In this article, prominent conservative columnist George Will really lets the Republican establishment have it, for all the bad karma they've been building up over the past few years.
First, he blasts Republicans for their support of teaching "Intelligent Design." Declaring sternly that evolution is a fact (wow, did he say that?), Will lets it be known which side he stands on in the divide between social and business conservatives - and it's not the side that is trying "to conscript government into sectarian crusades."
But he downright erupts over Republicans' wild and reckless spending, throwing out mountains of evidence that "the limited-government impulse is a spent force in [the] Republican Party." He alleges that most of the government's mountains of new spending, which is 65% nonmilitary, is pork doled out to faithful corporate contributors and pet projects. Will (correctly) declares that this spending is threatening the very existence of the modern conservative movement.The more Republicans get elected, the more spending soars.
And the reason for this Republican spending bonanza? Mr. Will attributes it to "Washington's single-minded devotion to rent-seeking -- to bending government for the advantage of private factions." He quotes a University of Virginia professor:
"Perhaps conservatives were naive to expect any party, ever, to resist rent-seeking temptations when in power. Just as there always was something fatally unserious about socialism -- its flawed understanding of human nature -- is it possible that there has also been something profoundly unserious about the limited-government agenda?"
Pardon me, Mr. Will, but I learned an expression in the third grade that seems quite applicable to the question posed by that professor. That expression is "Duh." As I have mentioned before, any movement that seriously wants to limit the government most certainly does not do it by supporting only one political party - especially a party whose main financial support base comes from corporate donations. What Will and the good professor blandly call "rent-seeking" is the natural inclination of any political party that feels like it has free reign to raid the coffers of a wealthy economy. And Will, by his traditional support for the Republican party come hell or high deficits, has contributed the free reign that the Republicans now enjoy.
In making this lament, George Will sounds an awful like the hapless, hand-wringing Democrats who are just now revealing that they really were against the Iraq War all along, in spite of having voted for it. "We didn't know the intelligence was false!" they cry. "Bush tricked us all!" But the truth is that Democrats were not tricked by Bush, since anyone with half or more of an independently functioning brain (as well as yours truly) knew that "Saddam's WMD" was a cock-and-bull story from day one. The truth is that the Democrats voted for the Iraq war because they believed that if they voted against it they would be voted out of office. And in much the same way, I don't think that George Will or others of the conservative movement's leading lights ever truly believed that the Republicans, given the chance, would slash government spending (well, William F. Buckley probably did, but remember that he is an ardent supporter of free weed...). Conservative cheerleaders like Will may have simply seen a powerful movement taking shape and decided that they should be in its corner if they wanted to keep their Washington Post columnist status. In the meantime, they would simply hope the Republicans kept their promises.
And now? What will poor, orphaned conservatives do now that their semi-voluntary veil of ignorance has been lifted? How will they right the ship of (red) state? Will threatens ominously that, if Republicans keep it up, "limited-government conservatives will dissociate from a Republican Party more congenial to overreaching social conservatives." To this, I say, good idea, but don't be surprised if you walk out of the party and no one follows you. Most "conservative" pundits and tastemakers see the mighty Republican political machine, and they know which way the wind blows. They will bend over backward to justify anything the Republicans do, calling anti-conservative policies the essence of conservatism. Their careers secured, they may gradually stop referring to the annoyingly off-message George Will as a conservative. In the end, will people forget that conservatism ever had anything to do with lower government spending?
BONUS READING GUIDE:
1. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer (whose name, if I remember my German, means "cabbage hammer") has joined the ranks of the "off-message conservatives" with this editorial blasting Intelligent Design and the Kansas School Board. The argument is weak (it brings up the "famous scientists believed in God too" canard), but I like the indignant tone.
2. This poll in The Economist shows that Americans are warming to the idea that America should "mind its own business" in international affairs, a proposition that the magazine calls "isolationist." As for opinion, I'm inclined to paraphrase Winston Churchill: the U.S. is the worst of the great power nations...except for all the others. The EU and China running the world might not be a nightmare, but probably wouldn't create the kind of expansion of freedom and prosperity we've seen in the last half century. And that's to say nothing of Russia, Iran, and bin Ladenism...shudder...
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