I think this is a unique moment in American political history: a political party that has run against "government" for 40 years, now controls it lock, stock and barrel.
And they're showing, on a daily basis, just how unequipped they are to carry out the national business. They take symbolic steps, as in the Schiavo case, but eschew systemic approaches; their words embrace compassion and a "culture of life", while their governing priorities, such as the bankruptcy bill, show total disdain for quality of life. It's the logical and obvious extension of their illogical and incoherent position on abortion: we'll mandate that you have the kid, but once s/he's out of the womb, don't look to us for help.
The right wing faction now in power sees government as nothing more than a mechanism to reward friends, punish enemies, and perpetuate its control. I thought this was pretty clear last year, but in another unprecedented political achievement, the Republicans managed to turn an election race between an incumbent and a challenger into a referendum on the character of the challenger, not the performance of the incumbent.
Now, as this diary by thirdparty suggests, they're out of energy and some of the contradictions of their approach are coming home to roost. A great example of this is noted by Mark Schmitt on his excellent Decembrist blog, commenting on "Miss America Conservatives":
...I'm tired of giving quasi-conservatives credit for what I call Miss America compassion (I'll explain in a minute). [Oregon Sen. Gordon] Smith's son's suicide led him to support more funding for suicide prevention and for mental health care generally. Great -- my life has been affected by suicide also, so I'm all for that. Similarly, Senator Pete Domenici's daughter's mental illness made him an advocate for mandating equitable treatment of mental and physical well-being in health insurance, a cause in which he was joined by Paul Wellstone. Again, I'm all for it, and I have no doubt that Domenici was at least as personally sincere and driven about it as Wellstone, and watching the two of them pair up on this cause and learn to work together was a good example for the potential of democratic institutions to create understanding.
But what has always bothered me about such examples is that their compassion seems so narrowly and literally focused on the specific misfortune that their family encountered. Having a child who suffers from mental illness would indeed make one particularly passionate about funding for mental health, sure. But shouldn't it also lead to a deeper understanding that there are a lot of families, in all kinds of situations beyond their control, who need help from government? Shouldn't having a son whose illness leads to suicide open your eyes to something more than a belief that we need more money for suicide help-lines? Shouldn't it call into question the entire winners-win/losers-lose ideology of the current Republican Party? Shouldn't it also lead to an understanding that if we want to live in a society that provides a robust system of public support for those who need help -- whether for mental illness or any of the other misfortunes that life hands out at random -- we will need a government with adequate institutions and revenues to provide those things?
And that's what I mean by "Miss America Compassion." These Senators are like Miss America contestants, each with a "platform": Mr. Ohio: "Adoption Assistance." Mr. Oregon: "Suicide Prevention." Mr. Minnesota: "Community Development." Mr. New Mexico: "Mental Health Parity." Mr. Pennsylvania: "Missing children" The platform is meant to show them as thoughtful, deep and independent-minded, but after the "platform segment" they return to play their obedient part in a degrading exercise that makes this country crueler and government less supportive.
And, of course, as with Miss America contestants' "platforms," there are a few approved topics and many more that simply couldn't be considered. It's not too likely that you'll see Miss Alabama adopt "Income inequality" as her platform or Miss Colorado, "Corporate tax evasion." Nor is a Senator likely to have a family experience with lack of health insurance, or personal bankruptcy, or Food Stamps.
Emphasis mine. Schmitt's larger point is actually that Republicans like Smith, or Coleman, or Domenici, who act to protect specific measures like Medicaid or community development, but fail to support fiscally responsible pay-as-you-go budget rules and accede to ever-larger federal deficits, are incoherent at best and hypocritical at worst.
This isn't a theory of government; it's political opportunism. And it presupposes that all these issues, which Republican Senators pick and choose from as if eating at a buffet, aren't inter-related. That's absurd on its face, as any five-minute conversation with a social worker or welfare case officer or inner-city school teacher will tell you: mental health issues, low educational attainment, job insecurity, health care, affordable housing--if you're dealing with one of these, you're probably dealing with a few of them.
Republicans have long made political hay running against Democrats as "the party of government." People don't like government; they don't trust it. In the right-wing mythology, public service has been degraded; public servants are derided as bureaucrats, clock-punchers, unimaginative and mean-spirited little tyrants lording it over regular hard-working Americans.
Thing is, though, while Americans hate government in the abstract, they tend to like and appreciate it in the concrete. People like police service, garbage pick-up, public education, road repair, transit investment, Medicare... Social Security. Defense and national security. If anything, they tend to want more of it, not less.
To give them more of it, though, requires raising taxes (or at least repealing tax cuts). Democrats have become phobic about this, though I think the political winds may be shifting on the issue; The New Republic, among others, seems to agree.
Most voters would undoubtedly prefer lower taxes and higher benefits, a fantasy the Republican majority has indulged by passing huge tax cuts without offsetting spending cuts. But, sooner or later, the voters will have to confront real trade-offs, if only because the financial markets won't let excessive deficits continue forever. And the early signs suggest that Americans might be more hospitable to tax increases than everybody has long assumed. Skittishness over benefit cuts obviously has a lot to do with the sinking support for Bush's Social Security privatization plan; among the options for improving Social Security's finances, by far the most popular solution is raising the limit on taxable income. And, as a recent Washington Monthly article by Daniel Franklin and A.G. Newmyer III points out, even Republican governors like former Bush administration budget director Mitch Daniels (now the governor of Indiana) have recently backed tax increases for their states in order to avoid cuts in services.
At bottom, government is ours: of the people, by the people, for the people. The debate isn't, or shouldn't be, "big government" versus "smaller government"; the debate should be, "What is government, as a mechanism for collective action, better positioned to do than the private sector?"
Historically, the American people have answered, "A lot." Democrats need to stop running against the specter of government--the true meaning of "Republican Lite"--and start forcefully reminding the public that government is THEM, and should be put to addressing their legitimate needs.