republicans

Fighting Big Government: Not Why, But How

by Ivan Osorio on December 8, 2008 · 14 comments

in Economy, Features, Politics as Usual

Bill Kristol, in his New York Times column, argues for Republican timidity in fighting big government. His reason? Conservative Republicans have achieved little in that regard, since “in the real world of Republican governance…there aren’t a whole lot of small-government Republicans,” and “talk of small government may be music to conservative ears, but it’s not to the public as a whole.”

So what? That just means that the fight will be much harder than advocates of small government have envisioned to date. That’s a reason to redouble efforts, not give up. Kristol concludes:

I can’t help but admire some of my fellow conservatives’ loyalty to the small-government cause. It reminds me of the nobility of Tennyson’s Light Brigade, as it charges into battle: “Theirs but to do and die.” Maybe it would be better, though, first to reason why.

Conservatives long ago reasoned why the fight for small government must be fought. Now the reasoning to be done is not why, but how.

Bailout: Where it all went wrong for McCain

by Iain Murray on November 4, 2008 · 3 comments

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Politics as Usual

Assuming, as most nonpartisan observers do, that Sen. Obama is walking away with this election today, it might behoove Republicans and their supporters to ask why a seemingly close election in early September got away from them so badly. For one potential answer, I can do no better than point them to The Short View on Financial Times TV (general link here). In the episode for yesterday, November 3rd, John Authers points once again, as he has several times before, to the correlation between the turn in Sen. McCain’s fortunes and the collapse of Lehmann Bros. Frank Luntz is one of many to have suggested that the failure of the McCain campaign to react by opposing the Administration’s bailout package was decisive. As Frank says,

That decision alone would have made him a hero to tens of millions of hard-working middle-class voters who resent seeing their tax dollars handed over to fund the retirement packages of the Billionaire Boys Club. But he didn’t.

In short, it’s the economy, stupid. Surprisingly for a self-described maverick, it appears to have been Sen. McCain’s desire to cling to the self-serving nostrums of Wall Street and the Beltway that doomed him.

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