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Big-Government Conservatives: Who Are They?
We’ve been arguing a lot about libertarians here on Ricochet. I’ve been criticized for quoting from a blog that some Ricochetti took to be non-representative of libertarians. For the record, I never claimed it was representative; I was mainly just interested in the argument being made. But some people were irritated even by the reference, and reminded me that they could cherry-pick some pretty terrible big-government conservatives if they chose.
Actually, I’m quite interested in this. Who are the obnoxious big-government conservatives out there? Don’t tell me George W. Bush, because he’s retired. (Although, on that point, I grant that he was bad about spending and permitting government bloat, but how much morality policing did he really do? Not a whole lot.) I’m mainly interested in people who are influential in conservative politics right now. Are there prominent, unapologetic advocates of bigger, more intrusive government out there? Rick Santorum? Mike Huckabee? I want to know who really gets under your skin, libertarians. If you want to provide links as well, that would be awesome.
To me it seems like small government thinking is pretty solid conservative orthodoxy these days. If you want more government, you’d better be real quiet about it because that won’t fly in almost any conservative setting. But we do spend a lot of time accusing one another of favoring big government. Are we just shadow-boxing? Suspecting one another of insincerity or just naiveté?
Commence with the pile-on. But give specifics, if you don’t mind.
Image Credit: Flickr user elycefeliz.
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Except that you’ve already disqualified him, GWB did run on bigger and more intrusive government (below extracts from 2000 brochure):
Here is someone arguing for State intervention in the culture:
http://thefederalist.com/2014/08/20/if-millennials-want-liberty-they-need-virtue-too/
John McCain, accepting the nomination in 2008:
Oh, there’s already a lobby for this in place. You know those groups like Community Marriage Builders? In this one example, it receives $799,000 per year via a HHS grant. However, it dodges the question of government dollars in its FAQ answer about funding sources:
But go to a CMB event and you’ll get handed a worksheet that requires you to fill out detailed demographic and income information. Because as the legally mandated disclosure in the privacy policy states:
CMB is just one example of the “little platoons” we’ve spawned and support that are ready-made lobbies for more spending.
NOTE: Apologies for the wonky formatting. The quote function is acting up. UPDATE: Fixed!
First, is Rachel really challenging us to provide evidence of “big government conservatives” based on statements found on the internet (possibly the cheapest form of talk that currently exists)?
I see little to no value in that proposition. Even if I could find some quotes by “big names” like Andy McCarthy or Bill Kristol, it’s still internet pontification with almost no relevance to real life. Count me out of this game.
Second, I would agree with Rachel’s insinutation that there are no self-proclaimed conservatives who want an overall bigger federal budget or a net addition to the federal regulatory code.
The problem is the people who are 95% conservative: I want a smaller government except for [insert favorite government program here].
And in our system of governance, the easiest way for Conservative X’s pet program to remain intact is to agree to let conservative Y’s other pet program stay intact, and possibly Liberal Z’s as well. So we have a large group of people willing to shrink government in principle, but as long as none of them are willing to see their personal ox get gored, in practice the size of the state continues to expand.
This is where we part ways. Advocating for the redefinition of marriage (and, therefore, expansion of government involvement in relationships where the state previously expressed no interest) is much more disruptive and intrusive than leaving marriage as it is. Otherwise, the Left would have little interest in it. I realize you’re advocating something else, but the aforementioned seems the libertarian fallback position when it’s pointed out that the state will never, ever be out of marriage.
I have a hard time taking seriously any argument that would focus on undoing millennia of human understanding of the procreative nature of marriage, rather than eliminating the Department of Education (instituted under Carter), the EPA (Nixon), reducing the IRS to a rump department via a flat tax, grandfathering away Social Security and Medicare, etc.
It is possible to be a social conservative and a small government conservative. Yer lookin’ at one. However, I tend to agree that we are underrepresented in government and misunderstood by many on both ends of the political spectrum. We’re concerned for culture and limited government (in fact, we think they’re inextricable), but we don’t have many good spokesmen in office at the moment.
Oops! “Comment” function appears to be broken. I was responding to Godel’s Ghost in #37
Tom, that’s the same quote Mike used (expanded a bit). Especially with the added context of tone and cadence from the audio, I find myself agreeing with Santorum even more. I agree with Rachel that the statement doesn’t imply big government; rather is implies allowance for some level of government involvement in some capacity whereas libertarians would generally say that there should be no government involvement at all in those areas. Contrary to the pundit in the clip from Napolitano’s show, Santorum’s statement doesn’t mean that he’s against the pursuit of happiness. As our libertarian/conservative threads have brought to light, there are serious differences between the two when it comes to the meaning of various fundamental terms and concepts like pursuit of happiness, harm, community, etc.
