WAKE UP RUSH: THE ERA OF BIG GOVERNMENT IS NOT OVER

WAKE UP RUSH:
THE ERA OF BIG GOVERNMENT IS NOT OVER

By: Red Phillips

Recently I heard one of Rush Limbaugh’s Morning Updates. Normally I don’t get a chance to hear them because they don’t coincide with my morning drive to work. This is probably a good thing since every time I hear him carrying water for the GOP I’m sure my blood pressure goes through the roof. Since carrying water for the GOP is about 90% of what Rush does with the admirable exception of his opposition to amnesty, that would be a lot of blood pressure spikes. Rush was in his usual optimistic, celebratory, and RNC talking points regurgitating mood. The reason for his optimism was some news from the campaign front. The Sierra Club has decided to redirect to state races some of the money it was planning to spend on competitive congressional races. Rush interpreted this as evidence that the Sierra Club no longer considers the races as competitive as it once did. Hence, the massive Democratic gains in the coming midterm elections that many have been predicting are not likely to occur.

I agree that this is a fair assessment of what the Sierra Club’s move means. I have been skeptical of the Democrat’s predictions of big gains from the beginning. The system (gerrymandering, the Incumbent Protection Act [Campaign Finance Reform], barriers to alternative party ballot access, to name just a few) is rigged so substantially to favor incumbents that sweeping change is unlikely. The biggest thing the GOP has to worry about is that its base will not show up in swing districts, not that angry and disaffected conservatives are going to suddenly become liberal Democrats.

On the right, most of the anger at Bush and the GOP is due to immigration and to a lesser extent spending. In the middle the sources of anger are immigration and the War. The Democrats, however, seem ill prepared to capitalize on these issues. The Democrats, always petrified of running afoul of the PC thought police, are unlikely advocates of an enforcement only and immigration restricting policy, which is what the people want. The Democrats are also in no position to criticize spending. They can criticize deficits because they would attempt to lower the deficit by soaking the rich, but they can’t credibly criticize spending since they are always begging for more. And the elected Democrat’s criticism of the War has, by and large, been tepid for fear of being branded unpatriotic or not supporting the troops.

So in this case, Mr. Limbaugh’s analysis of the election situation seems accurate. So what about it inspired a column? Mr. Limbaugh took the occasion to announce that “The era of big government Democrats is over.” Yeah, right. This statement is a paraphrase of an earlier, equally laughable statement made by Bill Clinton who declared that “the era of big government is over.” The era of big government Republicans isn’t even over. How then is it possible that “the era of big government Democrats is over?” According to the great “conservative” pretender David Brooks, the era of “big government conservatives” (sic) is upon us. Mr. Limbaugh readily concedes the problem of big government RINOs in his own party. Now he is pronouncing them dead in the other party?

This is the kind of triumphalistic, self-congratulatory backslapping that I decried in a recent column. This kind of rhetoric borders on delusional. One commenter stated that he did not recognize the self congratulatory conservatism that I was referring to. Well I submit Mr. Limbaugh’s foolish statement above as exhibit number one. The deficit is spiraling out of control, President Bush has yet to veto a single spending bill (unless you count stem cell research, his only veto to date), Republicans have embraced inherently big government interventionism in foreign policy and a growing security state at home, but we are supposed to rejoice that the big government Democrats have been vanquished. Who needs big government Democrats when you have big government Republicans eager to spend all the money they can get their greedy little hands on and more?

Wake up Mr. Limbaugh. Big government advocacy is alive and well in both parties. In fact some aspects of big government, such as foreign intervention and the security state, you are cheerleading with the best of them. It would actually be closer to the truth to declare significant opposition to big government over. Michael Lind, a center left commentator, made this point recently in a Financial Times column entitled “The Unmourned End of Libertarian Politics." Of course Mr. Lind is rejoicing that small government advocacy is dead, but unfortunately he is much closer to the truth than is Mr. Limbaugh. Aside from a small and largely politically insignificant group of true believers indignantly banging away at our keyboards, big government is unopposed. A first step in reviving true opposition to big government would be for the “conservative” punditocracy, of whom you are chief, to dispense with the triumphalist rhetoric and be honest about how far the “conservative” movement that you and others shepherd has drifted to the big government left. And as a corollary, it must be recognized how utterly ineffective the “conservative” movement has been in preventing that drift. So let’s cease with the declarations of victory and get about the hard task of rolling back the welfare/warfare state.

Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."

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Red Phillips is a physician from Georgia. Red Phillips blogs at www.conservatoroccidentalis.com. He is a regular columnist for Ether Zone.

Red Phillips may be contacted at: redphillipsmd@yahoo.com