The greatest allies the Republican party has today are President Obama and his Democrat party! The so-called 'Obamacare' project has crash landed and I sense that the worst is yet to come. In any event, the American people now have a rock-hard example to confirm their suspicion that governments are incapable of actually organising a piss up in a brewery! Now is the chance, one would think, for a Republican party, united behind a philosophy of smaller government, to stand together at the forthcoming hustings and sweep the board. Fat chance!
As Jeffrey Lord spells out in The American Spectator, the Republicans are split down the middle! Actually, I'm not sure if the split is actually in the middle, it is more a split between the ordinary 'Joe Does' who mostly loathe government and the political apparatchiks who love it. You can understand why politicians of all colours love government because it is through government that they can exert their power. For the average politician, the whole game, the whole wretched business of smarming to 'the folks', attending endless numbers of tedious 'chicken suppers', wheedling money out of donars, kissing babies and media arseholes, is all worth it for that chance to gain office and wield power! So, it is going to be a hard job to find a politician who not only does not wish to wield power but positively strives to relinquish as much of it as possible. Such people are as rare as hens' teeth which is why we, on both sides of the pond, have only only enjoyed one Ronald Reagan and one Margaret Thatcher.
Jeffrey Lord is a brave man because in his article he takes on no less an opponent than 'The Kraut', than whom . . . etc, etc! 'The Kraut' argues that there is no split in the Republican party on matters of principle only of tactics, as he said on TV:
I think this whole thing [a split in the Republican party] is very much blown up in the liberal media…. The difference between the hard right and moderates is really one over tactics rather than over ideology and objectives…. On objectives you tell me what is the fundamental difference between the so-called moderates and radicals. I don’t see it. We all agree on limited government, we all agree on restoration of individual rights, we all agree on liberty being the central ideal, we all agree on the restoration of individual responsibility and initiative… where’s the big difference?... This is ginned up by a lot of players for a lot of self-interested reasons…. Cool this a little bit by looking rationally at what are the real differences… and they are tactical.
Jeffrey Lord absolutely disagrees and in doing so actually quotes the late, and very much under-estimated, Sir Keith Joseph:
When you ask “where’s the big difference?” I would suggest it is right there with moderates whose view of the federal government and its role is entirely different from that of the party’s conservative base.
As has been discussed here before this difference was well expressed by Margaret Thatcher’s longtime adviser, the late Sir Keith Joseph. Joseph believed that the internal dynamics of politics continually ratcheted left — and that British Conservatives had simply acceded to what was called socialist ratcheting. To be a Conservative Prime Minister was to simply manage the leftward, socialist ratchets of the last Labour government, never to change course. The reason for Thatcher’s success — and Reagan’s in America — was precisely because they did not go along with the leftward socialist ratcheting and sought to ratchet rightward. To go completely in the other direction.
That seems to me to be absolutely spot on. And as Mr. Lord also reminds us, both these 'counter-revolutionary' leaders were forced to struggle against their own parties, the majority of whom simply could not bring themselves to diminish in any way their own power.
If 'Obamacare' brings down the Democrat party then the Republicans need to be aware of the danger of collateral damage. As Americans survey the wreckage, more and more of them will demand to know what solution the Republicans can offer. At that point the brown stuff will hit the Republican fan - so be ready to duck!
