Jewish World Review August 15, 2007 / 1 Elul, 5767

Rove and the failure of big-government conservatism

By Robert Robb

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | President Bush and Karl Rove, his principal political strategist, intended to create an enduring Republican governing majority during his tenure. Rove leaves the stage without that being accomplished, to put it mildly.

In 2006, Republicans lost the control of Congress they had been given by voters since 1994. (Democrats took over the Senate for a time in 2001 due to the defection of Jim Jeffords, who had been elected as a Republican.) Going into the 2008 election, polls indicate that voters prefer Democrats by overwhelming margins, to hold office and on a wide range of issues.

Unless something changes drastically, Republicans appeared headed toward having their national influence shrunk to 1960s levels.

What happened?

In large part, 9/11 and the Iraq war happened.

Bush was first elected in 2000 on primarily a domestic agenda. After 9/11, he became a self-described "war president." Attention and political resources were understandably and appropriately diverted from domestic issues.

The current protracted engagement in Iraq is fundamentally at odds with American instincts. We are willing to take action to bat back looming threats. However, we aren't comfortable trying to run or manage the affairs of other countries and peoples. We are, at root, still the peaceful trading nation the founders intended.

The Bush-Rove strategy to create an enduring Republican governing majority, however, was fundamentally flawed independent of the national security preoccupation and missteps.

Bush wanted to create such a majority by reconciling conservatism with an active federal government. A large federal presence would be accepted, even expanded, but redirected to the accomplishment of conservative goals. Some dubbed this "big-government conservatism."

The best example of the strategy in action was No Child Left Behind, Bush's signature first-term domestic accomplishment. The federal role in education was expanded, and funding increased, but in service to the conservative reform of accountability through testing.

Bush initially proposed to link a prescription drug benefit to Medicare reform. Instead of the federal government directly paying the medical bills of seniors, it would offer premium subsidies to purchase private health insurance. The administration flagged on reform, however, when congressional Republicans balked.

Changing Social Security from a system in which one generation pays the retirement benefits of the previous generation to one in which people save for their own retirement never got off the ground.

Republicans didn't do much on reform. But they certainly got big government down pat. And in the process revealed an important political truth: big government is inherently corrupting of conservative principles.

Under Bush, federal spending has increased twice as fast as it did under President Clinton. Republicans perfected the art of the earmark, federal money for local projects designated by members of Congress. The claim to be the party of spending discipline was thoroughly squandered.

Liberals and Democrats view themselves as the natural governing party in the United States. And they may be right.

Certainly conservatives seem more at home in opposition than in power. In the modern era, perhaps the natural role of the conservative party, if Republicans can regain that appellation, is to check the excesses of the liberal welfare and regulatory state.

There is reason to hope for more. There is always a tendency to accept the prevailing political currents as fixed. In American politics, however, they rarely are.

In the 1970s, there was nothing in polling or electoral trends to suggest that the era of Reagan was about to dawn. But it was.

Many young people appear to have a profound skepticism about government. Perhaps a conservatism re-rooted in libertarian instincts can fare better, once this political season inevitably passes.

Regardless, the Bush-Rove era has demonstrated that big-government conservatism is a failure, both as a political strategy and as a governing philosophy.