Replies

One take home message we ought to garner from last night's results is that economic libertarianism is not the winning issue everyone seems to think it is.

"Economic libertarianism," to use the phrase quoted above, wasn't even deployed as an issue this time around. McCain said nothing in that regard beyond a few nods to tax cutting, and he'd have had little enough credibility if he had considering that he is, and has been, in all other ways knowable, a big government boy who thinks his assorted pets---all named Peeve (thank you, Mr. Safire)---deserve political consideration, never mind political resolution.

It should have been deployed as an issue, this time and, for that matter, in 2006. Contrary to the usual suspects' arguments, big government is not a winning issue, and was probably the reason why Republicans got their heads handed to them in 2006.

The warning was sounded. We didn't listen. And because we haven't had a small government orientation while big-government conservatism (yes, I know, it sounds like "promiscuous celibacy") ruled the day and led us down the primrose path, what a surprise that Barack Obama could yap about "change" and the lemmings would believe that. And, that the big-government conservatives have room enough still to continue peddling their Kickapoo Joy Juice.

. . . Big-government conservatives are quick to point out that despite the best effort of small-government conservatives, government continues to grow . . . Even many believers in small government seem to accept the impossibility of actually cutting government . . .
First, little evidence indicates that big-government conservatism is more politically popular than its small-government competitor. The big-government conservatism of George W. Bush and the [Republican] Congress led to electoral disaster. Although the 2006 election results can certainly be blamed in part on Iraq, scandal, and traditional voter uneasiness in the sixth year of a two-term presidency, the magnitude of the Republican loss clearly reflects a wider discontent. Not only did an embrace of big government fail to save the Republican majority, it likely undercut Republican efforts. Without a principled conservative difference between Republicans and Democrats, many voters had no reason to look beyond the war or the scandals. Republicans were forced to run negative, largely issueless campaigns, attacking opponents over trivialities such as whether an opponent once included racy sex scenes in a novel that he wrote. Beyond being merely sleazy, such campaigns will neither motivate voters nor help build a conservative governing agenda.
[Fred] Barnes is wrong when he says, "Reagan and Gingrich failed for lack of public support." In fact, in 1996 after two years of the most small-government-oriented Congress in recent history, Republicans gained two seats in the Senate and lost only two seats in the House. These results came in the face of Bill Clinton's overwhelming reelection as President and the fact that Republicans had to defend an enormous number of freshman House seats that had been narrowly won in 1994. In fact, those Republicans who were among the most hardcore budget cutters were reelected by even larger margins than they had received in 1994. Many of these members were specifically targeted for defeat and some were running in districts Bill Clinton carried. Tom Coburn, for example, won by 10 percentage points while Bill Clinton carried his district by 7. Even Linda Killian of National Public Radio, who chronicled the 1994 freshmen Republicans, concluded that no backlash occurred against Republican attempts to reduce the size of government.
After the 1996 elections, Republicans began turning away from their government-cutting agenda. A steady erosion of electoral support followed, culminating in the debacle of 2006. As former House majority leader Dick Armey points out, the Republican defeat of 2006 was not a "repudiation of the conservative legacy that drove the Reagan presidency and created the Contract With America. To the contrary, it [represents] a rejection of big-government conservatism." Nor is it completely clear that Reagan and the House Republicans of 1994 failed. Certainly, they were far less successful in reducing the size of government than one might have hoped. Yet how much larger might government have become in their absence?
