Posted on 03/30/2020 5:26:27 AM PDT by billorites
Not long ago, as the severity of the coronavirus pandemic became clear, journalists were quick to say that the crisis marked the end of an era. "The Trump Presidency is Over," declared a headline in the Atlantic. One article in Politico said, "The Pandemic Is the End of Trumpism." A New York Times op-ed column carried the headline, "The Era of Small Government Is Over."
Well, yes. At least so far as that last article is concerned. The era of small government has been over for decades (if it ever happened at all). The highpoint of Republican and conservative efforts to limit the size and scope of the federal Leviathan was either Ronald Reagan's 1982 budget or the Clinton-Gingrich welfare reform of 1996. Then the GOP abandoned its plans for minimal government.
Even the Tea Party insurgency—which began as a rebellion against standpatters in the Republican establishment—protested cuts to Medicare and achieved little more than a sequester that severely damaged military readiness. And, of course, the current Republican president was elected on a pledge not to touch senior health care and retirement benefits. No small-government conservative, he.
What the moment requires is some intellectual modesty. It is far too early in the development of this national emergency to make definitive judgments on its political, economic, social, and cultural effects. We might as well explore alternative scenarios. For example: The coronavirus might not signify a conclusion to or beginning of a historical era, so much as an acceleration of previously germinating inclinations.
This quickening is most visible in the United States Senate. It was the youthful and heterodox members of the Republican conference who first recognized the severity of the challenges emanating from Wuhan, China. As Congress put together its economic relief bill, these lawmakers did not worry about violating free-market dogma. They recognized the extraordinary nature of the situation. Their primary concern was the fate of the unemployed. In so far as "Trumpism," to the degree that it exists, describes a political tendency that is suspicious of overseas commitments, international trade, and unchecked immigration, and more worried about the rise of China than the revanchism of Russia, this pandemic does not spell the "end." It may even serve as vindication.
The Republican senators most widely seen as preparing to run for president in 2024 have used the past few weeks to articulate a conservatism that is more heavily weighted toward security than freedom. Tom Cotton has a bill, cosponsored by Mike Gallagher in the House, to end U.S. dependence on the Chinese manufacture of pharmaceuticals. Josh Hawley introduced an "Emergency Family Relief Act" that was much more ambitious than the (for now) onetime payments included in the economic triage bill. Marco Rubio designed the small-business lending component that is essential to the CARES Act. They all criticized the Chinese government for lying about the coronavirus as it spread throughout the world.
On Capitol Hill, then, the virus has elevated the senators and staffers who have spent the last few years calling for a "realignment" of Republican politics away from the prerogatives and priorities of corporate America and toward those of middle- and working-class families without college degrees. The China hawks, economic nationalists, and advocates of industrial policy have found themselves playing the role of Cassandra, who saw the cost of war firsthand after her warnings were dismissed.
The young people on the right drawn to the agenda of national populism will come out of this experience more skeptical of China, more critical of the pre-crisis economic policy of the GOP, more suspicious of uncontrolled flows of labor, capital, and goods across borders. They may find that they have company, since the number of unemployed and nonparticipants in the labor force is about to swell. ADVERTISING
If the results of the disease and recession are widespread and long-lasting, expect the new acolytes of realignment to adopt Tyler Cowen's formulation of "state-capacity libertarianism" as a possible model for reconciling markets with a state strong enough to boost infrastructure, education, and research and development. The lack of capacity in the public health system and in the domestic manufacture of pharmaceuticals and personal protective equipment is a tragic reminder of the consequences of drift. Recent days have provided empirical proof of the aphorism that capitalism is, in the end, a government program.
A traditionalist right that understands the United States is in a full-spectrum competition with China, that uses public policy to strengthen working families in both the service and manufacturing sectors, and that observes and promotes American traditions of constitutional liberty would not be the worst upshot of this calamity. But it is just one conceivable outcome. And by no means the most likely.
The debate over conservative economic policy is just that, a debate, and the pro-market and supply-side constituencies, while no longer fashionable in certain corners of the internet, have lost none of their vigor, none of their intellectual ability, none of their institutional power. The mounting pressure from some on the right to restore economic normalcy as soon as possible testifies not only to the un-sustainability of lockdowns over time, but also to the potency of the status quo ante coronavirus.
