I’ve written several times lately (here, here, and here) about the distressing way in which the GOP has turned into just another tax-and-spend party based on its performance controlling Congress over the last 10 years.
Now, comes this article from David Boaz at the Cato Institute:
For years, Republicans argued that the Democratic majority in Congress was intruding the federal government into more and more matters best left to the states, the local communities, or the private sector. After 10 years in power, however, the Republicans have seen the Democrats’ intrusiveness and raised them. The Republicans have pushed the feds further into the local schools with the No Child Left Behind Act and tried to take marriage law away from the states with the Federal Marriage Amendment. They overruled a series of Florida courts in the Terri Schiavo case, imposing the massive power of the federal government on a tragic family matter.
But it’s not just these big-ticket items. Republicans have come down with a serious case of Potomac Fever. They believe that their every passing thought is a proper subject for federal legislation. They hold three-ring-circus hearings on steroids in baseball. They sharply increase the fines for alleged indecency on television. They hold hearings on whether college textbooks are too expensive. They threaten to punish Major League Baseball if the owners allow left-wing billionaire George Soros to be a part owner of the new team in Washington. They vote for a federal investigation of the video game “Grand Theft Auto.”
None of this is new, of course, but the depressing thing about it is that I see no major Republican leaders on the horizon who would stand in opposition to this “new conservatism.” In their own ways, each of the men who have been mentioned as potential 2008 Presidential nominees subscribes to the same philosophy as the one noted above. Republicans used to believe in Thomas Jefferson’s dictum that “that government is best which governs least.” Today, Republican and Democratic polticians both seem to be operating from the same basic premise —- that there isn’t any area of life, public or private, that isn’t the proper subject of some government regulation, investigation, or prohibition.
What’s a principled libertarian to do ?
