Dan

Calabrese

Read Dan's bio and previous columns here

November 10, 2008

Conservatives Didn’t Do Their Jobs, So America Fired Them

Conservatism in America is in the toilet today for one simple reason: When given the chance to govern according to their philosophy, conservatives failed.

And when you fail, you lose.

America did not decide in 2008 that it loved big government, redistributionist economic policies and foreign policy weakness. The majority of Americans don’t want any of those things, and won’t be happy if they are foisted upon them. But the voters weren’t really thinking about that when they went to the polls last Tuesday. They were simply firing the people who didn’t do their jobs.

Any discussion of where conservatism goes from here has to begin with an examination of why, given control of Congress and the White House from 2001 through 2006, conservatives did not get federal spending under control, reform the tax code, fix Social Security or resume serious domestic oil production.

But it really begins and ends with spending, especially domestic spending. Those who recall the Reagan years will remember the frustration we felt over President Reagan’s inability to cut federal spending down to size. But since spending originates in the House of Representatives, and Democrats controlled the House, we were left to dream of some wonderful day when Republicans might somehow manage to take control of all government’s levers. Then, we assured ourselves, we would see a slash job that would make limited government a fact, not just a way to describe our unrealized philosophy.

For the first six years of the Bush presidency, this dream scenario existed – except for the part about cutting spending and limited government. Given all the power necessary to do what Republicans say they are in favor of, Republicans did no such thing. Instead, they spent like drunken sailors, expanding existing programs, introducing new ones and bringing home the federal bacon to their districts just as shamelessly as the Democrats did.

It will be tempting for conservatives to shun responsibility for this by offering three excuses, all of which are B.S.:

1. It was President Bush’s fault. He was a big-government president. B.S. Even if Bush was that, spending originates in Congress. Bush did not veto their spending orgies, and he should have, but Bush didn’t tell them to engage in the spending orgies in the first place. If congressional Republicans cared about limited government, they would have made it a priority. They didn’t. They cared about redirecting federal largesse to their favored constituencies. The responsibility for that is theirs.

2. It wasn’t conservatives. It was “RINOs.” (Republicans In Name Only) B.S. Some of the biggest pork-barreling Republicans of the past eight years have been pro-war, pro-tax-cut, anti-abortion right-wing heroes on almost every issue. But with all-too-few notable exceptions (one being John McCain), they couldn’t say no to spending for themselves or for each other. Conservatives have to face up to the fact that their own kind were guilty. It wasn’t just Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins who spent themselves silly. It was almost all of them.

3. We couldn’t pass any real reforms because Democrats had the numbers to sustain a filibuster! B.S. First, there’s no filibuster in the House, and that’s where Republican spending was worst. Second, no one forced the Republican leadership to give the Democrats a de facto veto on any legislation that didn’t have 60 votes. Wimpy Bill Frist refused to make the Democrats stand in the well of the Senate for days on end reading the phone book in order to sustain a filibuster. Third, if congressional Republicans really wanted to win on this issue, they could have exercised leadership and taken their case to the public. And they could have grown a pair rather than running for the tall grass when President Bush – who wanted to reform Social Security and the tax code, and wanted to drill, drill, drill – found himself hemorrhaging political capital. Congressional Republicans didn’t rein in spending or do the other things because they didn’t want to. Period. They wanted to stay fat and happy and buy votes.

Conservatism is unbeatable until conservatives actually get elected. That’s when you have to start telling people that goodies to which they have grown accustomed are being discontinued. That’s when you have to start telling people that if they don’t work hard and learn to access opportunity, yeah, they will be poor. That’s when you have to start telling governors and big-city mayors that if they don’t have enough money, they’ll have to stop spending so much, because Washington isn’t going to send them checks anymore.

That’s also when you have to start telling the business, civic and community leaders in your own community, who helped you get elected, that self-reliance applies to them too.

“Come on, Congressman! Just one grant for the community college? Just one ballfield? Just one bike trail? Please? We raised money for you!”

Anyone can win a debate with a liberal over how Washington taxes and spends too much. From 1994 through 2004, we found lots of conservatives who had no trouble doing that, and we got them elected to Congress. What they did have trouble doing was governing. They found themselves face-to-face with the cold, steely eyes of the system, and the system ate them up.

There’s a lot that could be said about the message of conservatism, and there will be plenty of future columns in which we can deal with that. But it doesn’t matter what you advocate if you don’t do it when given the chance.

Conservatives had (and still have) the right ideas, but they didn’t do their jobs, so America fired them. Until you change that, nothing else you do or say will matter.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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