Santorum might fail the limited government test for other specific reasons, but this clip is not one of them.
You mean, as influential in conservative politics as the bleeding heart libertarians are in their sphere? That shouldn’t be hard. I myself am terrible at naming names (because I’m terrible at remembering names in the first place) but…
The Front Porch Republicans and Pomocons seems to have a lot of spats involving one side or the other defending what I’d consider to be intrusive government policy on c0nservative grounds. Items defended include public schooling, government-funded (and presumably mandatory for employers) family leave, Catholic distributism, social democracy instead of capitalism, certain “green” or “sustainable” initiatives. Several are mentioned in passing in this post.
Also, occasionally you’ll hear conservatives advocate that stay-at-home-moms should be paid for the service they’re doing for the country, or that all the country’s youth should do national service in order to promote patriotism.
Sometime earlier this summer, I think, NRO’s Pomocon department had a public education fest.
And yeah, Huckabee pisses me off, the Christian statist.
Yes, though I think the problem is more subtle and corrosive than that, which is one of the reasons I regularly highlight the programs and groups I have. With a straightforward government program, you know where to look for the big government lobby. Funding and employment interests are clear.
In the faith-based organizations office, we’ve created groups that appear to be independent, charitable, and driven by their faith. I would go so far as pretend to be those things. As I showed with Community Marriage Builders — and the exercise can be repeated with other faith-based charities — it doesn’t mention government funding in the funding questions, it hides them in the mandated disclosures.
This dodge allows the leaders, staff, and contractors of such organizations to pose as conservatives, especially in Red State communities, while being wards of the State. At least the social worker employed by Child and Family Services is up front about her interest in my wallet. But it’s much more troublesome to me that the guy in the pew next to me can pretend he’s one of us: even better than us because he’s living his faith.
But deep down he’s just another grant writer who’s happy that the IRS bleeds my family to feed his.
I realize that this is another area of libertarian/conservative disagreement, but your examples don’t distinguish between federal and local government. All public schooling counts as big government? Even though you didn’t mention them categorically, your green initiatives line might implicate zoning or building codes too. Are those inherently big government?
I believe Mike Huckabee has said some favorable things about big government in the past, though like most Republicans, he’s of the “I’m for small government except for all these things I care about” sort.
I won’t look for quotes, but I agree. Which is why I was never a Huckabee fan. My sense is that he didn’t even strum that limited government chord all that often.
Our libertarian friends have no monopoly on fury at the big-government conservatives infesting the GOP. I could recite the whole history of the “return to 2008 spending levels” whih the GOP refused to engage on, leading to budget fights which the GOP refused to fight, and CRs that the GOP always accepted (and announced that they would always accept, “There will be no shutdown”), the SuperCommittee (Gang of Twelve), sequestration, de-sequestration, and the blank check that Boehner finally handed Obama, which effectively killed the Tea Party. In four short years, the big government conservatives won their battle against the looming threat of small government.
The GOP has a stranglehold on spending, and they refuse to even pull its leash. The only time anything got cut was a whimsical balancing of defense vs “non-defense” spending which hurt our military far more than it hurt anything else (No NEA funding? Here, have some disability!). With four years of uncontested, record-breaking control of the House and its “front-side veto” over every penny of spending, what did we get? The collapse of the Hastert Rule, because Obama’s Orange Caddy is bent on destroying a small-government bloc.
Well, 200 words… ;-)
Local public schooling would be preferable to state public schooling with federal interference, and so on.
On the other hand, I do believe private schooling would probably be even better for everyone, including the poor. Plus, at this point I really think it’s more feasible to walk away from public schools altogether than it is to try to make your local public school truly local again.
Has anybody mentioned the War on Drugs yet?
I nominate any conservative who supports the War on Drugs. Period.
I’d also nominate any conservative who supported for or supports in any way Alabama’s Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act. (Look it up.)
Also I’d nominate Paul Ryan and any conservative who (like Ryan) voted for TARP and/or (also like Ryan) voted for the auto bailout.
Columnists? Here is Fred Barnes on Big Government Conservatism. Also, you can read anything by David Frum since the end of the Bush administration.
Those are among the most explicit. There are also those who seem genuinely puzzled by the base’s mistrust of its politicians, and attribute it to immature idealism.
