Posted on 09/28/2006 12:38:45 AM PDT by nickcarraway
If a successful steakhouse stopped selling beef and substituted stale vegan sandwiches as part of a strategy to increase its customer base, the restaurant wouldn't remain in business very long. Yet for some reason, the Republican Party has adopted precisely this strategy for governing.
Instead of rewarding its loyal voters with the limited government they were promised, the Republican Party has decided to increase its voter base by offering the stale ideas of big government liberalism. This tactic is difficult to understand given that in modern midterm elections, voter turnout has hovered around 40 percent, meaning that winning is about having an energized base that will show up on Election Day. Nothing would energize that base more than if Republicans used their power to reduce the size and scope of government, so why doesn't the party give its voters what they want?
"It's what I call Republican Disease," former House Majority Leader Dick Armey told me recently. "They want to be loved by the beautiful people. They want the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post to say nice things about them."
At a breakfast hosted by TAS last week, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), one of the few remaining small government warriors in the Republican Party, described the logic behind the Republican leadership's embrace of big government. As they pushed for a massive expansion of federal control over education in the form of the No Child Left Behind Act, Pence recalled Republican leaders justifying it by arguing, "Democrats have a huge advantage on education." A similar attitude took hold as Republicans added the prescription drug benefit to Medicare, marking the largest expansion of entitlements since the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.
Expanding entitlements and federalizing education clearly runs contrary to conservative principles, but the programs' defenders on the right would argue that they were politically necessary in order to win elections. However, it's difficult to see any evidence that Republicans won over moderates or Democrats as a result of betraying small government conservatives. If anything, the evidence supports the exact opposite conclusion.
According to the exit polls from the 2000 election, those voters who identified education as the issue that "mattered most," favored Al Gore over George W. Bush by a spread of 52 percent to 44 percent. The No Child Left Behind Act had passed by the time the 2004 election rolled around, and yet, according to exit polls, John Kerry trounced President Bush among voters who thought education was most important, by a margin of 73 percent to 26 percent. The numbers are similar with voters who thought health care was the most important issue. In 2000, Gore had a 64-33 advantage among these voters; in 2004, despite the passage of the Medicare prescription drug law (or perhaps even because of it), Kerry was favored by a margin of 77-23.
Defenders of the policy of triangulation may stress that Republicans maintained their majority in 2002 and 2004, but this was largely the result of national security and values issues, not because of any pandering they did on health care or education. Those Republican leaders who see expanding government as the means to maintain power overlook the fact that they have power in the first place because 1994's "Contract With America" promised to get government off of people's backs. They forget that a generation of conservatives was inspired by Ronald Reagan's eloquent defense of limited government, not by statist gobbledygook.
But there is a much simpler reason why Republicans should once-again embrace limited government: it works. If Republicans believe that conservative ideas are right, the best way to prove that to other people is to institute them.
When we spoke, Dick Armey pointed to welfare reform as evidence that if Republicans persevere and actually achieve something, it will be looked back on as a success. Though conservatives might argue that the reform didn't go far enough, it was clearly a vast improvement over the system that existed before it.
If Republicans showed the political courage to implement such policies as school vouchers, market reforms in healthcare, and Social Security personal accounts, at a minimum, they would thrill their base, and would likely win over moderates as liberal scare tactics are proven baseless.
Were they to govern this way, Republicans would be a lot more confident going into Election Day, and they'd be able to run a campaign based on more than simply calling Democrats "fraidy cats." Just as a great steakhouse wouldn't last long were it to start dabbling in vegan cuisine, the Republican Party will not survive as the party of big government.
As Mike Pence put it: "We will never win by being them, we will only win by being us."
Philip Klein is a reporter for The American Spectator.
pa ping
No, it's because given the choice between a weak socialist like Bush and a strong one like Kerry, the socialists Bush has been courting will pick the real deal every time.
And despite the complaints about NCLB, The Swimmer is still pushing to increase funding for the program.
It would seem that like everything else, we're just not doing enough of it yet to please the left.
I will remind you that Bush promised NCLB and the Prescription Drug plan in his campaigns. That is why he attracted enough moderates to be elected (barely). I'm sick of these sour grapes. Without these programs, we would have had Al Gore for eight years. What would that have cost?
Socialist my ass...tax cuts, tort reform, bankruptcy reform, the list goes on and on. Reinvigorating the military and going on offense against the terrorists. Some socialist.
It ain't just the "beautiful people" who appreciate pork.
Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here
The No Child Left Behind Act was written by Sen. Teddy Chappaquiddick. Bush was trying to reach out to the left (the VERY EXTREME left) when he got Teddy to write the bill.
To repay the President, Sen. Chappaquiddick promptly turned around and stabbed Bush squarely in the back. You'll notice, today, that Bush doesn't do a whole lot of reaching out to the left anymore, trying to build coalitions. They don't want them.
Granted that everything said here is true (and I don't think it's far from it) are you going to stay home and let the Democrats win? (I know you're not going to vote Democrat) That's even worse than what we're complaining about here, isn't it?
If he's so damned smart (and "conservative"), then why is he pushing a "no amnesty amnesty" that is pretty much the same as the Democrats want???
I think that the Republicans believe that their "base" has nowhere else to go - and that they can obtain additional votes by appealing to the leftists. If all politicians are equally cynical and calculating, my best bet is to vote in a lefty, who will strive to court the right.
Because the People want it, and even Pence knows it.
Sorry, but I simply don't believe that "the people want it". If they did, the House wouldn't be catching hell about securing the border, and the Senate wouldn't be back-pedalling as fast as they can about "the fence".
Pollsters lie in the way they formulate questions, so I take any polling data to that effect with a whole shaker full of salt.
But the People don't want interior enforcement, unless you ask a question like, "do you believe everyone should obey the laws?"
In my state, there are very few illegals (very few immigrants of any type), so people will support action against people who they don't know.
But in most of the country (including Indiana), good, solid, wall-building and law-enforcing Republicans will not tolerate any law which would be bad for Jose who cuts the grass and Marta who wipes up the baby.
Not gonna happen. Wouldn't be prudent.
And Rep. Pence knows this very well.
Take your pick. Either one will do.
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