Anyway, so this all brings me to Ramesh’s response to Sullivan’s post about our debate.

The always rational Ramesh starts out by breaking things down to the core:

What all of us are grappling with is the expansion of the federal government under President Bush. How should those of us who want a much smaller federal government respond when Bush, for example, imposes steel tariffs? We should denounce the tariffs and bash Bush for imposing them. On this much, I take it, all three of us agree.

Yes.

Then, Ramesh continues:

But Sullivan and Sager write as though the problem were simply that Bush is for big government — as though the problem would go away if Bush would simply commit himself to shrinking the government. I think that’s a simplistic analysis. I think Bush is responding to real political circumstances. The most important of these circumstances is the smallness and weakness of the constituency for limited government…The task of a political movement trying to shrink the government over the long run is to change those political circumstances, to expand the anti-statist constituency.

Mostly right, except that I know I’ve never argued — nor do I think has Sullivan — that there’s a ready-to-rock, slash-and-burn constituency out there just waiting for us. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have all that much to write about, and I’d have to go join the circus (it looks so fun on Carnivale).

All I’m arguing is that A) the current Republican Party is now about big-government conservatism, and B) traditionally small-government conservatives don’t seem to have much of a plan to change that.

Now, I don’t have a 10-point plan either. But I think a lot of people are disturbed, and that’s why this issue is getting so much attention.

Anyway, so I’m happy to hear Ramesh’s plan. Basically, it boils down to reforming Social Security. My thoughts are mixed on this, and I’ll have a column in The Post this Sunday that touches on that.

But what happens if we don’t get Social Security reform? I don’t want to be defeatist, but this may be the best chance in a decade for reform, and it could very well not work out. I’m not sure, whatever their merits, that we can rest the future of limited-government conservatism on private Social Security accounts.

I do ultimately agree with Ramesh, however, that whatever the problems with Bush, Kerry wasn’t the answer. And, so, such are coalition politics in a two-party system. But there’s a wide-open field now for 2008.

Anyone have any good candidates? Really… anyone?

Well, I thought I’d rest for a while in the Ponnuru-Sager-Sullivan-everyonethehellelse debate for a while, but it seems there’s no rest for the weary.

More TK…

Andrew Sullivan (who hasn’t really retired from blogging at all, as far as I can tell) weighs in on the debate that’s been ongoing between me and Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review.

He — no surprise to those who follow his blog — tends to agree with me. Here’s an excerpt:

I’m with Ryan, purely on the grounds that I think Bush conservatism has relied far too much on sectarian religious support and on expanding the power, reach and expense of the federal government. I don’t buy the notion that Newt Gingrich killed off small-government conservatism and so Bush has no choice. Gingrich is and was one of the least appealing figures in American politics. His tactics were crude and dumb. To abandon every small government principle because he screwed up a decade ago strikes me as silly defeatism.

Sullivan also asks what I think is a fair question: How would National Review view a President Gore who undertook the exact same policies as Bush? Now, I understand that you cut people in your own party a lot more slack, but I think they’d be pretty furious with him.

Philip Klein responds here at Tech Central Station.

One thing that caught my eye:

But there are reasons for optimism. In his article, Sager points out that a representative of the Log Cabin Republicans who argued against the marriage amendment was booed at CPAC. I was at the conference as well, and on the flip side, when the same representative lamented that Republicans had become the party of Washington, he was applauded.

Not to rain on this parade too much, because I think there is some reason for optimism. But I was one of the four or so people there applauding.

OK, I don’t want to drag this exchange with Ramesh and NR on forever, so let me try to clarify a few last points.

1) Jonah Goldberg (one of my favorite columnists, by the way) took particular exception to something I didn’t say: namely, that National Review supports or advocates big-government conservatism.

The blame may well be mine for lack of clarity, but I didn’t mean — and I didn’t say — any such thing. I said that NR was willing to live with big-government conservatism for now so as not to upset the current coalition. And I think there’s a pretty big difference between those two statements.

I obviously understand and greatly appreciate that NR generally fights the good small-government fight. (I’d argue that on certain social issues, like the Federal Marriage Amendment — which is an unnecessary expansion of federal power — they don’t. But that’s a quibble in the big picture.)

2) Ramesh seems to have seen the distinction I made between advocating and tolerating big-government conservatism. And he denies even tolerating it.

Fair enough.

But I just don’t understand how you can fight against big-government conservatism — which is largely what the Bush administration is giving us — while mocking the idea (as Ramesh did in his initial response to my CPAC column) that “the party’s political success requires increased libertarianism.”

Just where are new small-government conservatives going to come from?

