Watching the market today on my way out the door, I've stumbled across this little piece that, whatever you think of its Wheelan's political philosophy, describes perfectly the apparent paradox in the Republicans' "small government is better" foundation:
Wheelan draws an important parallel between the Republicans' hypocrisy on the markets and apparent contradictions in their platform and positions on other points.
Economics and Regulation
Wheelan elaborates once again what has been said many times over the course of this week: one day, Republicans are busy refusing to regulate the market since government is best, intervention and regulation are bad for markets, and people should exercise personal financial responsibility; the next day, they tell us that firms are too big to fail, that the Fed is justified in keeping the pockets of the wealthy full, that middle class homeowners must be protected, not merely left to suffer through the fruits of their respective exercises of said personal financial responsibility.
The problem is that you can't simultaneously embrace markets and personal responsibility and then, when those markets have a car wreck, argue that it's the government's job to protect us against rapacious Wall Street traders.
Federal Assistance to Demographic Groups
The Republicans' duplicity on economic regulation is not a new point. What Wheelan does well is point out that this "confusion" reigns in other areas of Republican thought as well. Note Sarah Palin's flip-flopping on government intervention in other areas:
In her critique of Barack Obama, Palin told the adoring crowd, "Government is too big ... [Obama] wants to grow it." That's...consistent with Ronald Reagan's famous assertion that the nine most dangerous words in the English language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
The Republicans are supposed to stand for less government -- lower taxes, less regulation, and, as a result, more personal responsibility and self-reliance.
But wait! Was that the same ostensible conservative telling the audience, "To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters. I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House."
Why are families who have children with special needs any different...? If you have [a host of listed other] problems, then "a friend and advocate in the White House" is big government.
Note that it is the same type of contradiction—the degree to which government is good or bad depends not on the level of intervention, but rather on who precisely stands to benefit.
Palin's speech suggested that, again, the Republicans want it both ways -- and it's no anomaly. This explains how the Republicans can talk about small government and then deliver huge new programs like Medicare prescription drug coverage, the largest expansion of entitlement spending in decades.
Or how the party of personal responsibility is fielding a ticket whose website calls for "aggressive federal action to help keep 200,000 to 400,000 families from losing their homes."
The War on Terror
Finally we come to the most interesting comparison that Wheelan makes. The other two can be filed under "Republicans want to help their cronies," an common enough meme here and elsewhere. But how about this on the constitutional issues and troubling practices that have arisen during the course of the so-called "War on Terror?"
[H]ow can the party that so vociferously (and effectively) maligns government be willing to entrust so much unchecked power to that very same government when it comes to arresting people and holding them without trial? Would you let the Post Office or the IRS or FEMA send people away indefinitely? If not, why should we entrust any other bureaucracy with that power?
Remember, this is the party that has historically opposed gun registration for fear that the government might someday swoop in and take away guns from its citizens. Where's that paranoia and distrust of authority when we need it most?
In fact, Wheelan need look only to the other two examples for a broad connection that binds the Republican governing philosophies across all three areas of policy—economics and regulation, domestic policy, and foreign/security policy. It's not "we help our cronies," but rather "we help Stereotypically White Anglo-Saxon Protestants."
Cronyism vs. Racism/Colonialism
In each case, those who stand to benefit due to the government regulation that Republicans oppose are likely to be working class minorities and/or non-Christians. In each case, those who stand to benefit from the types of intervention that the Republicans support are likely to be non-working-class white Christians, especially white Protestants/Evangelicals. This holds true whether we are talking market regulation, federal policy to protect and enhance the mobility of various urban, racial, immigrant, or labor-centric demographic groups, or oversight to prevent abuses against foreign (and domestic) nationals in the war on terror.
I don't want to claim that racism and imperialistic tribalism are the sole underlying philosophical orientations of the Republicans' facile and self-contradictory "government intervention is bad" history of positions, but I want to point out that once more we can't avoid the symbolics of race and the degree to which identity politics continues to shape policy.
For the Republicans, it's not about cronies, it's about "good people should be helped and protected" and "the people that the Democrats want to help and protect are the bad people." Why is one group the good people and the other group the bad people?
Why, according to the narrative, is Palin a popular, good-looking maverick reformer with folksy wisdom and small-town experience while Obama is a neophyte celebrity with an exotic background and an eloquence that leads one to suspect that there may not be anything underneath?
It has everything to do with WASP vs. not. White Anglo-Saxon Protestant is the identity du jour in the Republican moral universe. It's why laissez-faire is the answer to all woes one moment, but must be discarded at the next; why government programs for impoverished inner-city youth are "the soft bigotry of low expectations" while programs to assist heartland homeowners in over their heads are critical to saving America; why the Democrats' big government will "take away your guns," but a sound American foreign policy demands that government take away the guns of everyone else on earth.
Those "others" do not fulfill the requirements for "goodness" in the moral universe that increasingly attracts members of the Republican party and that governs for them where the resources of the world should go. Those requirements are: (1) White Anglo-Saxon, (2) non-first-generation American citizenship, and (3) Protestant/Evangelical religious identity.
Full stop.