What Happened? (federal spending)

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[billybudd]

Remember the Contract With America and all the other good stuff about reducing the size of government? Here's a nice graphic illustrating the question:

What Happened?

I have no idea.

[xrp]

In before the Republibots!

[detroitdarien]

What happened? What usually happens.. crusaders get power, then get used to power, then forget what they were crusading for, and then the agenda becomes - stay in power.

And 80% of us let them get away with it by not voting in primaries. By giving them a pass every two or six years, they think they are entitled...

[billybudd]

Strange that nobody is jumping to Bush's defense.

[scrabblehack]

The other thing is...it was also such an effective campaign device....it went a long way toward breaking the "all politics is local" mold -- why hasn't it been used again?

[Blackirish]

They throw the social right a few scraps so they can stiff arm fiscal conservatives/libertarions...

[billybudd]

why hasn't it been used again?

Probably because there isn't a strong enough constituency for cutting down government. I'm starting to suspect the whole 1994 "revolution" was a semi-deliberate misinterpretation of Ross Perot's showing in 1992. Reform was in the air.

Well, reform was tried and the Republicans couldn't keep it together. But, the argument was that there weren't enough Republicans in government. That argument has now been thoroughly disproven.

It's clear that the GOP will be worthless unless it suffers some trauma to jolt it back into trying to placate its fiscally conservative base. If not, the GOP will try to hold together the coalition with the scotch tape and rubber bands called "social" issues.

[scrabblehack]

Actually, I meant the concept of getting a majority of U.S. House candidates to run on a single platform....it doesn't matter what the issues would be...you can't argue that it wasn't an effective way of getting candidates elected.

[billybudd]

Of course it was effective and it could be again. My argument is only that reform ended up being a flash-in-a-pan because Republicans didn't understand the politics involved (or were committed to a certain path). Today, there's also the cloud of war/terrorism that has everyone preoccupied, so a wholesale domestic reform effort is unlikely.

But suppose the Republicans lost seats in 2006. That could be interpreted as the end of electability on national security and we'd go back to debating domestic policy.

This time around, the conservative grassroots have to be careful. We have to demand significant structural change in the way Congress does business to prevent them from overspending. We can't be satisfied with lukewarm "reform" that can be easily reversed. We have to hold Republicans' feet to the fire and be willing to abandon them at the polls if they act against our agenda.