While I have strongly praised the GOP for embracing entitlement reform and supporting the Ryan budget, I’m not under any illusions that the average Republican politician is fully committed to free markets and limited government.
Even after the Tea Party election of 2010, there have been some very disappointing moments.
- Republicans have been using Keynesian arguments to oppose budget cuts.
- Republicans have expanded federal transportation funding.
- Republicans have increased the budget of the Export-Import Bank.
- Republicans have boosted subsidies for housing.
This doesn’t mean that GOPers are hopeless, but it does confirm my point that almost all politicians are a combination of good and bad impulses. It’s sort of like they have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other shoulder.
So who is winning, the angel or the devil? The Wall Street Journal opines in favor of the angel.
Four years in the wilderness seem to have had the salutary effect of returning the Party of Lincoln to a focus on government reform and economic revival. …The surprise is how quickly the GOP has rebounded from the routs of 2006 and 2008, starting in the states. …The reform momentum has since gained speed as a reaction to the Obama Presidency. First in 2009 with Chris Christie in New Jersey and Bob McDonnell in Virginia, Governors from the East across the Midwest and through the Southwest have won on reform agendas that they have been able to implement to varying degrees. …The common theme is ‘s ability to finance them. The contrast of these GOP states couldn’t be greater with the union-dominated Democratic governments of Illinois, California and Connecticut, which resist reform and simply default to ever-higher taxes. …The reform impulse has carried over to Washington, thanks to the Congressional victories of 2010. …Much of the credit here goes to the Tea Party, which has used GOP primaries to elevate reformers and motivate incumbents to change or face defeat.
I agree with much of the column, particularly the credit to the Tea Party and the indirect reference (“restraining governments that were growing far more rapidly than the private economy”) to Mitchell’s Golden Rule.
But I’m more pessimistic about whether the GOP has truly learned the right lessons from the failures of Bush-Rove era. Take this quiz and see if you share my qualms.
- If Mitt Romney wins and proposes to burden the U.S. economy with a value-added tax, would a majority of Republicans rise up in revolt and oppose that dangerous idea?
- If Mitt Romney wins and decides to only make cosmetic changes to Obamacare, would most Republicans rebel and push to fully repeal the costly legislation?
- If Mitt Romney wins and endorses a new version of TARP, would the Republican caucus stand firm in opposition?
To be blunt, I don’t think a majority of Republicans would do the right thing if these tests took place. The GOP leaders on the Hill, after all, are the same crowd that gladly supported all the reckless spending and foolish intervention of the Bush years.
Yes, there are some fresh faces and Tea Party types who would stand with taxpayers, but I don’t think they’re anywhere close to being a majority of the GOP caucus.
And don’t forget that the Republican establishment in Washington is heavily influenced by corrupt lobbyists – many of them former GOP politicians!
So what’s it all mean? Well, as the cartoon indicates, Republicans are now more likely to say the right thing. But rhetoric is easy. I’m much more interested in their actions.
The only great president of my lifetime famously said “trust, but verify.” But I don’t even trust the GOP, so I definitely want to see results first.
P.S. If you like the cartoon, you’ll like this poster featuring Ron Paul and this English-to-Republicanese dictionary.
International Liberty 
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A VAT proposed by Romney, or the Republicans more generally, would be catastrophic. Democrats will surely go along, even if it hurts primarily the middle and lower class, as they see it.
Democrats are no less eager to capture the lower and mid class into mandatory collectivism as they are about having the rich finance the major product of politics: Mandatory collectivism — with the emphasis and seminal difference on “mandatory”.
The middle and lower class is where the bulk of votes is. Capturing that group into a welfare state of catch-22 dependency is the holy grail of a profession whoose main product is mandatory collectivism: politicians. Even if that means a predictable low growth economic trendline to decline.
You are only in politics for a few years, your best inherrent interests as a politician are to sell as much mandatory collectivism as possible. You can always blame low growth and decline on not enough mandatory collectivism. Experience shows that you have to really hit bottom ( eg imploding Soviet Union) for that argument to start losing traction. And even so amongst populations steeped in the mentality of mandatory collectivism, even after the implosion, mandatory collectivism returns with a different face (Putin).
Asking politicians to support individual freedom and free markets is like asking butchers to promote more vegetarian diets. A few will, but how many? Don’t entrust your vegan plan to a butcher. Don’t hope that politicians will stand up for individual freedom in any meaningful numbers. It is up to the population and individuals to uphold and preserve the serendipitous ideas established at the creation of America. Alas, you can see where it’s going. The sirens of prosperity shortcuts through mandatory collectivism are singing once again. And Americans are now listening, catastrophically, a the very same time when a humanity of three billion competitors are starting to break free of the same sirens that kept them enslaved fir decades and centuries The writing is on the wall for western world voter lemmings.
It’s your choice. You can bet that the collision with the iceberg won’t be too bad or you can look for a life boat. History shows that populations tend to be particularly myopic to impending disasters. Most Jews stayed in Germany well into the late 1930s. For the western world, the economic decline of the welfare state will come way-way before the world experiences another 0.5C of warming along the Al Gore scare graphs, filled with hubris about what the state of humanity will be in centuries. On a historical time scale, western world decline is just around the corner. It is actually well underway and irreversibly accelerating as western world voter lemmings adopt the very mandatory collectivism now beginni to be rejected by three billion awakening competitors. Wake up! Take an extended business trip through Asia and the three billion emerging world who is starting to adopt the very western ideas that western world voter lemmings are rejecting.
The RNC told the states that they are going to choose the delegates and tell them who to vote for as well. It’s like Obama-lite. Figuratively. Maybe literally as well.
Do You Trust the Republican Party to Protect, Promote, and Defend Liberty?
NO They’re just a bunch of venal, self-serving, power-hungry liars (on the whole), just like the Democrats.