United Liberty

Opponents to Barack Obama’s agenda are often casts as anti-government extremists. The president himself has taken shots at his Republican critics, who he says “[believe] that government has little or no role to play in helping this nation meet our collective challenges.”

Over at Reason, Matt Welch picks apart this rhetoric:

Keep in mind, the president is talking specifically here not about libertarian freakazoids who want to privatize their own grandmothers, but about governing Republicans. You know, the gang who, “during the first half of 2001 and all of the 2003-07 period maintained full control of both the White House and Congress,” during which time they “increased total spending by more than 20 percent, an average of 5 percent a year,” jacking up “both nondefense spending and mandatory programs enormously.” How in the hell can you spend so much money on “more tax breaks for the wealthy and fewer rules for corporations”? Which one of those two answers (the only ones the GOP has, remember) best describes No Child Left Behind, Sarbanes-Oxley, or Medicare Part D? If Bush was really all about “fewer rules for corporations,” how was it that he managed to be “the biggest regulator since Nixon”? (And do click on those links, they are filled with things like facts and numbers.)

So, if Republicans are a big-government party, and believe me, they are. What does that make Barack Obama and Democrats?