fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

The McCain Campaign Continues

Jim Antle says that there is no point in pondering what might have happened under a McCain administration, and he may be right. I think it does provide some perspective and offers a useful check on the impulse to shout “socialism!” at every turn, but it is not all that important. On a related McCain […]

Jim Antle says that there is no point in pondering what might have happened under a McCain administration, and he may be right. I think it does provide some perspective and offers a useful check on the impulse to shout “socialism!” at every turn, but it is not all that important. On a related McCain matter, what might be worth discussing a bit more is why the Republican leadership continues to believe that it has found a winning strategy by embracing some of the wackier McCain ideas from the election campaign.

For instance, why aren’t more conservatives challenging the increasingly ludicrous direction the House leadership is taking by imitating the McCain campaign’s pitiful grasp on economic policy? Confronted with financial crisis and recession, McCain wanted to impose a spending freeze, and Boehner and Cantor are urging the same thing. Republicans would have been even more likely to support a spending freeze had McCain been elected, but they are actually framing their opposition to the administration’s domestic agenda around such a non-starter of an idea that they cribbed from McCain’s campaign. Of all the times to urge a spending freeze, the GOP has chosen to call for it now?

How is this anything other than disastrous for the party’s ability to resist the administration’s plans for health care or cap-and-trade? If the important thing now is to oppose Obama’s bad policies, the GOP might be well-served by breaking out of their weird post-election habit of closely imitating their losing presidential candidate and endorsing some of his worst ideas. If railing against wasteful spending and calling for spending freezes made any sense and appealed to voters as a remedy for economic problems, McCain might not have lost. Does it make any sense, then, to frame the core of the opposition to the President around such a politically and economically bad idea? What the counterfactual President McCain might have done may not be important, but what the McCainified GOP is doing certainly is, and unless they want to endure a four-year replay of last year’s presidential debates the party leaders need to stop doing what they’re doing.

Update: As Antle reports, the “spending freeze” being proposed isn’t a complete spending freeze at all. It is a relatively minor reduction of the omnibus bill’s cost by holding discretionary spending at last year’s levels. So from the perspective of fiscal responsibility, it barely makes a dent, while also managing to convey the symbolism that the GOP is clueless on economic policy. It’s very much like when several governors refused to take 1% of the allotted stimulus money, and so managed to get themselves dubbed anti-stimulus governors. I’m glad to acknowledge that I overreacted to the proposal, but I had assumed that it was what they were calling it. Even so, you can bet that the details are going to be lost on the average voter.

Advertisement

Comments

The American Conservative Memberships
Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here