Bill Kristol, of all people, and Steve Benen's take:
It turns out, in the real world of Republican governance, that there aren't a whole lot of small-government Republicans.
Five Republicans have won the presidency since 1932: Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes. Only Reagan was even close to being a small-government conservative. And he campaigned in 1980 more as a tax-cutter and national-defense-builder-upper, and less as a small-government enthusiast in the mold of the man he had supported -- and who had lost -- in 1964, Barry Goldwater. And Reagan's record as governor and president wasn't a particularly government-slashing one.
Even the G.O.P.'s 1994 Contract With America made only vague promises to eliminate the budget deficit, and proposed no specific cuts in government programs. It focused far more on crime, taxes, welfare reform and government reform. Indeed, the "Republican Revolution" of 1995 imploded primarily because of the Republican Congress's one major small-government-type initiative -- the attempt to "cut" (i.e., restrain the growth of) Medicare. George W. Bush seemed to learn the lesson. Prior to his re-election, he proposed and signed into law popular (and, it turned out, successful) legislation, opposed by small-government conservatives, adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.
So talk of small government may be music to conservative ears, but it's not to the public as a whole.
That is, oddly enough, largely true. Republican rhetoric notwithstanding, Republican policy makers tend to increase spending and the size of the government. They do this, of course, to win elections.
Um, yes. And they obviously hold the public in contempt, to a large measure.
No comments:
Post a Comment