Regardless of whether small-government conservatives were or could have been successful in the past, the question remains of whether a small-government agenda could succeed today. We are living in a time of both international and domestic insecurity. Dan Casse says that "reducing the size of government no longer resonates with Americans as it once did." And in the population at large there may be "less popular fear of bureaucrats possessing too much control than of ungoverned forces surging out of control," as David Brooks claims.
Yet public opinion polls still show that a majority of Americans say they would prefer smaller government. Since the mid-1970s, the New York Times, CBS News, Washington Post, ABC News, and independent pollster Scott Rasmussen have all asked voters whether they preferred "a smaller government providing fewer services" or "a bigger government providing more services." As [an American Enterprise Institute study, "Attitudes Toward the Federal Government"] shows [nearly 50 percent for smaller, under 40 percent for larger], Americans have consistently supported smaller government.
Moreover, support for smaller government cuts across demographic and partisan lines. Predictably 79 percent of Republicans prefer smaller government, but surprisingly so do 53 percent of Democrats (according to the most recent polling results). Even majorities of traditionally less-than-conservative categories such as women (62 percent), young people (52 percent), and minorities (52 percent) favour smaller government . . . In fact, even as Democrats were heading to victory in 2006, a CNN poll showed that by a 54 to 37 percent margin, Americans thought that government was trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Overwhelmingly they preferred small government. This poll also showed that 72 percent of Americans thought that government had gotten bigger during the Bush administration, which may help explain Republican electoral misfortunes . . .
In many ways, big-government conservatives are showing their contempt for voters. Dick Armey tells a story of a Republican member of Congress who approached him during the debate over welfare reform. "I know this is the right thing to do," the member said, "but my constituents just won't understand." Armey replied, "So you're telling me that they are smart enough to elect you, but not smart enough to understand this?"
Besides, American voters tend to like politicians who stand for something, even if they disagree with what that something is. That is the reason why "flip-flopper" was such a devastating charge against John Kerry in the 2004 election.
Republicans, of course, might worry that taking a consistently limited government position might cost them some support from religious or populist conservatives. But such fears are likely overblown. Religious conservatives are unlikely to defect to the more overtly hostile Democrats, particularly if Republicans advocate federalist principles that allow states and localities to deal with social and cultural issues. In fact, Republicans might even gain a new pool of voters. According to [a] Pew survey . . . although 57 percent of self-identified libertarians voted for President Bush, roughly 40 percent voted for John Kerry. These libertarian voters certainly didn't back the senator's plans for raising taxes or increased spending. Rather, they objected to Republican deficits, spending, foreign policy, and involvement in personal decision-making. Consistent small-government conservatism might lure these small-government voters back to the party that claims to represent smaller government.
Finally, it is important to ask whether success can be measured only in terms of electoral politics. As Richard Weaver put it in his famously titled book, Ideas Have Consequences. Or as George Will recently stated even more strongly, "Only ideas have large and lasting consequences." By staking out principled positions in favour of limited government, conservatives can change the terms of the debate for years to come.
Barry Goldwater lost overwhelmingly, yet his campaign launched a generation of conservative politics. Indeed, without Goldwater there would have been no Reagan and no Republican Revolution of 1994 . . . The evidence suggests that reducing the size and power of the federal government would be safe, popular, and good politics. But ultimately, that doesn't matter. In the end, conservatives should stand for limited government and individual liberty simply because it is the right thing to do.
(Emphases added.---BD.)
---Michael D. Tanner, in "The Small-Government Alternative," from Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution. (Washington: Cato Institute, 2007; 321 pages, $22.95.)

