How the GOP Lost Its Way

Ex-Congressman Dick Armey, who I never rated as a great intellect, has a surprisingly coherent and insightful essay up on the WaPo about how the congressional GOP went from being about ideas to becoming nothing more than a sleaze-ridden vehicle for logrolling, and I highly recommend reading it.

About the only point Armey gets wrong, in my opinion, is when he says

The leadership must remember that the modern conservative movement is a fusion of social and fiscal conservatives united in their belief in limited government. The party must keep both in the fold.

and then follows it up by saying

The likely Republican losses in next week's elections will not constitute a repudiation of the conservative legacy that drove the Reagan presidency and created the Contract With America. To the contrary, it would represent a rejection of big government conservatism. When we get back to being the party of limited government, putting a national agenda ahead of parochial short-term politics, we will again be a party that the American voters will trust to deal with the serious challenges facing our nation.

The problem, of course, is that these goals are largely irreconcilable: small government is fundamentally incompatible with "socially conservative" meddling with people's private lives, and a party intent on keeping advocates of small government and social conservatives within the same tent is one too ideologically incoherent to be a party of ideas. Reagan squared this circle by paying mere lip service to the nanny-state moralists, and what Bush Jr. has done has been essentially to take the opposite approach, which is precisely why you have a situation in which two big-government parties are reduced to exchanging inane sexual innuendos in lieu of substantive arguments.

What is the solution to this dilemma? I don't know myself, but as a libertarian my own preferred answer is as follows: that we need a major new political realignment, under which either the GOP jettisons the fundies and makes an appeal to the more freedom-loving elements of the Democratic Party, or else the Democratic Party shorns itself of the socialists, protectionists and other assorted riff-raff and reaches out to disaffected believers in limited government. Neither of these two possibilities seem very realistic now, given the extent to which both parties are in the grip of their worst constituencies, but failing a major shift along these lines, I see a very long period of incoherent, unprincipled politics ahead, only possibly kept in check by divided government.

Comments

[gene berman]

In your final paragraph appears "shorns": I don't think it's a word at all. "Shorn" is the gerund form of "shear" and cannot be transformed into a present-tense singular verb by sticking an "s" on the end. You could say "shears" but it doesn't "sound quite right"; "rids" would probably be the best choice, though "excises" might better transmit the thought of eliminating something purulent or otherwise noxious.

Whether or not Armey is any great intellect or not, he's always been a clear and consistent voice on the side of reason in economic matters. And, while I wouldn't rank him with Reagan as a political leader, I'd place him far ahead insofar as are concerned efforts (in both speech and writing) to articulate the proper economic knowledge both of them possessed.

I'm as perplexed as are you as far as perceiving any avenue(s) for the improvement of political matters in the US and you're quite right that the parties are equally big-gov't. and committed to targeted big spending to maintain majority status. I prefer the Rs as the (by far) less distasteful. The preponderance of Ds are outright socialists and would wear the name itself if it hadn't achieved such negative connotations: they're only for such liberties as seem useful to achievement of their programs. The Rs are simply and generally ignorant of the process by which programs they happen to favor bring about, as unintended consequences, the very increased control they'd eschew if they knew more than they do.

[Abiola]

"I prefer the Rs as the (by far) less distasteful. The preponderance of Ds are outright socialists and would wear the name itself if it hadn't achieved such negative connotations: they're only for such liberties as seem useful to achievement of their programs. The Rs are simply and generally ignorant of the process by which programs they happen to favor bring about, as unintended consequences, the very increased control they'd eschew if they knew more than they do."

This argument would have a lot more persuasive power were it not for the fact that the GOP in recent years has outspent any Democratic congress since the Nixon era, while rubberstamping draconian "security" legislation Stalin himself probably would have looked on favorably. Even if I were inclined to accept that it is ignorance that keeps Republicans from seeing the consequences of their actions - and I don't believe any such thing - in politics actions count for a lot more than words, and it's no use to say all the right things while doing all the wrong ones.

[Andrew]

"In your final paragraph appears "shorns": I don't think it's a word at all. "Shorn" is the gerund form of "shear" and cannot be transformed into a present-tense singular verb by sticking an "s" on the end."

Well, if we're being pedantic, "shorn" is actually a participle, not a gerund (the gerund of "shear" is "shearing" when it functions as a noun)...

[gene berman]

Andy:

You got me! My only excuse is that it's about 50 years since I used either term (and besides, they're spelled so similarly!). I was almost gonna claim that I snuck it in to see if Abiola was on his toes but a nauseating wave of intellectual honesty overcame my better judgment. Good on yer!

[gene berman]

Abiola:

I didn't mean that Rs were largely unaware that laws they favor might cause discomfiture to some or some groups. The specific thing of which I don't believe they're generally aware (and certainly not to the extent that Ds are aware of like outcomes of their policies/programs) is the near-inevitability of the failure of their program to produce the predicted result and to then require further legislation "piled on," whether to "close loopholes" or to expand control to some aspect anciliary to the original.

Most of neither persuasion recognize this; however,a significant portion of Ds, I am persuaded, are deliberately aimed (in Fabian fashion) at achieving all-round control through incremental institution of partial measures. They're not trying to cook the frog by degrees--they're intent, at stages, to declare that the water's not hot enough and the heat needs turning up.

[sophia]

I find shorns rather interesting. But it's not a word I am familiar with.

You could also use "divests" or better yet, "frees" or "liberates".