United Liberty

With Scott Brown’s impressive win over Martha Coakley in Massachusetts on Tuesday, Republicans are poised to make gains in both the House and Senate in the upcoming mid-term elections. Not to rain on my Republican friends’ parade, but since Tuesday I’ve noticed some over-confidence among GOP ranks. Perhaps some perspective is in order.

We should certainly take Tuesday’s election as a rebuke of the President Barack Obama’s agenda, including his health care “reform” proposal. It came in what was one of the bluer states in the country. Although pundits agree that Coakley was a terrible candidate, it’s naive to deny that Voters aren’t happy with Democrats.

It is, however, important to point out that once you look at poll numbers, they’re not too happy with Republicans either. It seems that Republicans are forgetting that.

In 2006, voters went to the polls and gave Democrats complete control of Congress for the first time since 1993 because Republicans were spending too much money and the war in Iraq had dragged on for six years with no end in sight. It wasn’t because they approved of Democrats.

We saw this again in 2008, only this time the economy was tanking and bailouts became the punchline that led Barack Obama in the White House, despite the fact that he voted for the bailouts (he played the populist anger well).

Republicans want to forget that George W. Bush existed, and that’s understandable. Unfortunately, Republicans forget that they had control of the House and near complete control of the Senate from 2001 to 2007. Whether my Republican friends want to admit it or not, Republican members of Congress were complicit in growing the size and scope of government. Many of these folks are the same people I’ve seen at Tea Party events complaining about Barack Obama.

While I do not disagree in any way that Barack Obama’s economic policies are leading us further down the road to serfdom (apologies, FA Hayek), they are the same policies pursued by his predecessor (as noted by Tim Carney in his book Obamanomics).

For those of you that forget, with approval from a Republican-controlled Congress, George W. Bush brought us these fiscal disasters:

• Medicare Part D
• No Child Left Behind
• a doubling of the national debt
• a costly war in Iraq

As I noted, these are only the fiscal betrayals of Republicans when they had power of Congress with a president from their party. We’re not even discussion the trampling of the Constitution and Bill of Rights or TARP and bank nationalization that Bush supported in the final two years of his administration.

No doubt many Republicans will point to the Bush tax cuts or say that the increased spending was due to national defense.

The substantive tax cuts that Bush managed to push through were meaningless in the long term because there were no corresponding offsets in spending. As Grover Norquist in retrospect of this, tax cuts without spending cuts are tax increases.

As far as increase spending due to war and defense, Republicans increased non-defense discretionary spending dramatically, by almost 30% between 2001 and 2006.

Our government functions “best” when it is divided, at least in terms of expansion. Personally, I would prefer Republicans controlling Congress and a Democrat is in the White House. The 90’s weren’t perfect, don’t get me wrong, but actual growth in government was low and that’s because Republicans moderated Bill Clinton.

Many libertarians, including myself, are watching to see if Republicans will embrace free markets and individual liberty. Some feel Republicans haven’t wondered in the wilderness long enough. I tend to agree, but taxpayers are longing for the balance that a Republican-controlled Congress can provide.

But if Republicans manage to take back control of Congress, and that’s in the realm of possibility at this point, it won’t be because voters trust them or necessarily approve of them or believe that they have a better plan for the country. It will be because voters are angry with the party in power.