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.
Evil prospers when good men do nothing. The speaker-pelosi stench, can your nose take that?
It is not "pretty much the same" as what the Democrats want. Get real.
Yes it is. Just an amnesty. It still legalizes and eventually makes citizens out of the millions of lawbreakers that have invaded our county. There are slight differences in detail, but the main final result is the same.
YOU "get real".
How cute. Reminds me of discussions I had back in elementary school. Hey - Nanny Nanny Poo Poo!
Oh, and you are wrong - but I can see it would do no good to explain it as facts are apparently irrelevant to you.
Unfortunately for you, I've already studied the issues sufficiently to have made my mind up, and FROBL's like you aren't about to change it. Bush, the Democrats, McCain, Pence, and Cornyn are all pushing the same "agenda"---amnesty with a path to citizenship. There is only minor variation in the details among them.
Exactly - falsehoods are what you thrive on - you've made up your mind - that's why I said it will be pointless to try to engage in a rational discussion with you. You lack maturity and basic common sense.
No, I've got all the maturity and common sense I need (and more, I'm sure, than you do). As I said, I've actually taken the time to STUDY the issues. I know where the truth lies (and where the lies lie).
Now buzz off.
"I've got all the maturity...I need - Now buzz off."
LOL. Folks, you can't make this stuff up.
I did ask you to provide some substantive differences between you and the rats, as the scare tactics are getting old. The country survived eight years of the BJ king. I would suspect it'll survive two years of pelosi if we must. And since you offer NOTHING else to attract the votes of reasoned and reasonable people, oh well. I am tired of voting against, yet you offer nothing or no one to vote FOR. More's the pity.
"LOL. Folks, you can't make this stuff up."
So true. But you keep trying. You and timer are still pushing the same tired agenda as the Rats. You have NOTHING to offer but more of the same. The only difference is you have an (R) and they have a (D). The Rat party and the Rat-LITE party.
As I posted to timer:
You remind me of the Rats, now pushing the Mark Foley story for all it's worth. And you have the same thing to offer as the Rats do: Spooky scare tactics (though it IS close to Halloween) and more of the same. More and bigger government. More erosion of our rights. More use of the Constitution as toilet paper.
So just what IS the difference between you? Oh, that's right... "Vote Republican this November. Remember, we may look, sound and act like them, but we're NOT Democrats. Don't let the Democrats in or they'll act just like we are, only more so."
Sorry, my nose is too damned sore to hold anymore.
Nothing to vote FOR? The greatest boom economy in modern times, thanks to the president's tax cuts...and you don't even NOTICE!!?? Five long years ago the terrorists did their # on the trade towers...how many major hits since then? The only reason the BJ king didn't get convicted on the articles of impeachment was because alore would have been prez, a fate worse than death for the country. Admit it, you're a "perot type" : if you don't win the marble game, you go home and pout in the corner.
I don't see the Libertarian Party doing anything.
Perhaps it's because they can't get elected higher than a town water board position?
I say again my last, for possible penetration into your cranium:
"You remind me of the Rats, now pushing the Mark Foley story for all it's worth. And you have the same thing to offer as the Rats do: Spooky scare tactics (though it IS close to Halloween) and more of the same. More and bigger government. More erosion of our rights. More use of the Constitution as toilet paper."
How about addressing the issues? The border, the continued erosion of our rights (search and siezure. gun rights, control over our own children, etcetera, ad nauseum), pissing away our national sovereignty, continued globalization, with no end in sight. Shall I go on? If not our Constitution, our rights and our NATION, what the hell are you trying to conserve? You and your useless Pubbies? Certainly none of the above!
You can stew in your own juices as long as you want to, but realistic people know that in politics you don't get everything you want. Render unto ceasar the things that are ceasar's, render unto god the things that are god's. Where have you heard that before? The mistaken assumption you make is that CEASAR is the total answer to all of life's problems. Have you no higher ideals, a higher vision? George W. Bush has....
Dang, Dick. I could have sworn that you were suffering from that affliction yourself, seeing how you've taken to grossly insulting the border security and Christian social conservative wings of the Grand Old Party.
Guess there weren't any "beautiful people" at the A.C.L.U., huh?
The Super-Ugly People?
B U M P
70% of Americans are against it.
"Dang, Dick. I could have sworn that you were suffering from that affliction yourself, seeing how you've taken to grossly insulting the border security and Christian social conservative wings of the Grand Old Party."
Armey is a sell out whore.
I'm a small-l libertarian and a capital-R Republican. That doesn't mean I'm not frustrated with them.
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