Two-faced Republicans

The main accomplishment of the Republican Party, a dubious one at best, is that they mastered claiming to be something that they are not, and I suspect never intended to be. They were always about grabbing power and using it to reward their most faithful followers. Unfortunately it took too long before the American public realized the scam being perpetrated, and despite gerrymandered election districts, began to throw the rascals out. Brink Lindsey, Vice President for research at the libertarian Cato Institute writing in the 12/11//06 The New Republic described how the Republican Party’s rule over the past twelve years completely contradicted their claim as the party of conservatism.

Despite the GOP's rhetorical commitment to limited government, the actual record of unified Republican rule in Washington has been an unmitigated disaster from a libertarian perspective: runaway federal spending at a clip unmatched since Lyndon Johnson; the creation of a massive new prescription-drug entitlement with hardly any thought as to how to pay for it; expansion of federal control over education through the No Child Left Behind Act; a big run-up in farm subsidies; extremist assertions of executive power under cover of fighting terrorism; and, to top it all off, an atrociously bungled war in Iraq.

This woeful record cannot simply be blamed on politicians failing to live up to their conservative principles. Conservatism itself has changed markedly in recent years, forsaking the old fusionist synthesis in favor of a new and altogether unattractive species of populism. The old formulation defined conservatism as the desire to protect traditional values from the intrusion of big government; the new one seeks to promote traditional values through the intrusion of big government. Just look at the causes that have been generating the real energy in the conservative movement of late: building walls to keep out immigrants, amending the Constitution to keep gays from marrying, and imposing sectarian beliefs on medical researchers and families struggling with end-of-life decisions.