Republicans are pretty up front about their hatred of big government.
It’s an old story. They want to drown it in a bathtub.
What they don’t like to talk about is why when they’ve had the chance to small-town the federal government, under Reagan, under Newt, under W., all of whom could claim mandates to start running the hot water in the tub, they didn’t do it and in fact did the opposite. The federal government, the payrolls, the debt, the deficits, grew under Reagan and Bush. Newt’s only move to rein things in was to try to impeach Bill Clinton who was actually engaged in reining things in.
They don’t seem to ever get asked why they haven’t offered any serious proposals to cut spending and shrink the government over the last two years either. They’ve been noisy about voting against any new spending by the Democrats. But that’s easy enough for them to do, considering they knew that most of what they ostensibly opposed was going to pass anyway.
Frankly, I think they were all a bit shocked when some of the spending measures they opposed didn’t pass because conservative Democrats wouldn’t get on board or President Snowe lost her nerve or Scott Brown couldn’t remember which of his two constituencies he was supposed to be serving that week, the Right Wingers who will primary him in 2012 if he doesn’t toe the line or the Democratic majority of Massachusetts voters who didn’t send him to the Senate in the first place and aren’t going to leave him there if he turns out to represent the GOP leadership more faithfully than he represents the Commonwealth.
The Republicans wanted their hands on that money. They just didn’t want to give the President credit for it.
That’s why they love the stimulus but can’t say so. Lots of federal bucks have flowed into their districts, but they can’t admit they’re glad or that it’s a good thing because that helps the President and the Democrats in the polls.
They don’t hate big government. They hate it that they’re not running it.
When Democrats and Liberals run the government, they tend to make decisions that are not necessarily in the best financial interests of the banksters and stockbrokers and corporate CEOs and the other greedy rich bastards who are the real Republican base, the Tea Party be damned.
Democrats and Liberals don’t always seem to keep in mind that the point of government, big or small, is to make rich people richer.
It’s been lost in all the shouting, but the bailout of Wall Street as originally proposed by a Republican President backed up by Republican Senators and Congressmen and their Presidential candidate and his running mate was a no-strings attached gift to the banksters.
If the Republicans had had their way, the banksters could have used the whole wad to give themselves even bigger bonuses and we would not be getting any of the money paid back.
Republicans like big government when they’re in charge because they can shovel all that money the Feds collect into the bank accounts of their friends, cronies, and corporate bosses.
That’s why they’ve never seriously tried to get rid of the Departments of Education and Energy, and why they’re not going to try if they take over the House this fall. There’s money to be made there, in the form of patronage jobs and contracts and rewritten regulations that help businesses rake in the dough.
That’s why earmarks are not going to disappear. In fact, they’ll likely increase, under a different, focus group-tested name, of course. We may---or at least those of us who live in their districts---get more direct stimulus money under the Republicans than the Democrats have been able to dish out, because they won’t oppose themselves and because they don’t care if all the money flowing into their districts is borrowed from China or if the projects they’ve earmarked for themselves will ever get paid for.
They won’t make a serious attempt to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act either. The parts of it they really hate, the parts that tell insurance companies they actually have to insure people and pay their medical bills when they get sick as they’re contractually obligated to, are far too popular, while the unpopular part of the Act, the government subsidized mandate, is the part they like, because it does what they believe big government exists to do, shovels money into the hands of their corporate friends and cronies.
The only big government program that’s endangered by a Republican victory in November is Social Security, and when it comes to that, some Republicans are motivated by the nebulous principle that individuals know better how to invest their money than do government bureaucrats, some are motivated by the same magical thinking that governs all their fuzzy thinking about economics---left to its own devices, totally free of government meddling, the invisible hand of the marketplace will make us all millionaires---and some are motivated by cultural memory, having inherited their grandfathers’ eighty year old grudge against Franklin Roosevelt. But most are motivated by avarice.
There’s all this money lying around that is not going straight into the pockets of their Wall Street pals and cronies.
They can’t stand it that they can’t get their mitts on it right away.
Privatization means: “GIVE US YOUR MONEY!”
No, Republicans love big government, even more than Democrats do.
Democrats are made somewhat ambivalent about it because they worry about how it’s all going to get paid for.
Republicans never worry about that. Either a Democratic President will come along to figure it all out and make himself unpopular in the process or the magic of the free market will make everything better.
At no point will they make themselves the least bit unpopular by seriously proposing cuts in spending or raising taxes.
So, it’s all good.
Conservatives, though, the principled small government types, don’t seem to see this. They think that their Republican friends have just lost sight of their conservative principles.
It hasn’t sunk in on them after 30 years that Republicans like big government because it can be made to serve the interests of Big Business.
And the reason, I think, that it hasn’t sunk in is that conservatives are blind to the existence of Big Business.
Conservatives---and keep in mind I’m talking about the small government types, not social conservatives, and not the reactionaries the Media allows to call themselves conservatives---small government conservatives think we can have a small government because in their minds we are still a small country of small towns, small farms, small locally owned businesses.
Conservatives think we’re still living in the 19th Century.
Part Seven.
This is Lance Mannion at his best. I am now calmer than I was a few minutes ago.
Posted by: DeborahT | Friday, October 22, 2010 at 12:34 PM
They don’t hate big government. They hate it that they’re not running it.
You could have stopped typing right there, Lance, and have posted a great piece.
But I'm glad you didn't
Posted by: actor212 | Friday, October 22, 2010 at 04:49 PM
Conservatives think we’re still living in the 19th Century.
Didn't Bill Buckley say it - that conservatives stand athwart history yelling "stop!"
Posted by: Rugosa | Saturday, October 23, 2010 at 09:12 AM
Conservatives, though, the principled small government types, don’t seem to see this.
That's because none of them is over 20 years old.
Posted by: calling all toasters | Saturday, October 23, 2010 at 08:40 PM
Conservative small-government principles were always a lie. Look, when someone insists that government is inherently corrupt, it can't NOT be corrupt by its very nature, it can accomplish nothing, and nobody involved in the entire enterprise is anything but a crook... the logical question isn't what does that person think should be done about it- they've already insisted nothing can be done, remember- but why does that person want to be in control of an inherently and inevitably corrupt but nevertheless very powerful enterprise?
Not in order to fix it, that's for sure.
Posted by: RobW | Sunday, October 24, 2010 at 11:57 PM
RobW, when you're talking about Republicans in Washington claiming to be small government conservatives, then, yes, you're absolutely right, they're lying. But there really are principled small government conservatives who run for office for the same reason the original Progressives ran for office, to have the power to reform the government.
If any of them get themselves elected this fall they're going to be surprised either by their leadership's resistance to reforming the government or their own quick adjustment to the new reality where their principles no longer need apply.
Posted by: Lance Mannion | Monday, October 25, 2010 at 08:23 PM