American conservatism has grown so angry that it has become a parody of its former self. Tax cuts are always right (even if they inflate the deficit); government activism is always wrong (even if stimulus helped avert a depression). And the right’s hypocrisy when it comes to spending on conservative projects (prisons, the armed forces, subsidies to big business) is breathtaking. George W. Bush presided over a huge growth in government. . . .The Economist is not happy with Obama, either, but it seems to me they are downright disgusted with Tea Party-era Republicanism.
Our prejudice is firmly in favour of a leaner state, but the Republicans need to recognise, as their intellectual forebears did from Adam Smith to Abraham Lincoln, that government has an important role to play in a capitalist economy, providing public goods and a safety net. Teddy Roosevelt broke up over-mighty companies, rather than doling out tax breaks to them. Why on earth are people who champion a small state supporting an expensive war on drugs that has filled the prisons to bursting point without reducing the supply of narcotics? But the Republicans’ main problem is taxes. Successful deficit-reduction plans require at least some of the gap—perhaps around a quarter—to be closed by new revenue.
I used to read several conservative writers and publications to get some balance in my political perspective. But except for George Will, all of the conservatives I used to follow have now turned against the Republican Party: David Frum, Kevin Phillips, Andrew Sullivan, and pretty much all the British Tories. David Brooks is clinging to a position as a "both sides are at fault" centrist. Those writers who have stuck with the party have gotten, it seems to me, ever more shrill and less interesting. There is a case to be made for conservatism, but Republicans are not making it; I would say, actually, that conservative arguments now tell more strongly against Republicans than against Democrats.
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