Compassionate Conservatism … Means What?
Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum said in a recent speech on Compassionate Conservatism:
For all of the chatter about it during the last number of years it is still an emerging philosophy. It hasn’t ever been tried as a governing philosophy. From one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other, Republican passion for compassionate conservatism has waned as other “more pressing matters” took over. For some this lack of action has meant discouragement and for others it has meant cynicism. But the truth is that this compassionate conservative philosophy is the only viable conservative philosophy we Republicans possess.
… Some final points; Yes, this will require a role for government that some conservatives find disquieting. But that is a discomfort worth confronting. For too long there has been an implied belief that government was the problem; if government just stepped out of the way everything would be fine. That is philosophical nonsense. Government is as important as the other vital societal structures that order our lives. It is time for conservatives to stop treating government as if its elimination were the highest good that could come to humankind.
First of all, Senator Santorum seems to directly contradict Ronald Reagan here. Santorum says: “For too long there has been an implied belief that government was the problem; if government just stepped out of the way everything would be fine. That is philosophical nonsense.”
What Reagan meant when he said “government is the problem” is that the government is often causing profound problems as a result of unintended consequences and the drag on the economy by excessive government. This is still profoundly true. A deep skepticism about the role of government is one of the key underpinnings of the modern conservative movement. Santorum seems to be giving the green light to using government for going after every social ill.
My problem with the idea of Compassionate Conservatism is that in practice it seems to just be Big Government Conservatism . And Big Government Conservatism looks a whole lot like … Big Government Liberalism. When you are talking about huge government programs to tackle every social ill, what is the difference? And with Compassionate Conservatism, what prevents the welfare state from ballooning out of control just like with the liberal welfare state?
Without a set of clear principles in how Compassionate Conservatism differs in practice from liberalism, we should be skeptical of it. Just adding some more free-market oriented aspects to policies, and emphasizing personal responsibility a little more than liberals, is not nearly enough.
So what are examples of Compassionate Conservatism? President Bush’s huge Medicare expansion (which was a huge mistake)?
Perhaps Bush’s proposed partial privatization of Social Security, which is a great idea, is an example of Compassionate Conservatism. But then this is reducing government, not expanding it.
Compassionate Conservatism is a great touchy-feely phrase to help Republican politicians get elected. It gives them a battle-axe to challenge Democrats on their claim to being more compassionate. But as some kind of genuinely new governing philosophy, it has come up short.
