Below The Beltway

James Joyner points to what seems to be Andrew Sullivan’s rather constricted definition of the right to protest in a democratic society:

While I adhere to most of the principles of the small government right, I am aware of the important balancing act of a liberal coalition in keeping this country on an even keel. I come from the Oakeshottian school that supports what he called “civil association” but also understands the necessity for the other strain in Anglo-American thought, “enterprise association.” I do not want either party to have total power; and I do not believe every political argument has to be zero-sum. I loathe the cynicism that prefers trashing a new president over solving a serious social problem for people in real need.

And look: while I would like all the things my reader does in an ideal world, none of them was seriously on the table in last year’s election. And the candidate who was closest to them was soundly beaten. It’s perfectly proper – even admirable – to demonstrate and argue against the new administration’s ideas, but it’s also worth recalling that this plan in its essentials was an integral part of the president’s campaign platform and his party’s effective manifesto. It was debated ad nauseam last year, and Obama won by a hefty margin. The tone of these protests suggests that this is some wild power-grab. It isn’t. It’s a centrist and not-too-ambitious plan to fulfill a clear campaign pledge as responsibly as possible within a sensible fiscal framework.

The protestors keep saying that they want their country back. Sorry, my fellow small-governmenters, but this country is a democracy, and you didn’t lose your country, you just lost an election. You had your chance for eight years. You blew it, and you lost. What Obama is doing is what he was elected to do. The principled response is not a massive, extremist-riddled hissy fit a few months in, but a constructive set of proposals to build on universal care for a more market-friendly and cost-conscious system in the future. You have to win some political credibility for that; and then you have to beat the man you lost so badly to last year. That’s the civil and civilized way forward for the right. It also seems, alas, to be the one they are currently refusing to take.

There are so many fallacies in what Sullivan’s says here that it’s hard to pick out just a few to comment on, but let’s start with his idea that what was going on for the past eight years in Washington had anything to do with fiscal conservatism or the philosophy of small government. George W. Bush’s entire Presidency was a repudiation of free market principles. This is the President who gave us No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, the largest increase in discretionary non-defense spending since Lyndon Baines Johnson, the Freddie/Fannie bailout, the AIG bailout, the TARP bailout, and, as a final coup de grace, the auto manufacturer’s bailout. There was nothing “free market” about the Bush Administration.

Sullivan also says that “the candidate who was closest to them [small government ideas] was soundly beaten.” Since I doubt he’s talking about either Ron Paul or Bob Barr, I can only assume he’s referring to John McCain and, once again, gets it wrong. John McCain’s lack of commitment to small government and free markets is quite easily demonstrated by the position he took on the TARP bailout, his position on taxes, and his sponsorship of McCain-Feingold, one of the most egregious deprivations of civil liberties in American history. So, no, Andrew, the election was not a repudiation of small government principles, because there was no major party candidate espousing those principles on the ballot.

Moreover, Sullivan’s assertion that the health care reform package was “central” to Obama’s election victory is just absurd. Beyond mere appeals to general principles, Obama never put forward a specific health care reform package, and certainly never put forward anything resembling the bill currently before Congress. More than anything else, Obama got elected because of his vague and amorphous message of “hope and change” combined with a decades worth of voter frustration with the Bush Administration and the Republicans in Congress. To claim that debate on health care reform should be cut off because we discussed it in detail during the election is both a lie and absurd. Moreover, one wonders how Sullivan rationalizes this view with the fact that many Obama voters and many Democratic members of Congress are opposed to the current plan.

The final reason that Sullivan is wrong, though, is really quite simple:

[T]his is the United States of America. The right to protest one’s government for whatever reason one wishes is enshrined right there in our Constitution. It’s the first thing mentioned in the Bill of Rights.

Perhaps Andrew can be excused for forgetting that considering he’s British.

I don’t necessarily approve of all the tactics we’ve seen from the Tea Party crowd, and I think that most of the behavior over the summer at the town halls was counterproductive to say the best, these people have every right to do what they’re doing and shouldn’t be told to sit down and shut up just because the other side won the election.