Osler's Razor

Earlier this week, David Brooks wrote a challenging piece in the New York TImes titled The Possum Republicans. In the article, he chastises Republican leaders for failing to haul in the fringe of the party:

All across the nation, there are mainstream Republicans lamenting how the party has grown more and more insular, more and more rigid. This year, they have an excellent chance to defeat President Obama, yet the wingers have trashed the party’s reputation by swinging from one embarrassing and unelectable option to the next: Bachmann, Trump, Cain, Perry, Gingrich, Santorum.

But where have these party leaders been over the past five years, when all the forces that distort the G.O.P. were metastasizing? Where were they during the rise of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck? Where were they when Arizona passed its beyond-the-fringe immigration law? Where were they in the summer of 2011 when the House Republicans rejected even the possibility of budget compromise? They were lying low, hoping the unpleasantness would pass.

Frankly, I'm not sure there are such things as "Party Leaders" for the Republicans these days. Rather, it seems like the party is composed primarily of two major groups: The social conservatives, and the businessmen. Right now, Rick Santorum has the votes of the former, and Mitt Romney has the latter in his camp. Both groups, of course, claim that they want a restrained government, but neither really means it-- they rely on a growing, active government to achieve their goals. The social conservatives want government to actively restrict freedoms relating to abortion and homosexuality-- that is, they want the federal government to intervene to restrict the freedom of individuals. The businessmen, meanwhile, want government to promote business-- to pay farm subsidies and buy munitions and finance oil drilling through tax breaks. Neither group, once in office, has a track record of actually seeking to shrink the size of government, particularly in relation to individual liberties and overall spending.

Within the party, the hope for a principled and passionate position lies with a smaller third group, the libertarians, who seem to genuinely want smaller government and are willing to accept the price of that-- that a restrained federal government probably won't restrict abortion or obsess over gay marriage or finance agribusiness or maintain a gigantic army or favor one kind of energy over another. Libertarians would allow greater freedoms, and that includes the freedom to do things that may violate the morality of the social conservatives. They would also spend less money on everyone-- including business.

In that, I think Brooks is wrong. The libertarians are considered the fringe, but in fact they are the only ones left with a viable ideology consistent with the mantra of conservatism that government be restrained. It is not the party leaders, but this small fringe who are true believers in this principle, who can save the party (if it really is going to be a party of small government).