The Republican Party has pulled off a remarkable marketing feat. It has convinced panicky liberals like Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair to perpetuate the party’s sales pitch to its base — the notion that the GOP really is a radically right-wing party hellbent on rolling back the welfare state and shattering the status quo. You would never imagine such a thing from looking at the record of the most recent Republican president — who added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare and did not, in fact, “privatize” Social Security — but it’s thrilling for liberals to pretend they’re about to be ravished, and it serves the GOP well to be thought of as a party of change and, for Americans who want smaller government, hope.
Why do so few outlets call attention to the obvious: that the GOP out of power campaigns as one thing — a party of cut-government-to-the-bone libertarians (God-fearing libertarians, of course) — but once in power practices a feed-the-base style of welfare politics little different from what the Democrats once perfected? Military budgets, particularly for bases in the South, are subsidies, and whatever Marvin Olasky may have intended with his talk about compassionate conservatism, in practice Bush’s faith-based initiatives were a way to channel federal money to religious organizations, rewarding Republican churches and aspiring to buy off urban ones (which received the lion’s share of the funds). Medicare Part D was explicitly aimed at shoring up the senior vote for the party. The GOP campaigns on a get-government-off-our-backs platform because Democrats are ideologically resistant to taking that line, but in practice both parties are the party of big government. You cannot look at their governing records and come to any other conclusion.
Purdum is closer to the mark when he notes that “the connecting tissue between the parties has disappeared. … An analysis by National Journal of roll-call votes in the 111th Congress, which ended last year, found that, in the Senate, the most conservative Democrat was slightly more liberal than the most liberal Republican, and nearly the same was true in the House.” They may both be the party of big government, but they have different emphases in their vote-buying, they hone their rhetorical differences to create some kind of brand distinction in voters’ minds, and regional quirks are ever less allowed to impede the branding. What Purdum might be less comfortable admitting, however, is that this polarization is a triumph of liberal universalism: it’s a corollary to the decline of regional identity and interests in American politics. It’s also a sign that the old dams and harbors of our politics have been broken down — as Americans have been disaggregated from their localities and recombined in a national mass — allowing ideological currents to sweep freely from end to end of the country.
Centralized power plus rivalry between incommensurable abstractions, all misreported by a media that takes political marketing more seriously than governing reality, is not a recipe for deliberative self-government. But it’s a reasonably good one for Caesarism.
Franklin Evans 
Ben, Okla. City 
Aaron 
Clint 
MattSwartz 
Mr. Patrick 
Scott Galupo 
Cape Cod Paulie 
Me2 
Tom Mahon 
fnn 
“The GOP campaigns on a get-government-off-our-backs platform.”
But why? Why do they persist in continually fooling those people who vote for the Republican Party precisely for the policies they campaign for? If such persons are going to vote for the GOP anyway because who they are, why keep up the charade? Why be, not cynical just downright deceptive about one’s party?
Indeed, I now believe the original Bush II team sincerely wanted to craft a “conservative” governing mantra because they had concluded by 1999 conservative ideology had run its course and that GOP needed new arguments and policies if it was going to govern in a post-Cold War era. I think they understood a lot better than Grover Norquist apparently does that the “base” depends upon government a lot and to pretend otherwise was not only foolish it would be dangerous politics for the party in the future as we are seeing right now. For example: By backing itself into a corner on cutting the budget, which defense plays a big role, requires big cuts which hurt Republican constituencies, which is why many Republicans in Congress are backing away from sequestration. And yet because of this, it’s another broken GOP promise from the campaign trail. The same is true with the health care individual mandate they all once supported.
The attempt to create conservative governing philosophy died in the wake of Katrina, Iraq and the economic crisis. It was seen as authoritarianism mixed in with cronyism along with incompetence. But that was only part of the problem. The other half was an ideology that simply could not shed its anti-government fervor, from its talk radio hosts to its pundits and writers. They were saying one thing and the Bush II Administration was doing the exact opposite. Who were people supposed to believe was right?
An ideology which in word says government is bad but which in deed makes sure certain sections of the population get their government benefits is bankrupt, because it doesn’t believe its own words. It has to choose one or the other for long-term success over short-term political gain. Unfortunately the “movement” only thinks as a far ahead as the next news cycle.