A NEW REAGAN? [Andrew Stuttaford]
NRO
I do think that it's worth emphasizing again that you don't have to be a green eyeshade type, or balanced budget obssessive (I'm neither) to think that Bush's spending goes far beyond anything that could remotely be considered 'conservative'. Boosting spending to avoid deflation in 2001 made sense, as (obviously) does spending relating to the terrorist threat, Katrina (mostly), and the war against Islamic extremism, but this administration has been blowing taxpayer dollars in a way that beggars belief, and eventually may beggar the country.
Over at Reason Veronique de Rugy and Nick Gillespie do some of the numbers. Check out the statistics for the increase in non-defense, non-homeland security discretionary spending for the first five years of the Bush administration. According to de Rugy and Gillespie it has increased by 36 percent, compared with the fall of 11.1 percent under Reagan alluded to by Peter. Bush may be many good things, but he's no Reagan.
Gillespie and De Rugy sum up thus:
Bush and LBJ alone massively increased defense and nondefense spending. Perhaps not coincidentally, Bush and LBJ also shared control of the federal purse with congressional majorities from their own political parties. Which only makes Bush's performance more troubling. Like a lax parent who can't or won't discipline his self-centered toddler, he has exercised virtually no control whatsoever over Congress. In the wake of massive new funding for the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Bush did timidly suggest that some of the new money be matched by reductions in pork projects embedded in the just-passed transportation bill. The Republican response to such efforts is summed up by Alaska Rep. Don Young's reply to critics of a $223 million "bridge to nowhere" in Ketchikan. Proponents of budgetary "offsets" can "kiss my ear," Young told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, adding that paying for Katrina-related measures by trimming transportation pork is "the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
Depressing.
"CONSERVATIVE" [Jonah Goldberg]
Andrew - As you know I am sympathetic to your point of you on this (and I'm sure John Pod's ears are burning that he has silenced himself on this).
But, I think there's a basic conceptual problem here which stems from the fact that -- contrary to stereotypes -- conservative dogma remains unsettled. And as I'm writing a column on this right now, I thought I'd jump in.
I've long argued that there are two kinds of conservatives, those who are anti-Left and those who are anti-State. These two approaches usually overlap not just in terms of factions, but in our own minds. Most of us are a little of both. As a libertarian I think it's fair to say you're considerably more anti-State than you are anti-left. George W. Bush is considerably more anti-Left than he is anti-State. But does that make him less of a conservative?
Here's a hypothetical. Imagine that Bush or some other Republican managed to purge successfully the entire staff at PBS, NPR and the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. Imagine he replaced them with die-hard conservatives and libertarians of all stripes who produced indisputably conservative or rightwing programming -- of very high quality no doubt. But imagine the News Hour with a decidedly conservative sensibility. Imagine outstanding documentaries depicting Castro as a murderous thug and Stalin as a co-equal of Hitler in historic evil. Imagine stories on how regulations and bureaucracy stifle new medicines from coming on the market. Etc etc.
According to the way you seem to be describing things, conservative state-controlled radio and TV is oxymoronic. But how many people would agree that this new PBS is a leftwing or "non-conservative" enterprise? The left surely would think not, and my guess is a great many conservatives wouldn't either. Libertarians would call it conservative "statism" or some such.
In short, I think Bush is a big government conservative, but he's still a conservative. |
