The Battle of Washington By Daniel Henninger
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-battle-of-washington-1429138104?mod=hp_opinion
Hillary has a size-of-government fight on her hands.
Republican activists strapping on body armor for the impending presidential campaign may get what they’ve been itching for—the Battle of Washington. That would be the long struggle between Big Government and whatever remnants of individual liberty haven’t disappeared inside the federal maw of rules, laws, programs or prosecutions.
To conservatives this is the Leviathan state, an opponent normally thrashed in 400-page books. In real life, the federal Leviathan simply expands annually. This election could be different, with the fight over the size of government finally ending up in the streets. Several reasons why:
For starters, the incredible federal bloat of the two-term Obama presidency, especially ObamaCare. ObamaCare, both the law’s massive reach and the botched rollout, became the “Ghostbusters” of American politics. ObamaCare was the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, which seemed to frighten Americans across politics. What is it??!!!
Now before us is Barack Obama’s presumptive successor, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, touring the country in a Scooby-Doo van.
A school of thought holds that those disturbed by how far left Mr. Obama took federal power will find relief once the instinctively centrist Clintons reoccupy Washington. This is a pipe dream only Wall Street Democrats and retired generals could believe.
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After defeating the Clinton organization in 2008, the progressive left finally got full control of the Democratic Party. There is no chance they will let Mrs. Clinton even glance toward the center in the next 19 months. The Democratic left didn’t like the Clintons in 2007 and still doesn’t.
You’re not going to hear a peep about the private sector in this campaign, other than her opening-day remark that “there’s something wrong when CEOs make 300 times more than the average American worker.”
Mrs. Clinton is a Democrat inheriting the economic headwinds of the Obama presidency, six years of below-average economic growth that has produced middle-class anxiety over flat incomes and flat jobs. Her solution: Make big government bigger.
Start to finish, the Clinton campaign will be about income maintenance, education subsidies, refundable tax credits, expanded Social Security payments and, needless to say, pumping more helium into the ObamaCare balloon.
Enter Rand Paul. And Marco Rubio,Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina.
Up to now, and with the exception of Ronald Reagan’s genius communication skills, “small government” has been basically Republican boilerplate. Every GOP candidate mouthed it. But what did it mean, other than spending cuts, and why would average voters want it?
The compelling, even exciting, argument for smaller government lies in those 400-page tracts of classical liberalism. The man who grew up absorbing these ideas into his bloodstream is Sen. Rand Paul. Blessed with natural communication skills, Sen. Paul arrives to present a defense of greater individual freedom as an intriguing alternative to the big-government status quo.
Messrs. Rubio and Cruz and Ms. Fiorina are singing from the same small-government hymnal, and like Sen. Paul, all can make the message sound attractive, a rare thing for Republicans.
Sen. Rubio’s announcement for the presidency, indeed his entire political persona, is embedded in the experience of his immigrant parents, a story of upward-striving work rather than flatlined government dependency.
On her Facebook page Tuesday, Carly Fiorina cracked back at Hillary’s equal-pay pitch by pointing out that government seniority systems, which reward workers “for time in grade, not merit,” are what keep a lot of women’s pay treading water below men. Mrs. Clinton’s real constituencies, Carly Fiorina said, are repressive government bureaucracies.
Even Chris Christie, a Medicaid expander in New Jersey, got into the act this week, calling for future cuts in Social Security payments for wealthier retirees. Rick Perry’s booming Texas is a poster boy for the benefits of government that doesn’t smother. Govs. Scott Walker and Jeb Bush will elevate the same modest-government narrative.
How has the GOP arrived on the outskirts of the Battle of Washington?
The tea party—in its cleaner, 2007 incarnation—blew the whistle on Republican complicity in government’s growth. GOP Sen. Tom Coburn’s campaign in 2005 against Alaska’s “bridge to nowhere,” defended by Republicans Ted Stevens and Don Young, was an important, symbolic event. The spenders are always with us, but the party’s ethos was shifting toward rationalizing government with ideas like Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget-and-tax road map for prosperity in 2012.
More than anything, Leviathan has become vulnerable. The benevolent edifice of big government has been cracking, perhaps since FEMA’s nonperformance during Hurricane Katrina. The loss of faith accelerated under Barack Obama, with bland, acronymic facades cracking across Washington, from HHS to the IRS to the VA.
Marco Rubio this week called the whole federal thing so last century. And of course it is. It’s hard to know whether voters born in the 1980s or ’90s, women, independents and minorities will buy the argument that they or their families will be better off if government steps back. What we know for sure is that the lady in the Scooby van has to spend 19 months arguing for more of the same.
Write to henninger@wsj.com
Write to Daniel Henninger at henninger@wsj.com
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