Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

A Dog With Two Tails

Culture and Politics - Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, January 05, 2012

Rick Santorum has said that those who are critical of his so-called "big government conservatism" are wrong, and they are libertarians to boot. Since he is not a libertarian, he rejects the label -- he reasons that if you are a virtual anarchist, then everything is going to look like big government to you. That's true enough, but there is more to it.

As Republicans have done their go-along-get-along thing for the last several decades, an awful lot of territory has opened up between the mainstream Republican right and the libertarian right. This is not the result of the libertarians moving. As the spending has grown, so the distance between the two has grown. There is a lot more distance than there used to be. If you were to show the editorial board of National Review (from 1965, say) what kind of budgets the 2012 conservatives were going to be urging, their temptation would be to sell their magazine and spend all the money at the dog races.

But Santorum's comments to the contrary, there are still conservatives around, not libertarians, who see him as too easy with the checkbook.
For example, Mark Steyn has said that Santorum is a "wee bit too big on the Compassionate Conservatism side." I agree with this fully, and on this point I am roughly where Steyn is.

At the same time, because of where Santorum is on other basic issues, I believe he is worth supporting. But this has to be a hard-headed coalition support, not a simple placard-waving support. He has to get strong support from strong conservatives who are noticeably to his fiscal right. That strong kind of support should come with tea party pressure. A great deal of pressure already exists from the financial exigencies, but there needs to be more pressure on the point from people inside his camp.

After a good showing in an election, politicians are always as happy as a dog with two tails. But this presidential election coming up really is a watershed election. The fiscal realities are grim. Santorum could win every primary left, and be happy about it, and the fiscal realities would still be just as grim.

The only way out is if the conservative standard-bearer rejects, not the label compassionate, but the idea that compassionate government gives things. It does not. A compassionate government, the kind we should be yearning for, praying for, is a government which repents of using its power to take things.

It is a point that Santorum still needs to acknowledge. Somebody should talk to him about it.