Which brings me to my last points…

First off, I’m going on the assumption that the Republican Party will need to expand its base just to hold on to what it’s got. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the 2004 election was won on terrorism, plain and simple. Some on the right want to believe it was values, but if voters had trusted John Kerry on the war there wouldn’t be a Bush 2. Either terrorism will be less of a (perceived) threat in four years, or the Democrats will get their act together on national security. Either way, Republicans aren’t going to have a free ride on that issue forever.

So how do you create a more permanent Republican majority? I wish I were Karl “the Architect” Rove, but here’s my best guess.

Ramesh says: “for seven years I’ve been arguing that a strategy of expanding the new investor class is conservatives’ best bet for creating a constituency for limited government.” I think he may be right about this. So let’s hope Bush gets Social Security reform.

But this leaves out the entire social issues side of things. Here, I’ll quote Reason’s Julian Sanchez, who chimed in yesterday: “as older voters are replaced with today’s teens and twentysomethings, anti-gay politicking is going to face some serious diminishing returns and potentially become a net liability.”

Now, the NR folks would, I’m sure, point out (rightly) that opposing gay marriage doesn’t make one an anti-gay bigot. But there was more than a small element of that in the use of anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives in swing states to drive up Republican turnout.

This sort of stuff may gain Republicans more than it loses them in the short run — in fact, I concede that there’s hardly a question that it does — but it’s not a sound long-term strategy.

You simply can’t expect a new investor class — many of whom, presumably, will be suburban and urban professionals — to become loyal voters for a party that doesn’t speak to them at all on social issues. Here, I’m looking at the party as a brand (to which one forms an emotional connection) not as a platform, with which people might agree or disagree.

Well, I feel as though I’ve rambled at this point. So let me sum up (i.e. ramble more). I don’t think the Republican Party can gain much from going further to the right on social issues; it’s pretty much drained that well, and it seems to me that it may have to tack back left a bit if the Democrats neutralize the terror issue.

As for economic issues, the party could probably become a permanent majority by wedding big-government economic liberalism to blue-collar social conservatism. It’s a winning political strategy, but a terrible idea. I don’t think National Review wants this, but I think Karl Rove does — and I’m not sure what NRers would do to turn it around.

I also want to be clear on this: I’m not a member of the Libertarian Party, nor do I find third-party politics terribly beneficial to our form of government.

I’m a registered Democrat (because my grandfather was one and because it’s where most of the good primaries are in New York). But really I don’t give a damn one way or another about parties for their own sakes.

So, please, all the people calling me a RINO (Republican In Name Only, for all you non-wingers): It’s not much of an insult.

Nor is it a terribly sensible insult to hurl at a journalist, who really ought to be looking for the truth and not supporting a party anyway.

I tend to root Republican. But that’s about the long and short of it.

So, Ramesh responds to my response here.

And here’s my response to that response:

Basically, it seems Ramesh is saying that while he agrees with libertarians “about the proper functions of the federal government 90 percent of the time,” he thinks that to win elections Republicans need to marry social conservatism to big government.

Now, this isn’t a radically new idea, or anything. This is just what it sounds like: Big-Government Conservatism.

Admittedly, Ramesh makes it clear this isn’t his ideal outcome. But he seems happy enough to live with it, so long as it keeps Republicans in power.

This is certainly a defensible position, and it’s definitely not a surprising one. The only surprise for me is to find it quite so prevalent at National Review as opposed to just at The Weekly Standard, the traditional home of Krtistol-ite, big-government conservatism.

I’d raise two objections, however. While, as I’ve said, the War on Terror is reason enough to be glad that the Republicans are in power right now, on domestic issues there will come a point when winning for the sake of winning isn’t enough.

Just why do I need a Republican president and Congress to give me a Medicare prescription drug benefit? Why do I need them to balloon the deficit? Why do I need them to pass campaign-finance reform laws?

To be clear, I understand perfectly well that the Democrats would only be worse on these issues (though divided government would almost certainly be better — the only good case I heard for Kerry in 2004).

But I’m not terribly representative of the electorate.

When (and if) the threat of terror starts fading in the minds of Americans, and once Iraq is firmly in the hands of Iraqis — say 2006 or 2008 — suddenly the Republicans have a lot less glue holding the coalition together.

And that doesn’t mean just us traitorous libertarians bolting the Republican coalition — I don’t expect too much of that frankly. I think the economic libertarians are going to stick; and I think the anti-war libertarians already bolted.

What I mean is that those people we used to call “soccer moms,” who became “security moms,” could all of a sudden start paying more attention to soccer again and forget all about security.

And then just how solid will Republican gains look? Why keep voting for big-government Republicans as opposed to big-government Democrats — especially if you’re a suburban or urban woman who’s already uncomfortable with Republicans on social issues?