Wilkinson on the GOP

Will Wilkinson has a good piece up at his blog in response to some recent theorizing by the National Review crowd. Over at National Review, Jonah Goldberg and some others think that the stimulus debate will bring libertarians over to the Republican camp once and for all, ending the on-and-off alliances between libertarians and Democrats on some issues (cultural tolerance, civil liberties, militarism, etc). Wilkinson begs to differ:

"The stimulus bill vexes me not at all. It’s what you’d predict knowing the current extent of Democratic power, the opportunity that the perception of crisis creates, and the composition of the Democratic coalition. As a student of James M. Buchanan, I’m no romantic about democracy.

Moreover, what is it about the era of George W. Bush that makes Jonah think that conservatives and libertarians see eye to eye on the large questions of political economy? I understand it is now politically expedient for Republicans to oppose whatever Obama is trying to do. But, frankly, the recent performance of the Republicans in Congress has been pathetic, managing to do little more than fight to get a bit more for their constituencies and a bit less for the majority’s. I do not remember hearing a plausible, principled alternative powerfully articulated by the Congressional Republicans. Maybe that’s because the great success of the GOP over the last eight years has been to destroy the reputation of free markets and limited government by deploying its rhetoric and then doing the opposite. Partisan Republicans choke on the truth that the emerging shape of the Obama era is the aftemath of the GOP’s successful, if unwitting, campaign to destroy the political economy they proclaimed."

I couldn't agree more with Wilkinson. For eight years, the Republicans cynically used libertarian rhetoric while betraying every basic principle of libertarianism. They made it possible for Democrats to point to the Bush years and say, "That's what free markets and limited government look like." Republicans failed so completely and in so many ways that Americans are now turning to Obama's socialistic promises for hope. After all this, people like Jonah Goldberg think that libertarians should be proud of the Republicans for their mundane partisanship over the stimulus bill? Please.