When it comes to the power of imagination, it is hard to top
either liberals or children. On the night before Christmas,
millions of representatives of both groups had their wishes
fulfilled: for the kiddies, gifts from Santa Claus (really their
parents in disguise); for liberals, a federally restructured
health care system courtesy of Senate Democrats (who don’t even
bother to dress up as the taxpayers who will actually foot the
bill).
For an example of the latter’s childlike enthusiasm, behold the
visions of sugar-plums dancing in New York Times
columnist Paul Krugman’s head. The more substantive part of his
Christmas Eve column
revises Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The way
Krugman tells it, come 2014, the Cratchits can rely on the
federal government for Tiny Tim’s health insurance rather than
Ebeneezer Scrooge.
God bless us, everyone. But as easy as it is to mock an alleged
grown-up for reasoning along Krugman’s lines, one must confront
an uncomfortable fact: much of what liberals imagine eventually
becomes what passes for reality in Washington. By contrast,
conservatives tend to lack imagination, preferring to think of
themselves as members of the Beltway’s reality-based enclave.
Realism has its virtues, of course. But what conservatives often
practice is really a kind of stoicism in which they resign
themselves to living in the America of liberal imagination. The
Senate roll call had barely been read last Thursday before
right-thinking types were sullenly declaring the battle lost and
predicting they’d never have the votes to undo what the Senate
Democrats had just done.
So bound are they by liberal rules the best Senate Republican
leaders could hope to do was offer amendments to trip up the
Democrats by catching them in some kind of contradiction. Why,
did you know that by voting for this health care bill Democrats
might cut Medicare? Or raise taxes on people outside the richest
1 percent of taxpayers? Or give sweetheart deals to red-state
Democrats like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu?
Creative liberals can sometimes be more realistic than their
opponents. They are more effective at mobilizing constituencies
that stand to benefit from Washington power grabs than the other
side is at mobilizing the people who will see their money stolen,
their rights imperiled, their values trampled upon, and their
status quo upset. Liberals can afford to expand government
incrementally because the “ratchet effect” described by economist
Robert Higgs renders most of the marginal encroachments
irreversible.
The ratchet effect is real, but the reason it looks as ironclad
as a law of physics is that the countervailing influence is
practically nonexistent. The Senate passes a bill that imposes an
individual mandate to purchase health insurance that was
unpopular even in Massachusetts, that increases taxes and
spending, that compels taxpayer subsidies of abortion, that polls
badly, and that is vastly from what already passed the House. And
Republicans want to talk about Medicare cuts.
Here is the difference: Many Republicans are looking for issues
to use successfully against the Democrats in the 2010 elections.
Fair enough. But then what? Democrats are looking to create
conditions that will favor them over the long term by building a
bigger government secure enough to survive temporary electoral
setbacks.
Back when he was still a senior editor at National
Review, Joseph Sobran pointed out, “The real opposite of a
legislating party is not a foot-dragging party, but a party of
repeal.” The filibuster is a very fine thing, but what would
really have Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid quaking in their boots is
the prospect of “a conservative Congress whose chief business
will be chopping down the jungle of bad laws that oppress us,
laws that range from misconceived to iniquitous and
unconstitutional.”
Politically unrealistic, you say? Perhaps, but how is it any less
realistic than a strategy that seeks to keep taxes and spending
under control while accepting the permanent growth of the federal
government as inevitable? Even if, say, the health care
legislation cannot be defeated or repealed, it opponents should
think of ways to attack its taxes, subsidies, and regulations,
and to use its trappings to promote a real national free market.
Anything less would be a failure of imagination. Think: Tiny Tim,
taxpayer. If conservatives were ever to become as imaginative as
liberals, it would scare the Dickens out of Paul Krugman.
