Making sense of Senator Bob Bennett’s defeat

By Christian Probasco, 5-19-10

	Stephen Richer

Conversing by e-mail with political commentator Stephen Richer in Washington, D.C., I was reminded once more of the primacy of political narrative over all other elements of discourse in this grape nation of ours. I’ve had talks with socialist friends wherein we couldn’t agree on the basic meanings of such common terms as “shoe,” “sky,” “butter” and “radical right wing conservative.” I feel the same way when I try to hold a conversation with anyone who has lived in D.C. for more than six months.

I’m not sure I could illustrate the divide between the post-TARP/healthcare “reform” anger (and spin) in Utah which lead to Bennett’s downfall and the spin his defeat is being given in Washington than with my brief interview with Richer. I don’t know what he’s talking about, and he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. But I’m still grateful that he took the time to answer my questions, which were not easy.

I gave my take on the issue of the then-impending doom of Senator Bennett’s career last month. Richer argued in the Daily Caller that the Tea Party (which, by the way, has claimed to have taken over the Utah GOP) and others mischaracterized Bennett as a RINO (Republican In Name Only) and cast him down for a defensible vote on TARP, and an attempt to provide some Republican direction to a health care bill that ultimately passed with little or none.

If you want a pretty good analysis of what’s going on right now at the national level, I’d suggest an article by Gary North, even if you’re not a Christian Reconstructionist libertarian. And here’s a good clip from CNN about Bennett’s differences with the Tea Party insurgency.

Richer gets the last word in my interview but I’m not gonna sit here and take this “gross mischaracterization” stuff without retorting that it was Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard, who wrote, bizarrely, “When I coined the phrase “big government conservative” years ago, I had certain traits in mind. Bush has all of them….He understands why Reagan failed to reduce the size of the federal government….The reason: People like big government so long as it’s not a huge drag on the economy.”

It was also Fred Barnes who said, “Neocons tend to be big government conservatives,”

Also: it was Irving “let’s convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy” Kristol, the “godather of Neoconservatism,” who coined the term “conservative welfare state,” with which he was comfortable, and which should have blown up his typewriter as he was typing it.

Also: it was Irving’s son Billy who made the wackadoodle observation in the New York Times that “talk of small government may be music to conservative ears, but it’s not to the public as a whole. This isn’t to say the public is fond of big-government liberalism. It’s just that what’s politically vulnerable about big-government liberalism is more the liberalism than the big government.”

I could write a book on this subject. People have written books on this subject.

However, I’ll concede that I should have asked Richer about Bennett’s “alleged closet socialism.” I was upset, and still am, that the supposed conservatives in Congress didn’t have the guts to try bringing health care costs down simply by removing laws and regulations which all but preclude competition between doctors, hospitals and health care agencies. But that’s neither here nor there.

New West: What do you see as the core values of the Republican Party? In the pre-Bush days (Reagan’s term) the party was intent on shrinking the size of the federal government. What happened to that sentiment?

Stephen Richer: Fortunately, in this country we vote for individuals, not parties. This of course means that the Republicanism of the South could be distinct from the West, could be distinct from the Republicanism of the East, and I think it is.

But I think the core value of the Republican Party that has persevered (though it has certainly waxed and waned over time) is the maximization of individual liberty. This is still the idea I believe in, and I think it is still a central component of most Americans’ Republicanism. 

As for what happened to this sentiment during the Bush days, I’d refer you to the number of tales that have been written by White House insiders, but I think there is truth to the saying that “all power is all corrupting.” Reducing the power of government seems less appealing when that power is in your hands and can be used to enact your agenda. The Republican Party became something akin to a Christian Democrat party of Europe.

NW: Why would the crowd which came over to the Republicans because they believed that party was serious about shrinking government stick around for a neoconservative agenda which expands its role? Isn’t the party in the process of losing a huge number of Reagan Republicans to pick up a handful of neoconservatives?

SR: This is a gross mischaracterization of neoconservatism (see the recent conference held by Brookings Institution on the subject featuring Bill Kristol), and is emblematic of the all-too-casual way that many commentators use the term. To the extent that neoconservatism penetrated the Republican Party in the Bush administration, it did so largely in foreign policy. But Republicans have long believed in a robust foreign policy driven partly by moral aims (see Reagan’s crusade against Communism).

Given this stability in foreign policy, it can be inferred that the question suggests that neoconservatives are somehow responsible for big-domestic-government Bush-era programs like No Child Left Behind.

But this ignores the founding domestic philosophies of neoconservatism (again, to the limited extent that neoconservatism can be said to be monolithic). Irving Kristol left the Democratic Party and founded The Public Interest to warn of the perils of social engineering and to point out that more often than not, big government action has unintended consequences. James Q. Wilson became another famous neoconservative when he said that New York City society could not managed as if some sociological experiment.

Norman Podhoretz of Commentary and Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard have carried on the torch of neoconservatism, and neither of them could be accused of wanting to expand government’s domestic role.

This question confuses me because it seems to be talking about a completely different neoconservatism than the one that I am familiar with. The only “large government” position that neoconservatives have consistently called for is a robust military that believes in America’s military and moral supremacy. 

NW: Would you please give me your take on the ongoing Republican quandary whereby legislators vote against more government spending and then brag about how much federal money they bring home?

SR: It’s always somebody else’s pork, until it’s your own. This is not a new phenomenon; it gets at the old paradox that Congress is usually universally reviled, but constituents almost always like their individual representative.

David Mayhew once said that representatives are single-minded seekers of reelection. This is a case in point. Right now, it is very much in vogue to want to reduce government spending, but individual districts still like it when Congressmen bring home the bacon. They just hope you don’t realize the contradiction.

NW: I wrote an article on Bennett’s closet socialism. Wanna address the charges about the rhetoric, which hurts most Republican’s ears?

SR: To call Bob Bennett a closet socialist is lunacy. The guy has been a consistent conservative and free market supporter for 18 years, and you’re calling him a socialist based on one TARP vote and one proposed health care bill…? See the recent National Review article by Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism and as true a conservative as any. He acknowledges Bennett’s conservative credentials.

Let’s keep in mind that the TARP vote was made at the behest of a Republican president, was done in financially exigent circumstances (as in people thought the sky was falling), and was done with many other Republican representatives. Are you calling all of these representatives socialists too?  If so, you’re seeing more red than even McCarthy saw.

As for the Wyden-Bennett health care proposal, you’re right to suggest that it had statist elements that are distasteful to most Republicans. But part of politics is making the best of a bad situation. Democrats were intent on reforming health care; I would have much preferred a health care bill with at least seem Republican influence rather than the purely Democratic monstrosity that passed. 

Calling Bennett a socialist is empty, scare rhetoric that only serves to alienate American independents and moderates. The John Birch Society did this to ill-effect before the cool, educated reasoning of Bill Buckley kicked them out and ushered in the Reagan age.

Stephen Richer is a director at a Washington, D.C.-based legal think tank, and is a native of Sandy, Utah. Some of Stephen’s past writings can be seen here.

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