The Spending Freeze
Posted on February 26th, 2009
by Daniel Larison |
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Dave Weigel makes the point I have been trying to get across for at least the last month:
The problem is that spending austerity is not — as it was in the early months of 1993, for example — very high on voters’ minds, or even high on the list of reasons why voters remain cool on Republicans. In his response to the president’s State of the Union speech, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) argued that voters had “rightly” rejected the GOP because the party “got away from its principles” and “went along with earmarks and big government spending in Washington,” repeating an argument that Sen. John McCain made during the presidential campaign.
There is little polling to bolster this argument. Voters did not list government spending, or earmarks, or deficits, in their top concerns in the 2006 or 2008 national exit polls.
Indeed, the idea that the GOP lost these elections because of “wasteful spending” is most popular among activists and radio hosts, and for the last two years it has gained ground among the politicians who mistake these newly-satisfied activists and radio hosts for representatives of public opinion. The reduced numbers of the GOP in the House make it harder to recognize that their position as a losing one, because in the remaining safe Republican districts, where almost all of the anti-spending sentiment is concentrated, there probably is some strong, vocal opposition to these measures. It is the predicament of the GOP, which they brought upon themselves, that they have acquired a new responsiveness to constituents of these safe districts in response to their defeats on the one issue–spending–that is not even that important to these constituents, much less to the rest of the country.
Filed under: politics
Two things to note here. First, you can argue that the failure of the GOP to keep any spending credibility as a matter of policy didn’t have much impact politically. But that failure was a failure of principle at least as much as a failure of policy. And been perceived as a failure on a point of principle hurt very much. It meant that the GOP lost it’s ability to be taken seriously by its constituents (or anybody else for that matter). Restoration of credibility on spending will help for the same reason.
The other thing that hasn’t been explicitly stated (at least I haven’t seen it) is that the current poor economy vindicates the GOP in terms of the aspirations of the voters. Ie, that for the sake of the country and the party both, that the voters are increasingly likely to value the ability to earn a living in the bourgeios economy as we know it. And the Democrats tax-and-spend policies are a cliche of course, but clearly a valid one as we’ve seen so far from the Obama Administration. To that extent the outlook for the GOP isn’t as bad as it seems.
“And been perceived as a failure on a point of principle hurt very much.”
What effect did it have? What damage was done? It caused fiscal conservatives to gripe. Yes, I complained as well, but I actually voting for GOP candidates for Congress last year because there were no preferable alternatives. It didn’t matter–the GOP candidate for my House district was blown out by his opponent, and this happened in a district that had never not elected a Republican since it was created. He wasn’t an incumbent, and had a good reputation in the city, but the district had turned sharply against the party. Spending had very, very little, if anything, to do with that outcome.
*Maybe* the party’s lack of spending discipline made these conservatives less enthusiastic about supporting the GOP with donations, and maybe in some exceptional cases it caused them to sit out the last election or even vote for other parties’ candidates, but the numbers involved are so small that we cannot understand the ‘06 and ‘08 elections as repudiations of the GOP *because* they lacked spending discipline. There are far more important causes for these results, and I see no signs that the party is even aware of them.
Daniel,
Do you think the GOP has the potential to be “Californiaized” nation-wide? By that I mean, reduced to a rump number of core constituentcies that produce politicians “to the right” of the public, but, more importantly, out of touch from (and even irrelevant to) the public?
If the GOP had any credibility left on the spending issue, it lost it with the $700 billion bank bailout bill, which gave carte blance to Henry Paulson to use to rescue his friends temporarily. Not to speak of the whole history of no-bid contracts in Iraq and myriad corporate subsidies and tax breaks, or the VP candidate from the most subsidized state in the Union.
I prefer frugality in gummint, but the GOP has zero credibility on that score. For Gov. Jindal, whom I respect, to give a talk in the manner of an elementary school assistant principal, with tax cuts and economy in government as its themes, is pretty much a Kool-Aid cocktail.
Lead weight or life preserver, the ghost of Lord Keynes rules us all. Bobby Jindal’s piety and wit, such as they are, shall not lure the moving finger back, nor cancel half a line. It’s writing in red ink, and moving on.