MAYBE IT’S TIME TO TRY LIMITED GOVERNMENT
Colorado Springs Gazette, 11-13-08
If the Republican Party in
In times of economic
crisis, you will not win running on abortion.
You will not win running on piety.
You will not win running on family issues. You will win if voters
believe you can fix the economy.
Poll after exit poll
showed that economic questions were uppermost on voters’ minds. The economic meltdown happened during a
presidential campaign, and voters handily went against the party on watch for
most of the past decade. So where to go
from here?
Some conservative
activists are already taking about a Republican party that returns to its
roots. But which roots will it return
to? The roots of
social conservatism? Or the roots of limited government? The evidence says that, as a matter of
policy, social conservatism and limited government are incompatible. Republicans are going to have to choose.
Consider: In the recent six years of a Republica-led
government, social conservatives dominated the Republican party.
During that time, federal spending soared faster than any administration since
LBJ. Entitlement programs grew like
tumors. The Republican President and
Congress taxed and spent like drunken sailors on shore leave.
None of this should be
surprising. Any government run by people
who want massive intervention in people’s personal lives is overwhelmingly
likely to lead to massive intervention in people’s economic lives. After all, what is more personal than how you
spend your money?
A rededication to social
conservatism as federal policy would ignore the drubbing Republicans took at
the polls. Instead, Republicans should
consider something they haven’t tried:
Limited government.
Instead of spouting on
values issues and offering economic prescriptions indistinguishable from
Democrats’, Republicans should be citing chapter and verse of the massive
regulatory state that got us into the mess we’re in. For Democrats to claim that economic problems
simply happen while Congressional actions fix them is patently ridiculous. It doesn’t hold up under even the most casual
scrutiny.
Republicans should hit the
Democrats hard on issues of personal responsibility, pointing out that bailouts
are morally hazardous and economically irresponsible regardless of who gets
them.
Republicans should be
pushing for cutting taxes and cutting spending, in the name of making a more
prosperous future. They should be hitting entitlement programs hard, showing
the absurd distortions they cause and show how they mortgage our children’s
future. They should show that, unlike Democrats, they actually understand what
creates the prosperity that makes millions of people want to live in
Ironically, focusing on
the economy is the best way to make much of the social conservative agenda a
reality. In a world where people are
able to make their own economic decisions and are held responsible for their
own actions, many things social conservatives want tend to happen on their
own.
In a world where goods and
services get better and cheaper over time, people are more to start
families. They are more likely to marry
and stay married. They are more likely
to want all the children they conceive, and to have more time to dwell on
spiritual matters. They experience the
vigorous exchange of ideas appropriate to a free society, they are less likely
to turn to drugs or prostitution out of economic desperation and hopelessness,
and of course they are free to worship (or not) in any way they choose. Isn’t that a world worth working for?
None of this will happen
without you, the socially conservative voter.
The grassroots Republican organizations in
Democratic plans to tax,
spend, and manipulate the economic actions of Americans will fail, just as they
always do. When that happens, the
Republican Party needs to be ready with an alternative. If the free, entrepreneurial spirit of the
west can resurrect itself in