After all, the law of unintended consequences stipulates that for every action there is an equal and unplanned and (probably) negative reaction. The cascading collapses of demand, liquidity, and solvency may soon put us in a world more unstable than the creaky one we already inhabit. And if past is prologue, the monetary and fiscal expansion that authorities have used to stave off doomsday will look very different to conservatives out of power. One year from now, the American political scene could well resemble that of a decade ago, when a unified Democratic government was under siege from Red State outsiders who had rekindled opposition to deficit spending.
If that happens, then anyone connected to the coronavirus response will be exposed to intra-party challenges. And Nikki Haley, who defended capitalism with aplomb in the Wall Street Journal, and resigned from the board of Boeing after the company requested a federal bailout, will benefit from an anti-statist turn on the grassroots right. In the long run, then, coronavirus may end up reinvigorating both the nationalist and free-market camps.
But you know what else happens in the long run. For the time being, coronavirus has accelerated a generational and ideological transition within American conservatism toward the politics of social conservatism, foreign policy unilateralism, and economic solidarity.
Bump
This is likely to be a successful approach, unfortunately.
Anyone who has been following threads here on FR over the last few weeks knows that even many people here who think they're "freedom-loving conservatives" capitulated to Big Government in this coronavirus situation very quickly.
AMEN!
Anti China conservativism.
Yup. Just like those that got drafted during WWII. Instead of standing up to big government, they just went along with it. Some even volunteered! What sheep! /sarcasm
It's been disappointing to see the number of FReepers who fail to equate big government with less freedom.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Just give me my check!
Anyone who thinks they can get elected on ‘small government’ is welcome to run on making Social Security and Medicare operate per the rules of child support - where you first go after immediate family to pay for their own parents and grandparents, BEFORE holding a gun to the heads of unrelated people to pay for their care. In other words, if a poor couple in their 80s has 3 kids who are doctors, then those kids would be responsible for taking care of their parents, rather than others. And if they refused to pay up, they’d be ordered by a court to do so. And if another old couple didn’t have the means, or didn’t have kids, then the state would pay out (i.e., a last resort to keep them from starving in the streets).
It didn’t go over very well here, on this, supposedly small-government, site, so I doubt it would go over very well with the general public.
But talk about raising taxes by a dime on fuel, and all hell breaks out here. Same for any other tax.
So we have our perennial standoff - with the only compromise being low taxes and high spending on social programs - and HUGE DEBT.
No one to blame for this, but us voters, on both sides of the aisle...like it or not.
Lookout for “supranational bodies” ?
“DOES THE CORONAVIRUS MAKE THE CASE FOR WORLD GOVERNMENT?”
“comprehensive “public health” measures by national governments and (ii) greater supranational coordination inevitably point to infectious diseases as justification for increased state power over personal medical decisions.Scary and fast-spreading viruses are perfect fodder for their busybody argument that people cannot simply be left to their own devices. “
“we already have de facto supranational bodies such as World Health Organization tasked with preventing and lessening the spread of diseases like the coronavirus. “
https://mises.org/power-market/does-coronavirus-make-case-world-government
"Capitulating to Big Government" is a surrender of freedom by definition.
Sadly, I think we have become CINO’s
You must be kidding. World War II was a perfect example of all the institutional flaws we are trying to fight here in the U.S. today: Big Government, Globalism, Fascism, etc.
In the past, conservative traditional native-born Americans felt they were on the hook to pay for all this, but really automated machines and computers now do the majority of the work, and their output is increasing every year. Increased "worker productivity" is really a euphemism for increased automation. If the robots, and not our grandchildren, are going to pay the bill, why fight it as hard as we did? Improving technology frequently changes things. Worst case there are many cheap retirement locations around the world, many of them recovering from the end stage of leftist destruction.
A lot of us will never vote for Nikki Haley NO MATTER WHAT. For anything. Ever.
Big, bloated government will quite literally get you killed.
We gave the CDC $8 bil. a year to keep precisely THIS from happening.
And they got caught with their pants down, by mere virtue of being bureaucrats.
Cuomo Sr. said "You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose." Politicians can campaign against big government, but they can't make it go away entirely. They have to concentrate on fights they can win and fights that are worth winning.
Republicans are naturally the party of less government and freer markets than the Democrats, but politicians who tie free markets to globalization aren't going to start being popular any time soon.
I thought this story was about moving to the right.
And yet it mentions republicans.
Interesting
But republicans are barely on the right. At least the ones I see in Congress. Most of them are just pigs with their noses in the trough. Unlike Democrats whey use napkins. That is the only difference.
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