Former Catoite Radley Balko argues that the Republican Party deserves to lose because it "has exiled its Goldwater-Reagan wing and given up all pretense of any allegiance to limited government." He goes on to detail all the sordid ways in which the GOP has indeed betrayed its allegedly pro-free market, limited government beliefs and thus "forfeited its right to govern."
I don't disagree with any of Balko's analysis but I do take issue with his conclusion for one very simple (some would say banal) reason: The best way to limit the federal Leviathan is to have Congress and the presidency controlled by different parties. See, for example, the relevant parts of former Catoite Stephen Slivinski's book, Buck Wild: How the Republicans Broke the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government. Slivinski calculates that when one party controls the political branches, the growth of real per capita government spending is 3.4%. Under divided government, the rate is 1.5%. And it doesn't much matter whether Democrats or Republicans control are in sole charge: 3.3% government growth under Democrats vs. 3.6% under Republicans. The most libertarian combination seems to be a Democratic president with a Republican Congress, where the average rate of government growth is 0.4%. (This is also the rarest alignment in modern times, so it may be less significant statistically.)
In short, yes the Bush administration, enabled by a corrupt (ideologically and otherwise) Republican Congress, has been the second coming of LBJ. But rather than reward a party whose leaders in Congress have even lower approval ratings than President Bush with unified control of government -- giving the Democrats a mandate to turn American into some sort of socialist workers' paradise -- I suggest letting it gain in Congress (preferably without a filibuster-proof Senate because judges and international treaties are my pet issues) while losing the White House. Which isn't to say that this would necessarily be better than a President Obama with a Republican Congress, just that the chance of the GOP taking over even one house of Congress is only slightly greater than the chance that Bob Barr will be elected president.
In sum, if we want divided government -- and I for one certainly do -- we had best let at least one Republican win.
[Cross-posted from Cato's blog.]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
1 comment:
Good post. Divided Government is also consistent with the intent of the founders when they built checks, balances and separation of power into the Constitution. What they did not anticipate, is how single party rule undermines these constitutional protections. I have been beating the divided government drum for two years on my blog. I voted for John Kerry to get divided government in 2004 and lost. I supported a straight Dem ticket in 2006 to get divided government and won. This year I will vote to re-elect divided government by supporting John McCain.
This scholarly article from a Constitutional lawyer puts more than a little academic cred behind the divided government thesis. The only way to re-elect Divided Government in 2008, is elect John McCain for President. It is the right thing to do.
Post a Comment