Opinion: Flaking, Itching, Swelling
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One highlight of last week’s sack of the GOP is the emergence of Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) as the party’s Aeneas. Small-government conservatives are angling to get control of the scattered Republican forces (and possibly defeat a House minority leadership bid by Ohio’s get-along-go-along Rep. John Boehner). Toward that end, they’re lining up behind principled conservatives like Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) and looking for particular energy from the Apache State—small-government conservatism’s true home—in the form of Rep. John Shadegg and the always impolitic Flake.
Dig Flake’s hilariously candid pre-election interview with my alma matter on the vexed question of why libertarians should have voted for the GOP. His answer: ‘If you believe in limited government, the Democrats don’t offer you very much... But having said that, there’s nothing we’ve done as Republicans that ought to make libertarians excited about our record.’ Asked whether the GOP has abandoned its small-government ideals: ‘Well, that’s the natural conclusion to draw.’ What could a Republican congress do to win pro-freedom votes? ‘At this late date? Adjournment.’ And have they learned the hard lessons? ‘Maybe the [Terri] Schiavo experience or the prescription drug deal or some of the other items have taught us a lesson. I can’t honestly say that they have.’
Flake has also hit The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page post-election, with a set of recommendations/lamentations about how the Republicans can get their groove back. His article is for subscribers only, but you can get the general gist through Sentence Fast-Forward®:
I was rummaging through my closet the other day when I came across an old T-shirt. Stamped across the front were the words ‘SCRAP THE CODE: The Armey-Tauzin Tax Reform Debates.’... What a difference a few years makes... And we wonder why we were beaten like a rented mule on Tuesday?... The factions of the party must decide: Are we going to re-emerge as the party of ideas—or be content as assistant hirelings of big government?... ‘We’ve overspent, badly, and it was offensive to you as well as our conservative principles. We’re sorry, and we’re going to do better...’ In 2002, we repealed the Freedom to Farm Act and in its place installed the ‘Farm Security Act’—those who value the adage about trading freedom for security can pause and shudder here—with even more lavish subsidies...
On one point, I suspect even Flake is too optimistic. ‘[O]ur constituents need no convincing,’ he writes. ‘They know [excessive spending] is wrong.’ Even candid politicians need to dispense bromides about the wisdom of the electorate, but exit polling doesn’t seem to have furnished evidence that Republican overspending was an issue for most voters. There was this pre-election CNN/Opinion Research poll indicating 54 percent of Americans believe the government is ‘trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses’ and only 37 percent feel Uncle Sam ‘should do more to solve the country’s problems.’ But this is the old My Parish Priest/My Kid’s Teacher thing: Everybody agrees the institution is rotten to the core, but nobody sees their own little corner as being part of the institution. If Republicans in power act pretty much like Democrats, that’s because nothing wins more friends than concentrated benefits with distributed costs. Start finding specific areas to reduce and you find spending cuts are as unlikely to pass the Dicky Flatt test as spending increases.