And… it’s up. My column on fusionism gone cold:
While some libertarian types may have been upset with President Reagan’s deficits, he was at least singing from their hymn book: Government is the problem, not the solution. George W. Bush on the other hand has never even gone to the trouble of aping a small-government posture. Instead, Bush has adopted one of Reagan’s other famous lines, sans irony: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.
…
Now, to be clear: What’s most disturbing to libertarians about all of this is not that the shift in the traditional alignment will hurt the Republican Party at the polls — at least in the short term. What’s disturbing is just how powerful the idea of a “God-and-government” coalition could be.
What if Karl Rove’s idea for a permanent majority actually worked? The GOP could convince soccer moms that it’s not so hard-hearted by implementing national health care piece by piece. It could pick up the votes of blue-collar union members by appealing to them on “values” issues that the Democrats can’t talk about without choking on their own bile. And the GOP could even pick up votes from socially conservative black and Hispanic voters who are adamantly opposed to gay marriage.
The electoral logic of Big Government Conservatism, in fact, is virtually inescapable. Where the logic falls apart, however, is in why we would continue to call this new edifice “conservative” at all.
This is what I — and I think other libertarians — mean when I talk about a conservative split. It’s not the libertarians leaving the Republicans (though that could happen, and to some extent did happen in 2004). It’s the Republicans leaving themselves.
Speaking as a religious conservative, this view doesn’t represent me well. We don’t march lockstep with GWB at all. He simply was the best candidate we could field and while he wasn’t a small government conservative and never was, he did give us a lot, like Lower taxes, judges and such.
Your split is not with religious conservatives, it’s with the McCain, Chaffee, Bush, Snowe, the usual suspects.
As a Libertarian-leaning Republican voter, I think you have a very important message and I’m glad to see you’re writing about the potential problem.
Maybe you could focus on what could be done to bridge the gap and keep both arms of the party cohesive?
This isn’t news to me. One of the things I’ve always disliked was his big government attitude. I had said that the worst outcome of the last election was if either Bush or Kerry won. Individual freedom and the Bill of Rights are becoming history.
It is the government that’s the problem, not necessarily the ideology, though that frightens me too. I am particularly adverse to having religion shoved down my gullet in the name of the government. Please don’t use my tax money to sponsor your God.
Texas business owner Dick Simkanin’s appeal is finally underway in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
http://www.givemeliberty.org/
Popped over here from Tech Central to comment on a paragraph from your column that you didn’t quote above:
“Eventually, it seems inevitable that expanding the Republican Party’s power at the expense of its principles will cause it to hollow out its core and collapse. But such a day could be far away.”
That day may be closer than you (or Jonah Goldberg) might think. If not for the Iraq war, the President might already have lost a lot of moderates like me. We’re the largely unserved constituency who have watched as the word “conservative” somehow became interchangeable with “republican,” but who haven’t jumped ship because the alternative — till lately — never looked like much of an improvement. I’ve already had to compromise my more tolerant, compassionate principles to stay in this party for far too long. FCC finefests and Schiavo interventions are final paradigm shifting straws. Shoot, I’ve found myself beginning to wish Schwarzenneger really could run for Prez, and I can’t even spell the guy’s name.