Here is an interesting statement from Thomas Oliphant. The op-ed piece is about the Specter controversy going on, but within it he makes this statement that really jumped out at me:
It's important to see all this through the right's lens. Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980; since then, conservatives have been president 16 of 24 years; the party has held the Senate for 16 different years and directly controlled the House for 10 and had effective control of the floor for two more (1981-82).From one Christian conservative perspective, during this period there have been more than 25 million abortions, gay rights have advanced rapidly, family structures have come under cultural assault, pornography has become an industry, and Hollywood continues to undermine parents' authority.
Other conservatives note that the federal government has expanded instead of shrunk, its spending has not been restrained, its direct influence over public schools has increased, and entitlement programs have been added. Many conservatives see the Republican Party as successful at running campaigns and winning elections, but they wonder if their standard-bearers and strategists (right now that means George Bush and Karl Rove) have any interest in actually changing things.
One could easily add to this analysis that during the 8 years in this time period that the Republicans did not control the White House, they had a President in Clinton who signed several major pieces of legislation that had long been part of the Republican agenda and that were opposed primarily by Democrats - NAFTA, GATT, welfare reform, the Telecom bill, deregulation of the financial industry. The irony is that Clinton's agenda on these matters was more consistently conservative than Bush's agenda. Clinton was pro-free trade; Bush has imposed tarrifs in several industries. Clinton pushed through deregulation bills; Bush pushed through the first major new entitlement program, to the tune of some $500 billion, since the Great Society of the 1960s. Clinton made it a major priority to balance the budget and did so; Bush brought back record deficits.
The irony of all this is that in controlling government for most of the last 24 years, the alleged party of "smaller government" has overseen a spectacular growth in government on virtually every front. And despite their heated rhetoric on issues like abortion, pornography and gay rights, their followers have more to hate in our culture today than they did in 1980. Their rhetoric clearly does not match reality, and I suspect that rank and file social conservatives have to be getting a little frustrated over it. How long can this charade continue?
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Charade?
The reasons you point out here are exactly why I laugh when people call President Bush "extreme right". Bush is not very conservative. Many of us Republicans never saw him as such. At the end of the Clinton years, the Republican party realized that it wasn't going to win elections with people who were signifacantly more conservative than the general populace. They chose instead to back more moderate candidates.
That is what I think our system of government is all about. It forces compromise. The Republicans cannot get all of their agenda through, nor can the Democrats. Instead they have to find the comprimise in between that is dictated by the votes and opinions of the general public. You can lean this country one way or another, but it's very hard to knock it over either way.
I don't see that as a charade, or as hypocracy. I see it is compromise that is a necessity of the system, which is a great thing since it keeps extremists from either side from achieving their goals that are out of line with the mainstream public.
1. This is exactly why I laugh at our 2 party system. Both parties completely misrepresent themselves, and both parties grow the govt. whenever they are in power. It's a sham. Clinton, at least, got very lucky with the timing of the technology/internet boom which allowed him to grow the govt. and balance the budget at the same time.
2. I would attribute any progress on social issues such as gay rights etc more to a change in public perception than anything people in govt. did or didn't do. If the Republicans could really have controlled the general populace's thoughts on social issues, they would have. Fortunately they can't, :)
I don't see that as a charade, or as hypocracy. I see it is compromise that is a necessity of the system, which is a great thing since it keeps extremists from either side from achieving their goals that are out of line with the mainstream public.
Except that in this case, it's not in any way extremist to say that we have to slow down the growth of government or we're going to go broke. We can't keep spending hundreds of billions of dollars more every year on stuff the government has no business doing, and to continue to vote to do should be seen as insane, not "moderate". Both parties are complicit in this vast giveaway where they take from one group and give to another, and most of the time it takes from the middle class and gives to the rich. And both parties cover up this truth with rhetorical nonsense. The Republicans talk about wanting "smaller government" that they have no intention of actually trying to make a reality, and the Democrats talk about being the party of the common man, while simultaneously robbing him blind with taxes to give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax giveaways to their corporate paymasters. That's not moderation, it's highway robbery.