There's a lot of talk about moderate and budget-hawk Republicans disliking the Bush Administration's budget, with it's massive deficits and increases in spending. The Republican Party is starting to have the same problem the Democratic Party started having thirty years ago:
Their national coalition is starting to fall apart.
I've talked at length about the Democratic Party's self-destruction
elsewhere (interspersed with some other miscellaneous comments); the Republican Party is going to have the same kinds of problems in the near future.
It's more than a little simplistic, but for our purposes we can divide Republicans into two groups: the fiscally conservative, states' rights Republicans (for want of a better term, the Nixonian Republicans; those who believe generally in small government, strong defense, conservation, and civil liberties but are not particularly committed to social conservatism) and the social conservative Republicans (for reference, let's call them the Santorum wing. Again, I generalize.)
For a long time, the interests of those two groups dovetailed nicely. The Nixonian group favored small government, states' rights, etc. on principle. The Santorum wing held these positions because they precluded, essentially, the federal government intruding into the governance of Southern States. Before the majority defected to the Republican Party in the Sixties, most of Dixie's arguments against civil rights (and in favor of Jim Crow, the poll tax, etc.), for example, were made in the name of the states' rights to govern themselves. Social conservatives weren't out and out in favor of states' rights, but the states' rights platform accomplished their goals. And although the fiscally conservative faction wasn't particularly engaged in the conservative social agenda, they recognized allies when they saw them. Over time, for maximum rheotorical effectiveness, the two groups blended their positions to some extent.
I've written before that's Clinton's genius was that, because of his political skill and personal charisma, he was able to bring the disparate parts of the old Democratic coalition back together. Ronald Reagan can be seen in a similar way; he epitomized the dual conservative ideals of small government and social conservatism. Reagan thus commanded (and his name still commands) not only a majority but a ferverant majority from all parts of the Republican Party. Bush I, as his VP, rode the same feeling into office in 1988.
The beginnings of the Republican fracture I've hinted at above can perhaps been seen in the 1992 election, when Ross Perot drew some of the fiscally conservative/pro-business Republican vote. Democrats voted Perot as well, but because he drew mainly from Republicans (the Perot vote was 75-25 Republicans-Democrats, last breakdown I saw), Clinton was elected easily.
The point I'm making here is simple: the interests of the fiscally and socially conservative portions of the Republican Party no longer coincide properly. The fiscal conservatives are still behind small government, low spending, etc. on principle. The socially conservative wing (which I define fairly broadly, to include some like Ann Coulter who call dissent/civil demonstration unpatriotic), however, have learned that big government can serve their interests far better than small government. The socially conservative "states' rights" movement of the 50's and 60's would, for example, have seen legislation like the Patriot Act and the Defense of Marriage Act as intolerable intrusions by the federal government into the internal governmental workings of the states. Total Information Awareness would likewise have been unacceptable. And fiscal conservatives of the same time period would have seen (and some still see) as federally funded programs like Bush's "faith-based initiatives" as unacceptable socialistic entitlements, wastes of taxpayers' money.
Bush ran as a Reaganesque Republican, who would once again be the best of both conservative worlds. But as careful obervers of American politics should note, it's no longer possible for any Republican to fit that bill.
Howard Dean's campaign is unique, I think, because it presents the possibility of a new coalition: a conglomeration of fiscal conservatives and social liberals who are not against big government on it's face, but who believe government must be big enough to serve the basic, unment needs of the people (with respect to health care and education, especially) without irresponsibly spending their money or intruding upon their liberties and private lives.
