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Allan Lichtman: Conservative Big Government ... Whither American Conservatism (Part 2)

[Mr. Lichtman teaches history at American University.]

Conservatism has always been about the purposes of government rather than the size or scope of government. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that George W. Bush has built a form a conservative big government during his presidency.

However, big government poses a serious political problem for conservatives because it contradicts their rhetorical defense of limited government, states’ rights, fiscal responsibility, and individual freedom. Conservative big government also differs from the liberal project of using government to reform society from the bottom up, funding welfare benefits, regulating business, empowering labor and minorities. The Bush administration began from the top down, subsidizing business and expanding its global reach, shielding corporations, and backing robust military, intelligence, and police forces. For decades, Republicans had complained of Democrats who created cadres of dependent voters: recipients of welfare and Social Security, members of federal employee unions and beneficiaries of affirmative action programs. Liberals, libertarians, and some conservatives charged that President Bush has created corporate dependents instead.

During Bush’s first term, federal spending grew by 17 percent in constant dollars, compared to 11 percent during Bill Clinton’s two terms. Discretionary domestic spending under Bush increased even more rapidly than total spending, “exactly the opposite of what was promised by Republican leaders when they first came to power in the 1990s,” wrote conservative fiscal analyst Stephen Moore. The federal government’s share of GDP rose to 19.9 percent in 2005, after declining from 22.1 percent to 18.4 percent during the Clinton years.

Conservative big government opened fissures between the wealthy and other Americans. Income inequality shot ahead at a record rate between 2002 and 2005, reaching levels unknown in America since the eve of the Great Depression. In 2005, the top 10 percent of earners collected 44.3 percent of income, compared to 32.6 percent in 1975 and about equal to the 43.8 percent in 1929. The top 1 percent collected 17.4 percent compared to 8.0 percent in 1975 and 18.4 percent in 1929.

New elements of conservative big government emerged in the second term. The administration confirmed in late 2005 that the president authorized the National Security Agency to wiretap Americans without warrants, bypassing requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. In July 2005, the administration won passage of an energy bill that subsidized big energy companies. The administration gained a renewed Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that gave the executive branch authority to define persons, possibly including U. S. citizens, as “unlawful enemy combatants” who could potentially be detained indefinitely. Aliens who were defined as unlawful enemy combatants and were tried by military tribunals could be denied protections of the Geneva Convention against torture, habeas corpus rights to challenge their imprisonment, and safeguards against the use of coerced and secret testimony.

“Have Republicans become the party of torture, secret prisons, and indefinite detention?” asked libertarian author James Bovard in The American Conservative magazine, which Pat Buchanan had founded in 2002. “The new law – far more dangerous than the more controversial Patriot Act – is perhaps the biggest disgrace Congress has enacted since the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.”

Yet a new conservative leader would still depend on campaign contributions and other political support from corporate interests that would demand paybacks from government. Such pressures would pose once again the contradiction between the Right’s defense of free markets and its backing for corporate loans, subsidies, tax breaks, no-bid contracts, and other forms of special treatment from government. A new leader would be entwined in the dilemma of how to advance the conservative goals of protecting national security and upholding morality and decency in society without a large and meddlesome state that contradicted the Right’s defense of personal freedom and small government. The future of the conservative movement may well depend on whether the next Republican presidential nominee can find a way out of these dilemmas.

I await your thoughts.
Read entire article at Britannica Blog