Doug Bandow Gets It

He writes:

If the Republican Party is going to be relevant, it should at least advocate smaller government. That is, people going into the voting booth would know that a vote for the Democrats was a vote to expand the state while a vote for the Republicans was a vote to shrink the state. In contrast, today voters know that the Democrats want, and will give them, a lot more government while the Republicans say they want a little bit less government but are likely to expand it a lot. That is, both parties, in practice, are promoting much bigger government. Not much reason to support the GOP.

Precisely. In the last few election cycles I have felt too many of the Republican candidates were folks who claimed to want smaller government and to support individual liberty [insert Reagan quote here], but had strong track records of precisely the opposite: increasing the size of government and sacrificing individual liberties on the altar of "security" and backward-looking and sometimes bigoted social values. Mike Bloomberg, who is fiscally conservative but socially liberal, is the only Republican who comes to mind that I could vote for with anything approaching enthusiasm. The question, then, is whether there is room in the Republican party at the national level for that type of conservatism. If not, they'll continue to lose my votes.