(Via bilerico,) Bruce Hetrick’s satirical look at SJR 7 in the Indianapolis Business Journal:
Hi. Big Brother here. You know me: Mr. Government-Knows-Best,
Mr. Run-Your-Life-For-You,
Mr. Tell-You-What-You-Can-and-Cannot-Do.
I realize I’m not popular in these Hoosier parts. I know I’ve failed to mandate the use of motorcycle helmets. Failed to mandate the use of safety belts in trucks. Failed to stop you from smoking up that old Chevy Malibu with your little munchkin ridin’ shotgun.
Granted, after decades of futility, I finally conned you into daylight-saving time. But that was an aberration. And you’re not happy about it. And a huge percentage of you opted out, anyway.
More typical of your Hoosier resistance to regulation: You have the second-highest smoking rate in the nation and the heart disease, cancer and death rate to show for it. But you won’t even consider joining Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont and Washington in passing a statewide smoke-free workplace law.
But there is one issue where you love me, baby. One topic where even you government-be-damned, you’re-not-the-bossof-me Hoosier masses crave Big Brother’s meddling.On that issue, you dig discrimination. You clamor to keep folks different from you quietly closeted.
Hypocritical as it may seem, all you members of the none-of-your-business, anti-bureaucracy crowd beg me to regulate the lives and loves of one infinitesimal subset of humanity.
And it’s not the rapists. Not the spouseabusers. Not the sex offenders. Not the child-molesters. Not the deadbeat parents. Not the polluters. Not the puppy-killers. Not the murderers, muggers, drunks or thieves.
Nope, the ones you want me to rein in are men who have sex with men and women who have sex with women. For when it comes to this horrible, terrible, devious, dangerous threat to humanity and the planet, you love to have Big Brother dictate who can love whom, and under what circumstances and whether we even speak of such salaciousness.
I think this does illustrate a fault line in the Republican coalition we’ve seen over the past couple of decades. Pro-business interests tend to desire a weak government that doesn’t do much except help enforce contracts and keep the market stable and safe enough to allow business as usual to be conducted. Social conservatives seem to envision a stronger, more intrusive government, at least in certain areas like, for example, gay marriage, rights (or lack thereof) for unmarried couples, abortion, religion in schools, etc.
The bad year at the polls in 2006 might put a little more stress on the fault line. A bad year in 2008, and maybe we’ll be looking at a seismic shift.
Good. Hopefully the libertarian part of that coalition has finally had it and realized they weren’t getting ANY of what they were in it for, namely smaller and less government. The Republicans have proven themselves the antithesis, for larger and more government, and on behalf of the repulsive social conservatives.
Unfortunately, Doug, the GOP has cultivated plenty of pro-business, big government types that abhor laissez faire but love crony capitalism. That part of that coalition can also grab an anvil and take a swim.
Mike Kole,
This writing has been on the wall since at least 1981, with the “Reagan Revolution”. I have little confidence that they’ll see it now.
And it’s not quite true to say that the right-libertarian types in the GOP haven’t gotten *any* of what they wanted under Bush. They’ve seen tax breaks, particularly for the brackets they hope to be in one day.
The GOP has learned that it can shut up that part of coalition every time with talk of tax cuts, even tax cuts that don’t do them very much good, and/or are fiscally irresponsible.
Aghast at the swelling cost of entitlements, particularly Medicaid?
Here, have a tax cut. Where ya gonna go, the Democrats? Haw haw haw.
Shocked at the atrocities committed in Haditha and Abu Grahib?
Here, have a tax cut. Where ya gonna go, the Democrats? Haw haw haw.
Disgusted by the administration’s forum-shipping with “terror suspects” like Jose Padilla, who’s been indicited for planning substantially less than the jaw-droppingly horrific crime we were assured he was to imminently commit?
Here, have a tax cut. Where ya gonna go, the Democrats? Haw haw haw.
Alarmed at the selective suspension of the writ of habeas corpus by an executive that doesn’t even have the nerve to announce that it’s doing so?
Here, have a tax cut. Where ya gonna go, the Democrats? Haw haw haw.
Irritated by the continued War on Drugs(tm) and a toothless FDA which results in any drug, no matter how terrible its effects, being A-OK by the government as long as a major pharmaceutical company patents it?
Here, have a tax cut. Where ya gonna go, the Democrats? Haw haw haw.
I could come up with more examples, of course.
I’m pretty well convinced that right-libertarianism in this country will remain utterly impotent as a politica force until everyone who can remember Barry Goldwater is dead. Barry’s enemies were LBJ and the hated Democrats, and the enemy of Barry’s enemy is the right-libertarians’ friend, which is going to keep them in bed with the GOP until Goldwater is no more than newsreel footage, like Calvin Coolidge or Joe McCarthy.
Goldwater was regarded as a revolutionary in the Republican Party in his day, someone who championed “Main” Street against “Wall” Street and its Deweys and Rockefellers. I am not sure his libertarianism was fully recognized as such on Main Street in his day, and Reagan learned to play down the fact that he had signed into law in California what was at the time the most liberal abortion law in the country. In time Main Street grew uncomfortable with the moral implications of the “Goldwater-Reagan” revolution and grew ripe for picking another sort. “Wall” Street, the big business wing of the party, has always been comfortable with big government as long as it can come to an understanding with it and is far more persistant and directed in its objectives. The political positions which will dominate “Wall Street” are those which conform to its economic self interest.
Economic self interest always includes raising barriers to entry to competitors and thus regulation is no enemy to this group unless it stamps on the toes of a subgroup. Government delivers tariffs, rich contracts and public works projects. Look at the record. Lincoln was closely associated with railroads and subsidies for their expansion (on the regulatory side railroads had to secure the right to partially obstruct navigable rivers to build bridges). T. Roosevelt built a navy and started the Panama Canal. Anti-trust regulation became a necessity because of excesses on the energy side. Hoover built dams and raised tariffs. Eisenhower started the Interstate Highway Program.
Not even Goldwater, who passes as the libertarians’ saint among Republicans, stood against all those dams littered about the far west. (Oddly on that point, not a single new dam project started under Reagan, at least according to the author of Cadillac Desert).
Here’s another example of that “small” government conservatives love:
(source)
That’ll teach a pregnant teen to seek out medical help.