Balkinization: Republican defeat is the only path to responsible conservatism

Republican defeat is the only path to responsible conservatism

Andrew Koppelman

Kris Kobach’s defeat in last week’s Kansas Republican Senate primary – Democrats were rooting for him because he was likely to lose the general election - is bad news for the country. It reduces the likelihood that Democrats will capture the Senate. If they do not, the federal government will remain paralyzed in the face of the worldwide Covid-19 emergency.

Small government has been the mantra of the Republican Party for a long time. It was once an intelligent critique of the excesses of certain specific programs, but it has become a mindless prescription for destroying the country’s power to govern itself. Just how mindless? Until recently, it was hard to know for sure. In 2009, amid a huge recession, they fought intensely to stop the Obama stimulus, and their alternative – only four Senate Republicans opposed it - consisted of nothing but tax cuts. (Michael Grunwald, The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era 218 (2012).) Had they prevailed, the American economy would likely have gone into a prolonged depression. But it was uncertain whether they really meant it. Since Obama didn’t need their votes, they may have judged that this irresponsible posturing would be harmless, at least in the short run. As it turned out, the Obama stimulus was too small, but it wouldn’t be fair to blame Republicans for their inability to see into the future.

Now, however, as millions of Americans face destitution and homelessness, we can see just how destructive their ideology has become. Congress is stuck. At issue is whether to extend a $600 weekly increase in unemployment insurance and a moratorium on evictions. On the merits, this is easy: democracies are not supposed to deliberately devastate their own people. Politically, too, this should be a no-brainer: the parties should be competing for credit on rescuing voters. The Republicans were willing to increase the national debt massively with their 2017 tax cut, which gave huge benefits to the rich with almost no effect on wages or growth. Yet now they are suddenly skittish about additional deficits.

This is the biggest economic catastrophe since the 1930s. Millions of jobs have been destroyed. The United States still does not have the capacity for rapid tests for the disease, or enough protective equipment for hospital workers. State governments are under economic pressure to reduce their own workforces, crippling their own capacities and driving up unemployment even further. Bold and big responses will be needed. Trump can’t be bothered even to try to control the disease, much less its economic effects. Biden will almost certainly replace him in January. But the early Obama experience shows that Congressional Republicans will do everything they can to prolong the disaster. They can’t support a stimulus even now, when it is manifestly in their political interest. They will certainly try to make a Biden presidency fail.

The United States desperately needs a responsible, pro-market conservatism. The smartest free market advocates understand that a well-functioning capitalism needs a large government apparatus. We need more market competition and more reliable social insurance. Government must make sure that businesses stay honest, that they don’t cheat customers and employees. It must address climate change, another crisis that elicits even more extreme and foolish denial from Trump. And provide public services that the market won’t supply: don’t you wish he hadn’t fired the pandemic response team he inherited from Obama?

Political efforts to cripple the capacities of the government are not peculiar to Trump, though he’s unusually unsubtle about it. They have become part of the ideology of the Republican Party. The Republican politician who has come off best in the age of Trump is Mitt Romney, who has shown integrity and courage. But as a presidential candidate, he said this: “Did you know that government – federal, state, and local – under President Obama, has grown to consume almost forty percent of our economy? We’re only inches away from ceasing to be a free economy.” We would be freer without roads, bridges, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, police, firefighters, environmental protection. Of course much of this is politically untouchable, so the drive for small government inevitably focuses on spending that has no powerful protectors – public goods that benefit everyone in general and no one in particular. Such as public health.

The need for a strong and vigorous government is particularly acute in emergencies. The next president will enter office, as Obama did, amid a worldwide crisis. If the Republicans have any voice at all, they will be the party of inaction, as they are today.

There are, of course, extremists within the Democratic Party as well, some of whom repudiate capitalism and want to abolish the police. But they don’t control their party. Even if the Democrats win both houses of Congress, their leadership knows that its House majority depends on moderate members from swing districts that could easily become Republican again. If there is a comparable moderate wing in the Republican Party, it is the Never Trump Republicans, who remain in political exile. Conservatism’s only hope is for the extremists now in command to face electoral defeat of spectacular proportions. And the country’s only hope is for a unified government that can actually address the frightening problems we face.

Posted 10:28 AM by Andrew Koppelman [link]