Same Dem Mistakes Call for New GOP Answers
Political parties, like generals, have a tendency to fight a new war the same way they fought the last one even when the enemy and circumstances have changed. Conservatives eagerly draw parallels between the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and that of Barack Obama. It’s a very convenient and perhaps true analysis of the state of the present administration. But conservatives should not expect the same playbook that brought them a conservative majority after Carter to work for them today.
The Obama administration seems to be a rerun of the paleo-liberalism of the 1970s, with huge increases in spending, initiatives for new or expanded entitlements and a worldwide self-flagellating campaign to appease our enemies. It’s a familiar state of affairs for conservatives, but if our opponents fail in governing that by no means guarantees our own success. Imagine the most optimistic scenario: Republicans gain the House in 2010 and the White House and Senate in 2012. But then what? Of course, stopping many Democratic plans will be an improvement but it won’t be enough.
In the coming years more Americans than before will retire, enlarging the slice of the population that gobbles up government largesse. The Republican candidate in 2012 might offer the panacea of lower taxes and a lighter regulatory regime but those will only postpone the day of reckoning. It is much easier to lower tax rates than to reform Medicare and Social Security. We may be able to lower tax rates again but any action in this area as time goes by will become harder and it will come with diminishing returns.
There is a convergence of our politics with that of Western Europe. Increasingly their problems become ours. And like our European counterparts we have not yet discovered the political coalitions and means to achieve the necessary reforms to our welfare state. As the problems of entitlements intensify, it is conceivable to see successive Democratic and Republican administrations each entering the White House with high expectations and leaving with an unmistakable sense of failure.
The Obama administration up to now seems to be a replay of the old liberal canon. Conservatives in opposition to this paleo-liberalism might win some battles, but essentially they’ll be winning old battles anew. The problem is that conservatives lost recent elections not because they were unable to defeat the liberalism of yesteryear but because they were incapable of developing solutions to the problems that Americans face today. Whatever victories come from our confrontation with the Obama administration, they may conceal our fundamental weaknesses and leave us offering the public more of yesterday's solutions.