"The success of a
party means little except when the nation is using that
party for a large and definite purpose," said
Woodrow Wilson in his
first inaugural.
"No one can
mistake the purpose for which the nation now seeks to
use the Democratic Party."
As with Wilson`s Democrats in 1913,
so it is with the Republican Party today. It has been
called to power for the
"large and
definite purpose" of halting the growth of
government and putting the nation`s fiscal house in
order. Whether it can succeed is another matter.
While a visitor to Capitol Hill the
day the gavel was passed from Nancy Pelosi to
John Boehner could not miss the confident enthusiasm
of the new Republican class for the assignment history
has given it, the balance of power in this city weighs
heavily against its success.
Consider. To bring the budget even
close to balance in half a decade means cutting
projected spending for Medicaid, Medicare and Social
Security. But any changes here have to be agreed to by
Harry Reid`s Senate, and then by Barack Obama, who has a
veto that the House Republicans have not a prayer of
overriding.
And as Obama showed at year`s end
when he agreed to a two-year extension of George W.
Bush`s tax cuts in return for payroll tax cuts of his
own and new unemployment benefits, the White House will
exact a high price for Obama`s signature.
As for cutting defense, if House
Republicans have the kidney for that, they will have to
overcome resistance from their own
neocons,
hawks and lobbyists for the
military-industrial complex who are former
Republican members of Congress.
Will farm-belt Republicans go along
with cuts in
agricultural subsidies? Will bricks-and-mortar boys
go along with cuts in a federal highway program that is
the legacy of
GOP
Rep. Bud Shuster of Pennsylvania?
The
U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the
Business Roundtable, who help finance the party,
have programs inside that $3.5 trillion federal budget
they wish to see protected. Will a Republican House,
most of whose senior members have supped at their
tables, bite the hand that holds the big envelopes?
And when it comes to cutting social
programs –
welfare, food stamps, the earned income tax credit,
unemployment insurance, Pell grants, housing subsidies –
the party of Nancy Pelosi and Reid, unreconciled to its
repudiation, with the aid of the mainstream media, will
paint the GOP as the hard right with hearts of titanium
who deny the necessities of life to the neediest while
defending tax cuts for millionaires.
Can the party stand the heat, or
will it get out of the kitchen?
While Republicans in 2008 seemed to
accept defeat as the just deserts of their own failings,
the Democratic left acts as though it were cheated of
power by an unscrupulous enemy. As Republicans and their
families were celebrating in the Capitol, they were
being roundly cursed on cable TV by Democrats and their
allies.
This is not to counsel despair. It
is to suggest that the true conservatives and
tea-party true believers who
gave the GOP its victory in November have won a
single major engagement in a long war whose outcome
remains very much in doubt.
After all,
FDR`s New Deal was never repealed. It was
confirmed by President Eisenhower. Lyndon Johnson`s
Great Society was never repealed. It was
consolidated by Richard Nixon. Even Ronald Reagan
conceded that he had failed to control federal spending,
though he cut taxes and regulations. Then came Bush I
and Bush II, both of whom were, in
Fred Barnes` description,
"Big Government Conservatives."
The federal government now spends
close to 25 percent of the entire economy, a share not
equaled since World War II, while the feds collect
around 15 percent of gross domestic product in taxes.
Looking back over history, the
growth of government seems
inexorable, almost unstoppable. And, invariably, it
is has been crises that bring it about.
World War I brought a vast
expansion of government. But after
Wilson`s
war, the country turned to Republicans Warren
Harding and
Cal Coolidge, who cut income taxes and government
back to where it consumed, when Silent Cal went home,
about 3 percent of the gross national product.
The Depression, the New Deal and
World War II led to the permanent expansion of
government. And the postwar cuts in government never
took it back to prewar levels, for the Cold War was
suddenly upon us.
The end of the Cold War brought
defense cuts, a peace dividend and balanced budgets
under Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress, but Bush
II and the neocons took care of that, with
trillion-dollar tax cuts, trillion-dollar wars and
trillion-dollar expansions in domestic spending.
Where, then, is the hope? It is
here:
As Boehner put it, we can`t kick
the can up the road anymore, because we`ve come to the
end of the road. Like
Greece and Portugal, Ireland and Illinois, New York
and New Jersey, we have arrived at Hotel California.
COPYRIGHT
CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Patrick J. Buchanan
needs
no introduction to
VDARE.COM readers; his book State
of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and
Conquest of America
be ordered from Amazon.com. His latest book
is Churchill,
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How
Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost
the World,
reviewed
here by
Paul Craig Roberts.