I was once naive enough to believe that persistent government growth was caused by the Democrats, and that once Republicans had the Presidency and the Congress, we would begin incremental moves toward smaller government. I was seasoned enough to think that those changes would be too slow to satisfy some people, but as an incrementalist I’d be fine with it.
Then along came George W. Bush and the Republican Congress. Did the government shrink too slowly? Nope. Was there a disappointing deceleration in the rate of government growth? Nope. In fact, government growth accelerated at a rate Bush’s liberal predecessor couldn’t hope too achieve. It was breathtaking to behold.
At the same time, the U.S. started moving downward on the Freedom House’s index of economic freedom. And a major dollar devaluation commenced.
The economy did exactly what one would expect under those circumstances.
You don’t have to want more government to be a big government conservative when big government is what we have. Complacency about the status quo will suffice. This has been the case since at least the New Deal.
Isn’t that exactly what “social conservatism” means? Using government to impose social norms on society?
Otherwise, if you didn’t think government was the medium of doing this, than what’s the point of running on “social issues” for a government position?
Go become a priest instead.
As for the original question of this post: yes, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. Big government types which have not a single “conservative” bone in their body.
1) Pro-Union
2) Pro-tariffs targeted at picking winners and losers in the economy
3) Lots and lots and lots of earmarks
4) Pro-NCLB
5) Pro- Medicare Part B
6) Anti-NAFTA, i.e. anti-free trade
7) Pro “national service”
8) Lots more Federal spending (education requirements in schools, government-financed trust-funds, government finances “community investments” etc.)
What more do you want? Pretty “tame”? Compared to what? Nancy Pelosi? Yes, probably “tame” compared to her.
Of course, many “social conservatives” are perfectly willing to ignore the track records of Santorum and company as long as they spend 95% of their time on the campaign trail talking about condoms and gays.
That seems to be the primary job of government, according to them.
PS: And yes, add GWB to that list of big-government “conservatives” too.
You are wrong on Jeb Bush. He was the first govern in decades that actual shrunk government at the state level. He only had the second or third fastest growing state but reduce the headcount both in real numbers (including for profit contracts) and in public employee count by privatizing. Other governs followed him but he was the first of a crop a reformist governs who actually reduced state government size.
I really hate how there is so much ignorance about what Jeb Bush actually says and does from conservatives. His positions and policies are much more nuanced and don’t fit into these stereotypical RINO policies molds. He is about as competent you can get from a Center Right administrative Technocrat that is conservative on a lot of issues and moderate on others. He would of made a lot better and more conservative president than his brother but he is not going to run. His wife would never agree to it. She hates being a politicians wife.
My local congress man who I loved also voted for it also. His reason was he sold his vote to add a rider ( I don’t remember what is way). I think what happened was a lot of elected officials were sold a bunch of scary boggie man BS and because they were clueless about monetary policies and basic economics so they bought the argument hook line and sinker. I am still upset about the votes but people do stupid things when they think a crisis is happening in areas they know little to nothing about. Politicians are even more susceptible to this type of risk than most people. Unfortunately we don’t have conservatives who are willing to loss for doing the right thing when it comes to the really important things. It all started going downhill a lot faster when almost everyone voted for the Katrina Bail-out.
The late great Chris Christie did a flying tackle on Tesla’s attempt to commit free enterprise in NJ on behalf of the auto dealerships cartel. The Tea Party Congresswoman that took out Ike Skelton, ranking Dem on the Armed Services Committee, immediately turned around and said she had to support higher farm subsidies in the interests of national security. Every blogger and politico that rolled their eyes when the rubes of this country said using TARP subsidies to pay bonuses on Wall Street was morally wrong could fit within your definition.
Can we stipulate that “big-government conservative” is a pejorative?
We label people we disagree with “big-government conservatives.” Does anyone actually self-identify as such?
The point is a belief that progressives are using government to impose their social norms on society (e.g. by redefining marriage) and that we should acknowledge this and fight back to stop them from doing so.
That’s a ridiculous non-sequitur, complete with childish rhetorical trappings.
By doing the same thing as they do? By creating programs that intrude the government into our lives more, so that when Liberals get elected, they can use the exact same programs to impose their social norms?
A “social conservative”, realizing that government is the primary mechanism through which social norms have been destroyed in America over the last half century, should instead be fighting to remove government from our lives.
But that’s not what they’re doing. Hence, I’m not sure what the meaning of the word “conservative” is in their name.