That book should have been required reading for anyone who had any involvement in helping to pick the field from which the like of John McCain, of all people, could have ended up with the Republican presidential nomination. And, for anyone who wanted to exercise his or her right to vote this time around.

And before anyone starts kvetching about oh, how the open primaries were one of the real reasons why we got stuck with McLame and by Gawd it's time the Republicans did something about them, they should be advised that when Republicans bitch about open primaries they will be bitching about a monster they helped suckle themselves. We take you back to Connecticut, 1986. The Supreme Court shoots down the state's closed primary law (adopted in 195), in Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut, after the Republican Party adopted a 1984 rule allowing independent voters to vote in the Republican primaries, on the grounds that its rights to freedom of association were abridged, following the failure of a GOP effort in the state legislature to amend the Connecticut law and allow the new party rule to stand.

Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote for the majority (William Brennan, Byron White, Harry Blackmun, and Lewis Powell concurred); Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a dissent, with Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor joining; Justice John Paul Stevens also dissented, a dissent in which Scalia joined while writing his own dissent.

In the proverbial nutshell: The Connecticut Republicans sued to challenge the Connecticut law's constitutionality; a federal district judge and a federal appeals court sided with the GOP, and the state took it to the Supreme Court.

Were the State to restrict by statute financial support of the Party's candidates to Party members, or to provide that only Party members might be selected as the Party's chosen nominees for public office, such a prohibition of potential association with nonmembers would clearly infringe upon the rights of the Party's members under the First Amendment to organize with like-minded citizens in support of common political goals . . . The statute as applied to the Party's rule prevents independents, who otherwise cannot vote in any primary, from participating in the Republican primary. Yet a raid on the Republican Party primary by independent voters . . . is not impeded by 9-431; the independent raiders need only register as Republicans and vote in the primary (emphasis added) . . .
The State argues that its statute is well designed to save the Republican Party from undertaking a course of conduct destructive of its own interests. But on this point "even if the State were correct, a State, or a court, may not constitutionally substitute its own judgment for that of the Party." Democratic Party of United States v. Wisconsin ex rel. La Follette, 450 U.S., at 123 -124 (footnote omitted). The Party's determination of the boundaries of its own association, and of the structure which best allows it to pursue its political goals, is protected by the Constitution. "And as is true of all expressions of First Amendment freedoms, the courts may not interfere on the ground that they view a particular expression as unwise or irrational." Id., at 124. 13 [479 U.S. 208, 225]
We conclude that the State's enforcement, under these circumstances, of its closed primary system burdens the First Amendment rights of the Party. The interests which the appellant adduces in support of the statute are insubstantial, and accordingly the statute, as applied to the Party in this case, is unconstitutional.
---Thurgood Marshall, writing for the majority.
In this case there is no federal statute that purports to authorize the State of Connecticut to prescribe different qualifications for state and federal elections. Thus, there is no authority whatsoever for the Court's refusal to honor the plain language of the Qualifications Clauses. An interpretation of that language linking federal voters' qualifications in each State to the States' existing qualifications exactly matches James Madison's understanding:
"The provision made by the Convention appears therefore, to be the best that lay within their option. It must be satisfactory to every State; because it is conformable to the standard already established, or which may be established by the State itself." The Federalist No. 52, p. 354 (J. Cooke ed. 1961).
---John Paul Stevens, dissenting.
Both the right of free political association and the State's authority to establish arrangements that assure fair and effective party participation in the election process are essential to democratic government. Our cases make it clear that the accommodation of these two vital interests does not lend itself to bright-line rules but requires careful inquiry into the extent to which the one or the other interest is inordinately impaired under the facts of the particular case. See Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 788 -790 (1983); Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 730 (1974). Even so, the conclusion reached on the individuated facts of one case sheds some measure of light upon the conclusion that will be reached on the individuated facts of the next. Since this is an area, moreover, in which the predictability of decisions is important, [479 U.S. 208, 235] I think it worth noting that for me today's decision already exceeds the permissible limit of First Amendment restrictions upon the States' ordering of elections.
In my view, the Court's opinion exaggerates the importance of the associational interest at issue, if indeed it does not see one where none exists. There is no question here of restricting the Republican Party's ability to recruit and enroll Party members by offering them the ability to select Party candidates; Conn. Gen. Stat. 9-56 (1985) permits an independent voter to join the Party as late as the day before the primary. Cf. Kusper v. Pontikes, 414 U.S. 51 (1973). Nor is there any question of restricting the ability of the Party's members to select whatever candidate they desire. Appellees' only complaint is that the Party cannot leave the selection of its candidate to persons who are not members of the Party, and are unwilling to become members. It seems to me fanciful to refer to this as an interest in freedom of association between the members of the Republican Party and the putative independent voters. The Connecticut voter who, while steadfastly refusing to register as a Republican, casts a vote in the Republican primary, forms no more meaningful an "association" with the Party than does the independent or the registered Democrat who responds to questions by a Republican Party pollster. If the concept of freedom of association is extended to such casual contacts, it ceases to be of any analytic use.
---Antonin Scalia, dissenting.

The open primary does no one any real favours. It never really will. But the Republican experience in Connecticut and the mischief that has followed ought to have told one and all about what can and does happen, abetted by ideologised institutions, when the passions of the hour get that high and loud and the wisdom of our ancestors gets a pillow held fast over its nose and mouth.