Comments on: Conservatives Abandoning the GOP?

By: Roger

Roger — Fri, 12 May 2006 02:23:27 +0000

I guess I should concede that the growth of internet commerce championed by Clinton/Gore had nothing to do with that random "stock market bubble" and that the gutted military Clinton left succeeded on pure random luck in knocking out the Taliban Afghanistan and knocking out the Iraqi military so handily in a matter of weeks. Still, facts are facts.

By: Roger

Roger — Fri, 12 May 2006 02:18:22 +0000

No, just stating the facts.

By: andrew

andrew — Thu, 11 May 2006 06:37:59 +0000

You have to be joking Roger. The Cold War ended and defense spending was cut to around 3% of GDP by the end of the 90's. That's why there was a surplus for a brief period of time. Well, that and a giant stock market bubble which couldn't last forever.

By: Roger

Roger — Thu, 11 May 2006 01:01:29 +0000

The only fiscal conservative in the last quarter century was Bill Clinton. He cut spending and shrunk govt. infrastructure and workforce. Yes, he raised taxes, which he then wisely used to pay down the deficit. Probably no truer conservative in the fiscal sense has served since Washington.

By: Ratoe

Ratoe — Wed, 10 May 2006 15:50:12 +0000

I think Tapscott misses two important points that are driving fiscal conservatives away from Bush and the Republicans.

First, is the simple issue of policy ineptitude. From poor war planning, to the prescription drug madness, to Homeland Security's role in the bureaucratic bungling of disaster relief, there is a growing sense that the folks in charge have little competence.

Many conservatives support--in general--these policies, but have little faith in Bush's judgement in personnel matters. The ineptitutde results in massive waste of government funds.

The second revolves around ethics. When you have a Republican Cabinet official bragging that government contracts are given out as political favors--rather than on the basis of cost effectiveness--this should turn off any citizen who demands responsive governance.

It will be interesting to see how Bush responds to the Alphonso Jackson scandal. Anything short of a sacking will be tantamount to an embrace of a culture of corruption.

By: yetanotherjohn

yetanotherjohn — Wed, 10 May 2006 15:36:08 +0000

I think your point number one is the key one. To look beyond the two parties you have to assume a third party that would 1) really be absolutely reliable on fiscal restraint, 2) able to simultaneously win the presidency and enough seats in congress to uphold a presidential veto. What is much more realistic is that you would find the third party throwing the election to the party the third party supporters dislike the most. A far left third party would guarantee a republican victory as it pulled votes out of the democratic party. Likewise for a far right third party ensuring a democratic win. A truly centrist third party would depend on the primary issue it was running on as to which party it would hurt most. If it truly pulled uniformly from both parties (almost a definition of being a centrist party), then it wouldn't change the election, but I can guarantee that the losing party would see the "defectors" as the cause of their loss.

If you look at the recent three votes on earmarks, you found (a) the votes were all close with no vote more than 4 votes from switching, (b) there were democrats and republicans on both sides of the issue and (c) more republicans were voting against the earmarks and the number of republicans was higher than their proportion of senate seats and more democrats were voting for the earmarks and doing so out of proportion to their numbers.

This is not an issue that either party is marching in lock step, though the republicans hold a slim preference towards fiscal restraint compared to the democrats. Given that the current number of republicans is as high a number of republicans in the house or senate as we have seen in the last 75 years, the answer may actually lie in increasing the number of republicans. If republicans voted in the same proportion as they have and democrats voted in the same proportion, then adding 3 more republicans would have let all three votes to block pork pass.

You can read more at the link

http://blogs.wizbangblog.com/2006/05/04/what-a-bipartisan-senate-can-agree-on.php

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Wed, 10 May 2006 13:57:11 +0000

The Republicans have only been a Movement Conservative party nominally since 1964 and practically since 1980. Both Goldwater and Reagan talked about fiscal discipline.

Ironically, the last Republican president who was truly a fiscal hawk was Eisenhower, who no one really thinks of as a "conservative."

By: Dave Schuler

Dave Schuler — Wed, 10 May 2006 13:45:20 +0000

James, could you explain to me the process by which fiscal conservatives have convinced themselves that there was a time that fiscal conservatism dominated the Republican Party and Republicans held both houses of Congress? That ain't the way I remember it. My recollection is that neither Republicans nor Democrats were particularly opposed to federal government spending—they just differed on how they wanted to spend the dough.

I've sometimes wondered if a significant difference between “conservatives” and “progressives” (not scare quotes: I don't think either term is too apt at this point) is that conservatives hearken back to a (generally imaginary) Golden Age some time in the past and for progressives the (mostly illusory) Golden Age is always in the future.