Tuesday's memo

Last week E. J. Dionne examined a fabrication that for decades has infected vast segments of the electorate while denoting, in the real world, virtually nothing. The fabrication has come dressed in tidy "catchphrases" -- "that politics comes down to a choice between being for 'big government' or 'small government,'" which, as Dionne observed, is "one of the most useless" arguments in politics.

That the argument dwells as merely one among "the most useless" is undeniable. I'd go one step farther, however, and submit it's the single-most useless in terms of realistically differentiating the two major parties.

Sure, as a base-inspiring battle cry, it's a real dandy. But as an accurate reflection of what the GOP actually does? In those terms, the argument has meant less and less since the New Deal era. What's more, the last 12 years, and especially the last six, have blown it to smithereens.

It was Sunday's New York Times analysis of "big-government" Democrats' earmarks that brought Dionne's piece back to mind. There's no question the new pigs in charge are still at the public treasury's trough: "Eight months after Democrats vowed to shine light on the dark art of 'earmarking' money for pet projects, many lawmakers say the new visibility has only intensified the competition for projects by letting each member see exactly how many everyone else is receiving.

"So far this year, House lawmakers have put together spending bills that include almost 6,500 earmarks for almost $11 billion in local projects."

Pretty bad. Yet "the Democratic totals" -- which include peculiarities such as a federally funded study of the "root causes" of post-traumatic stress disorder, which could well be trauma -- "are less than half the record set by Republicans when they controlled Congress in 2005."

Notwithstanding the Democrats' level of stomach-turning waste, $11 billion is but a speck on the surface of conservatism's "small government." And Dionne wasn't forced to drill down far to demonstrate the emptiness of its cherished catchphrase.

"Could there be any more of a big-government endeavor than the invasion of Iraq ...?

"Many farm-state conservatives are resolutely opposed to 'welfare' programs but passionately favor big-government subsidies for farmers, even rich ones....

"The same inconsistencies apply even to that dreaded concept 'socialized medicine'.... General Motors paid $4.8 billion for health care last year, including $3 billion for retirees. Is it any wonder that the good capitalists at GM and the other car companies would love the government to pick up some of these costs?"

And not least, "Do the domestic spying programs have anything to do with a small-government agenda?"

What astonishes, of course, is not that conservative pols and "good capitalists" continue to beat the propagandistic drum of small government while swelling their bellies with big-government entrees and Big-Brother desserts. What astonishes is that their opponents -- who, it is rumored, are the Democrats -- cannot piece together a coherent electoral message to put the lie to such an elaborate political fiction.

In brief: Authentic conservatism no longer bears any recognizable relation to office-holding conservatives. As for office-seeking conservatives? That's a different matter. The point may seem bloody obvious to anyone who closely follows the mostly two-ring circus of modern politics, yet every election cycle inspires millions of casual, preprogrammed conservative voters to swear allegiance to hundreds of big-spending, big-government, pseudoconservative pols.

It's a potentially gangbusting contradiction, and I mean that adjective in its literal sense.

Comments

[Perry Logan]

Let's face it, conservatives believe what they believe (and repeat it endlessly), no matter what the facts.

Infact, the federal government has always grown less under Democrats. Truman and Clinton actually made the federal government smaller!

[Dr. Jack Bloedorn]

Remember the term "reactionary" - years ago an apt descriptor of Republicans? Today, only the names have changed ... Republicans are now Conservatives; Democrats are now Progressives. But what remains is the mindless reaction of many against new ideas which appear to threaten the "good old order" of things. And the universal metaclassification under which these many mount such breathless negative reaction against new progressive ideas is ... "liberalism". Forget about welfare, small government, lower taxes, socialized medicine, big military, etc. ad naseum. It just takes too much energy to make reasoned, fact based agruments ... if an idea changes or even threatens the status quo, it is labeled "liberal" - and that is enough to prove its fallacy and inadvisability. Witness the factless piffle of the Limbaugh, Hannity, Ingraham, et al, crown on talk radio. So lazy, so disingenuous.

Oh that "liberals" had a similar toxic invective with which to summarily dismiss conservatives and their right-wing ideology. How about: unliberal; nonliberal; illiberal; or, maybe just good old "reactionary"?