Huck and "Big Government conservatism"

Sayeth Goldberg:

It is the job of "fusionist" conservatives to convince the socially conservative to be economically conservative as well.

But why should they believe the fusionists? Honestly, why? The majority of true social conservatives and religious traditionalists today are either 1) part of the rural and/or downscale suburban worlds that need and desire assistance from the government--whether they'll admit to it or not--to take back some control in lives that outsourcing and big corporations have robbed of much of the security and social networks which once resulted from the regular work, affordable healthcare, and stable neighborhoods and school districts common in an earlier generation; or 2) part of upscale suburban or exurban worlds that have benefited at least in part from exactly those same policies, whether in the form of school loans or environmental regulations or whatever else. Put that together, and the appeal which the "fusionists" make to social conservatives to see the chimera "small government" as their natural home seems based on ideology and nothing more; certainly it can't be primarily based on actual lived experience.

quote: "My disgust with Bush and the late, unlamented Republican Congress is not that they spent so much money (though that's part of it). My real disgust is that they spent on credit."

Exactly. Both Reagan (who is idealized too much by Republicans) and Bush really ran up the deficit. Of course, there are situations like a depression or a world war in which deficit spending may well be necessary.
But ordinarily it is not. And while conservatives like to talk about wasteful government programs, deficit spending is even worse because it is putting it on the taxpayer's tab with interest. It's as wasteful and stupid as running up a credit card bill.
I find it interesting that Romney has attacked McCain for opposing Bush's tax cuts. Well, it turns out these tax cuts have in part caused our deficit to explode. McCain seems a lot wiser on this issue, and Republicans who think that being fiscally conservative is just about tax cuts need to think again.

rr

***I think it's completely fair to judge that Huckabee is no proponent of small government.***

Based on what reasoning? Everyone seems to repeat that same talking points about Huckabee being a "economic populist" but they never provide evidence to back it up. Huckabee has talked about reducing spending more than anyone in the race.

C'mon, Rod, the counter-narrative (i.e., the truth) is just waiting for someone to pick it up and run with it.

It is a bigger leap of faith to think there will ever be enough small-government partisans elected to enact such a program than to accept an incarnate deity. The small government purists in the GOP, such as the Sage of Bethesda, Prof. Will, are ever more out of touch, despite Will's acknowledgement in the 80s that the American people have an enormous appetite for government.

Americans want it all but too many don't seem to expect to have to pay for it. That mindset doesn't just function at the government level.

I agree, I think one of the frustrations of many conservatives is that no matter who we have put in office, government continues to grow. I think that is in part because the president isn't the only factor in the game. There is the whole Congress, and then there is the whole government machine itself. Plus, one of the downsides to reducing the nation's biggest employer's payroll, is unemployment will rise. Which then might give us a truer picture of the unemployment picture, but no president wants to have a rise in unemployment on their record.

So, in the same way that no conservative president has been successful at reducing government, it could be that one said to be more prone to "big government" policies might actually end up reducing government in the long run, or at least a whole lot less of a rise than some of the current contenders for the throne. After all, some could argue that Bill Clinton grew the government less than many conservatives.

I think after several years of this, perhaps the real issue is that fewer are actually believing that the people who say they can, actually can or will do it. So, why not give credit to someone who isn't claiming he will. He actually has the persuasive ability to have a shot at actually doing it (for whoever the president is, one thing they must do is sell it to the American public and that influences the Congress). I don't see any of the other candidates having that ability. They won't shrink the government.

The only other one with a potential ability to actually do that is probably McCain. He knows the Congress and has the connections, knows how to deal with them than any of the other Rep. candidates. But, I don't know if he could win. And I have concerns about him.

As for fusionism, it exists practically but not ideologically.

I disagree, Jim; I think the only place where fusionism resonates today is in almost entirely artificially constructed ideological environs--like, for example, the blogosphere--rather than in the actual political world. I think fusionism may well have had some purchase on real-world politics during the Cold War; but once communist tyranny disappeared as the antipode everyone could measure themselves against, arguments about whether our moderate welfare-state democratic government should or shouldn't act to lower interest rates on school loans or increase tax breaks for farmers could only be productively cast into a "conservative (=small government) vs. liberal (=big government)" format with the help of some genuine ideological arm-twisting, as well as some political scare-mongering.

Russell Arben Fox
I think fusionism may well have had some purchase on real-world politics during the Cold War; but once communist tyranny disappeared as the antipode everyone could measure themselves against, arguments about whether our moderate welfare-state democratic government should or shouldn't act to lower interest rates on school loans or increase tax breaks for farmers could only be productively cast into a "conservative (=small government) vs. liberal (=big government)" format with the help of some genuine ideological arm-twisting, as well as some political scare-mongering.

Yeah, almost no problem is solvable by looking at it through the lens of thinking less government is a good thing. (Nor is it solvable by thinking more government is a good thing, but, contrary to what the right things, the left does not actually believe 'Government should be bigger' as a philosophy.)

There are different legitimate ideological ways of looking at a problem, but 'Using the government is a bad thing' is not one of them, especially for, duh, people in charge of government policy.

And now all the legitimate ways of 'looking at problems' are very confusing, as almost everyone who wants to use the government to solve problems has end up on the left, and their ideologies have gotten all mixed together. Liberals and few different strains of progressives from different eras all jumbled up.

Here's one example: A combination of 'we must have racial equality', a liberal issue, and 'poor people can never get ahead', a progressive issue, has resulted in Affirmative Action, which attempts to lift poor black people out of poverty.

This is incredibly inane, as there are plenty of poor white people also stuck in poverty. Trying to 'equalize' the number of poor people across races is completely and utterly idiotic as a government policy.

But that's what happen when you just get a bunch of random ideologies all mixed together, instead of a progressive party arguing that poor people should be uplifted and a liberal party arguing that black people should have equal opportunities. Somehow, 'poor people' vs. 'black people', and 'uplift' vs. 'equality', got commingled and here we are.

But I don't blame the left, I blame the party that used to have the liberal issues and decided instead that all government was bad, that the most important 'liberty' was to not pay taxes, instead of everyone having the right to use the same water fountains.