The Governing Philosophy of the Modern GOP

A few days ago, in the middle of a discussion on Newshour, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks made the following rather extraordinary observation (hat tip Mark Kleiman):

"I think Republicans have in their minds we are
the anti-government party. We came to shrink
government. So they say that out on the
campaign trail. But when you are the majority
party actually governing, it doesn't work.
People want the problem solved. So instead of
having a governing philosophy that will tell
them I'm going to spend it here but not there,
they have a governing philosophy that is
irrelevant to actually governing. So they take
that anti-governing philosophy and they just
toss it out the window and when they get here
and spend like sailors. So what you have is a
governing philosophy that doesn't apply to the
real world, so they have no sense of priorities,
no sense of what's important and what's not,
no sense of restraint and where to direct
their effort."

Though this statement is damning enough, it actually understates the problem. It's not just that the GOP has "a governing philosophy that is irrelevant to actually governing," it's that they have a governing philosophy that is incompatible with actually governing, at least in the long term. Big government conservatism is not a coherent or sustainable governing philosophy. It's simply an oxy-moronic slogan, a phrase that future historians will use to describe a period in our history when our near-sighted and reality-averse leaders attempted to defy the basic rules of governing, accounting, and math.

For a perfect illustration of this phenomenon, we need look no further than conservative standard-bearer, Bill Kristol. Kristol's latest piece in the Weekly Standard has the unintentionally ironic title Back to the Basics: The path to political health and successful governance. In it, Kristol pays lip service to all the trouble President Bush has encountered since his reelection and reassures conservatives that "[a]ll of this is water over the levee, so to speak. The good news is that Bush is poised to rebound by getting back to basics, and getting back to a core, winning agenda." What is the primary domestic component of this core winning agenda? You guessed it: tax cuts. Kristol writes:

"With respect to the economic agenda, Social
Security reform is now dead. This clears the
way for a focus on economic growth, and on
tax cuts. The administration will correctly
insist that the budget reconciliation bill
include an extension of the capital gains and
dividend tax cuts."

He concludes that "the administration needs to insist on these cuts, and move as quickly as possible to make the other tax cuts permanent." To be fair, Kristol mentions in passing that there need to be spending cuts as well, but he doesn't offer much in the way of specifics, and it's abundantly clear where his priorities lie (his vague call for spending discipline comes only after he lays out his very specific tax cutting agenda).

Kristol and like-minded Republicans are like the medieval doctors who thought that the cure for all ailments was a good blood-letting. For Kristol, the answer is always tax cuts. Whether we're enjoying good economic times or enduring bad, whether it's peacetime or war, whether we have a budget surplus or a gaping deficit, the proper course of action is always to cut taxes (and in a way that disproportionately benefits the wealthiest Americans). The ballooning size of our deficit doesn't matter to Kristol. He lives in the world of new math, where up is down, left is right, and the way to balance the budget is to cut revenue.

As Brooks himself has admitted in another rare moment of lucidity, the GOP has never reconciled its big government spending policies with its small government tax policy. This massive bit of cognitive dissonance is troubling enough. But the problem is compounded by the simple fact that the GOP has never bothered to lay out exactly what its big government spending policies are. GOP lawmakers are in such a state of denial about the incoherence of their governing philosophy that they've never bothered to develop spending priorities, much less explain them to voters. We know exactly what taxes the GOP would like to cut or eliminate, but when it comes to spending, we're left to guess. Here's my humble bit of advice for Republican politicians: it's time for you to do some serious soul-searching and self-reflection. The voters need to know what you believe in, but before they can do that, you have to figure it out for yourselves.

UPDATE: Another great quote from David Brooks (hat tip Andrew Sullivan):

"Sometimes in my dark moments, I think
[George W. Bush] is 'The Manchurian Candidate'
designed to discredit all the ideas I believe in."