Douglas Kern has a column up at TCS Daily, in which he nicely describes the Three Deadly Republican Spending Rationalizations:
1) "This program will be expensive, wasteful, and corrosive to the virtues that make a free society function, but it's popular, and we need it in order to keep the Republican majority."
2) "This program will be expensive, wasteful, and corrosive to the virtues that make a free society function, but it's necessary in the name of national security."
3) "This program will be expensive and wasteful, but it will actually improve the virtues that make a free society function, because it uses the power and affluence of a large central government to subsidize independence, self-discipline, decentralization, and the rejection of the welfare state mentality."
Well done, I think, and he discusses them nicely, tying them to his title: "The GOP: Drinking Itself Sober."
I only have a problem with this one little statement: "This, Father, is the Republicans' dilemma. The modern Republican lives in a Washington he hates -- it's too rich, too powerful, too centralized, too self-important." I'd agree, of course, that Washington is all of that. It would be tough to convince me that today's Republicans hate it.
Posted by Craig Ceely at July 18, 2006 12:19 PM