Ross Douthat at the American Scene has an interesting take on Michael Tanner’s new book from the Cato Institute, Leviathan on the Right:
“The inconvenient truth, for writers like Tanner, is that anti-welfare state libertarianism remains enormously unpopular with American voters, and so fiscal libertarianism can only have a place at the political table if it weds itself to something like an Irving Kristol-style neoconservatism, and takes pride (as it should, given the correlation of forces pushing for ever-larger government) in keeping America’s public sector from swelling to the size of Europe’s, while seizing every opportunity — as in the welfare debates of the 1990s — to make the government that we do have run more smoothly.”
Hmmm, a conservative with a brain. This would explain why my extreme right-wing Congresscritter (involuntarily retired in November) always sent out literature that said, in essence, what can the government do for you? Dishonest, but wise politics.