Below The Beltway

In today’s New York Times, Bill Kristol says that Republicans need to abandon limited government ideology:

[T]alk of small government may be music to conservative ears, but it’s not to the public as a whole. This isn’t to say the public is fond of big-government liberalism. It’s just that what’s politically vulnerable about big-government liberalism is more the liberalism than the big government. (Besides, the public knows that government’s not going to shrink much no matter who’s in power.)

Now it’s true that the size of the government and the modern liberal agenda are connected. It’s also true that modern conservatism has to include a strong commitment to limited (though energetic) government and to constitutional (though not necessarily small or weak) government. Still, there’s a difference between a conservatism that is concerned with limited and constitutional government and one that focuses on simply opposing big government.

Kristol’s distinction at the end there is a false one. By definition, someone who is concerned with a Federal Government limited to it’s proper constitutional role will be opposing efforts by others, whether Republican or Democrat, to expand that power beyond those constraints and increase the size, scope, and power of government. In essence, Kristol accuses those who oppose big government of lacking a coherent ideology when, in reality, they are the only ones who are approaching politics with anything resembling a set of principles concerned with more than “what works” or “what get’s me re-elected.”

In reality, it’s Kristol, and big-government conservatives like him, who are the ones without a coherent set of ideas. In fact, one could argue that, over the past eight years, we’ve seen quite clearly what the consequences of so-called big-government conservatism actually are, and it’s not pretty.

Kristol goes on to claim that George W. Bush actually succeeded by rejecting a limited government agenda, though, as Michael Tanner notes, it’s hard to argue that Bush’s strategy has been a success in any sense of the word:

Undoubtedly, in Kristol’s world, it is President Bush’s commitment to bigger, more expensive, and more intrusive government that has brought about his soaring approval ratings. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress were losing because they cut spending to the bone, abolished pork, turned down earmarks, and generally behaved like Barry Goldwater reincarnated.

Kristol goes on:

If you’re a small-government conservative, you’ll tend to oppose the bailouts, period. If you more or less accept big government, you’ll be open to the government’s stepping in to save the financial system, or the auto industry. But you’ll tend to favor those policies — universal tax cuts, offering everyone a chance to refinance his mortgage, relieving auto makers of burdensome regulations — that, consistent with conservative principles, don’t reward irresponsible behavior and don’t politicize markets.

Erick Erickson responds to that one quite nicely:

No, if you are for a limited, constitutional government you will be inclined to say government should not interfere in the free market. If you are for limited, constitutional government you will be inclined to say Congress should not try to fix a mess that it by and large created. If you are for limited, constitutional government, you will be inclined to think Congress is the legislative branch of the United States government, not a car manufacturer, which is what it would become under its bailout plan.

In fact, a person who really is for limited, constitutional government would recognize that the present government is doing more that it should or ought to and would be in favor of scaling it back. But that’s not Bill Kristol. He is trying to have it both ways. He is trying to claim he is a conservative in favor of limited government, but does his best to put up a smoke screen to distract from the fact that he is not.

The good news is that between the Republican Congressional losses in 2006, the staggering depth of George W. Bush’s approval ratings, and the rejection of John McCain, the American public has made it clear that Kristol’s brand of me-too Republicanism isn’t what they want.

The bad news is that the GOP still hasn’t figured out what it stands for, and the public isn’t going to wait much longer.