Bob Barr

Big Government's Ugly Side
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
January 31, 2007

That the Republican Party nationally has lost its way is largely beyond dispute.

While its thrashing at the polls in November is blamed by many on the mishandling of the situation in Iraq by the administration of President Bush, the roots of the GOP's misery extend much deeper. Indeed, as noted in a recent column by longtime conservative public relations expert Craig Shirley, by the time the dust had settled on the 2006 off-year elections, the Republican Party was considered by a clear majority of voters to be the party of Big Government.

Such a label for the GOP was not easily won, but rather the result of several years of hard work convincing the electorate that the party of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan was just as interested in federal spending and increased government power over individuals as the Democratic Party, which the Republicans used to scorn for committing just those sins. In fact, in many respects, the modern-day GOP clearly outshines its counterpart in staking out the "big government" position.

Unfortunately for the Republicans, the voters saw through the rhetorical fog the party employed to cloud its unabashedly pro-Washington agenda. Deficit spending at the hands of the Republican Party was clearly seen for what it was—deficit spending—and hollow references to President Reagan, who just one generation earlier had drawn cheers from Americans of all political stripes for labeling government as "the problem," proved insufficient to mask the party's wayward drift.

In foreign affairs, too, with the neo-conservatives' lust for military intervention foremost in the minds of American voters, the GOP was unable to convince voters it still hewed to Reagan's sound philosophy that a nation embarks on such a course at its own peril. While the 40th U.S. president oversaw a necessary and well-balanced rebuilding of America's defenses during his eight years at the nation's helm, he also understood that wielding military power in an irresponsible manner was dangerous and ill-advised. Neither Reagan's policy of using military power as a deterrent not as a sledgehammer, nor President Dwight Eisenhower's wise counsel to guard against an overly influential "military-industrial complex," appears to be among those maxims in the current Republican administration's playbook.

In the arena of domestic policies, the party that once upon a time could legitimately claim the Goldwater-Reagan mantle of working to ensure "the maximum of individual freedom," had moved so far toward government control of the lives of America's citizens as to make it impossible to argue with a straight face that "individual freedom" even entered the equation anymore.

From its ham-handed intervention in the Terri Schiavo case in 2005, to its repeated efforts to nationalize marriage via a constitutional amendment; and from the 2001 Patriot Act to the warrantless spying on American citizens in contravention of a law to the contrary that came to light in the year leading to the 2006 elections, Americans saw a party with a seeming insatiable yearning for maximizing government control over the individual and minimizing individual freedom.

Reagan's admonition in 1964—the year he began his rise to the apex of modern American conservatism—that "those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on [a] downward path," had been rendered moot by a succession of privacy-invasive laws and policies championed by the Bush administration.

GOP stalwarts might perhaps see a silver lining in the self-manufactured dark cloud that has settled over its party, if its leaders exhibited a degree of understanding of what caused their problems and were using its electoral defeat as Reagan used Goldwater's in 1964—to recognize its shortcomings and present new and enlightened ideas and leaders. Yet, sadly, the Republicans nationally appear still to have a tin ear tuned to their predicament. The same congressional leaders have been returned to power; the White House that helped orchestrate the party's defeat still insists on absolute control of the Republican National Committee (a demand to which the committee acceded); and the party punishes those who display the audacity to point out that the party had made mistakes. (U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, was unceremoniously kicked off the Judiciary Committee as a result of drawing attention to his party 's Big Government ways.)

Here in Georgia, many Republican officeholders appear poised to emulate these mistakes. The list of individual freedoms already or potentially in the sights of Republican legislators to curtail, is large and growing—smokers, drivers, landlords, drinkers—and the party is showing signs it is just as willing to grant tax breaks to its favorites as was its predecessor.

Whether the state party recognizes the parallels between such efforts to expand government control and the fate that has befallen its national brethren, will largely determine the length of its nascent majority status.

Bob Barr occupies the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union Foundation.