Bush’s borrow-and-waste big government
I rarely repost entire pieces from other writers, but I will make an exception for Andrew Sullivan’s “The Big Government Spending Party” today. It’s just too good:
Finally, Americans have grasped the fact that the Republicans have abandoned their role as the fiscally responsible party. In the new Time poll, we find the answer to the question: Which party would do a better job of managing government spending? Democrats get 46 percent; Republicans 31 percent. Yes, the GOP will as usual talk about "big-spending Dems" and "big government Dems." But this rhetoric may have made sense in the 1980s and early 1990s. We now have clear evidence that if you want bigger, more corrupt and more debt-laden government, you should vote Republican. Republican profligacy should be punished the only way they understand. Depending, of course, on your local representative or senator, your impulse as a fiscal conservative this fall must be to vote Democrat. They may not be much better; but they couldn't imaginably be worse; and punishing the GOP for betraying a fundamental principle is the only way they'll rediscover its importance. [emphasis added]
I have but one correction to make to Sullivan’s observations: “fiscal conservatism” as practiced by this administration is not synonymous with fiscal responsibility. If anything, the realities demoted by those phrases are diametrically opposed.
Sullivan’s larger point, that conservative rhetoric is mired in a decades-old conception—or misconception—of liberalism, needs to be understood by everyone who still defends Bushism against the bogeymen of “big-government liberalism.” Focusing on such a tendentious construct while ignoring the very real threat of unchecked conservatism is a very frightening type of ideological blindness, and one that will continue to do great harm until it is corrected.