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06 Nov 2008 08:54 am

"A Small Government Conservative"

Freddie has a smart post on faux small government:

You didn't hear John McCain agitate against Medicare, or Social Security, or the prescription drug benefit. I highly doubt you would have heard any of his rivals for the GOP nomination do so, either. Being the candidate who tells the American people he's going to cut their benefits is political suicide. If you think the McCain-Palin ticket performed poorly with elderly voters in key states like Ohio, Virginia, and Florida, well-- I invite you to imagine how they would have done if they had been perceived as threatening social security, a cherished (yes, cherished) American institution.

The American population is graying rapidly. We will have an unprecedentedly large number of senior citizens moving forward. Elderly people vote. If there was any ideological space in this country for meaningful entitlement reform, it be crushed before that simple fact of demographics. I don't think people understand what a massive change for America this prescription drug benefit was. Preventing a new entitlement from being passed is a far easier thing than revoking one which already exists. Of all the reasons conservatives have for anger towards George Bush, I think the existence of this new, enormous and expensive federal entitlement might be the biggest. He spearheaded a new and costly expenditure for the American government that, once calcified and entrenched, has very little chance of being taken away, and no chance of being taken away without massive political consequences.

Some would say that small government conservatism doesn't require entitlement reform. I think this is a strange definition of small government. But suppose conservatives content themselves with chipping away at the margins, shrinking government in the spaces between the vast expenditures of military spending and entitlement programs. I still think the existence of these vast governmental programs undercut the case for small government. Perception matters, and more and more Americans seem to perceive that government is the appropriate vehicle for positive social change. I simply don't see much stigma attached to the use of government assistance, and I find less and less people who feel any real commitment to "getting the government out of their day to day life." They say they are small government conservatives. What can that appelation possibly mean, when they feel perfect comfort in an expanding state apparatus?

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