What Republicans want

Responding to Ohio State University history professor and author Steven Conn’s Op-Ed article on Tuesday examining the history of the federal government’s relationship with the private sector, reader Barry DuRon wrote:

“Conn sets up a straw man and dismantles it. I see no evidence that Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and other Republicans ‘insist that the federal government is the mortal enemy of the private sector.’ No serious Republican claims there is no role for a federal government in our life.

“A federal government is essential for such necessities as the armed forces and infrastructure. I have not met any Republican who would not agree that there are some interstate activities that need to be regulated by a federal government, or that regulatory bodies such as the Federal Aviation Administration and the Food and Drug Administration are superfluous.

“There is, however, a wide gulf between no government and a bloated federal government that devours a big chunk of our gross domestic product.�

Steven Conn responds:

It’s tough to believe that DuRon has not met one Republican who is against any type of interstate commerce regulation by the federal government or believes we don’t need the FAA or the FDA.

During the primary season, GOP candidates tried to outdo each other promising voters that they would slash and burn the federal government, even though Texas Gov. Rick Perry couldn’t quite count to three. During his political career, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has called for the elimination of almost everything, including the FBI, and he has built a substantial following among GOP activists. His son Rand called for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act and was elected to the Senate in 2010.

But DuRon’s observation is revealing in a different way. Republicans since Ronald Reagan have generally been quite vague about which government agencies they propose to gut, knowing that to offer such specifics risks alienating voters who quite like those programs.

Instead, they have promised tax cuts and more tax cuts. The goal here is to “starve the beast,� a strategy pushed by Grover Norquist, another of those Republicans DuRon should take note of. By shrinking government revenue through tax cuts, the reasoning goes, federal programs will have to be eliminated. Norquist has persuaded many Republicans in Congress to sign his “no new tax� pledge, which allows politicians to promise lower taxes without having to specify what citizens will lose in return.

Those of a certain age will remember the name David Stockman; he was Ronald Reagan’s whiz-kid budget director charged with implementing the president’s tax-cut, trickle-down policies designed to shrink the federal government. Those policies didn’t work, and Stockman resigned in disgust in 1985. In a 2009 interview, Stockman told a reporter: “The Republican Party has totally abdicated its job in our democracy, which is to act as the guardian of fiscal discipline and responsibility. They’re on an anti-tax jihad, one that benefits the prosperous classes.�

And while the prosperous classes benefit from it, the other inevitable result of that jihad is a gutted federal government for the rest of us.

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