Almost to a person they are the products of marginal, managerial and very incremental change. They are institutional young people, that have grown up and matured in step by step march through existing institutions.
In a way, they are obedient, polite, moderate, striving, disliking of mess, lower class, populism, fights.
They are passive. The Democrats are ardent, passionate, fighting tooth and nail, clean and dirty, tactical and strategic. The Democrats have a vision of a more socialist society. Many Republican elites share their goal, just have tactical difference in getting to utopia.( For example, Mitt and his RomneyCare )
By and large, multi generation affluent Republican elites are human products not from the gardens of liberty, but from on the dunghill of servility, albeit prestigious and comfortable.
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