Greenspan puts finger on conservative failure

Self described "libertarian Republican" and former Ayn Rand associate Alan Greenspan has everybody talking about his forthcoming book [hat tip Russell Brown at Hard News], in which he sagely observes the reason for the Republican demise in last year's US election, and from which he draws a pertinent lesson for conservatives everywhere. The Republicans deserved to be soundly stomping, he says, because the party "swapped principle for power."

In the book, Greenspan wrote that Bush essentially left an unbridled GOP Congress to spend money however it saw fit, and by not vetoing a single bill in six years, the president deprived the nation of checks and balances. "The Republicans in Congress lost their way," Greenspan wrote. "They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose."

Are you listening David Cameron? Are you listening John Key? Do you listen 'Key Wees'? Greenspan's lesson is this: In swapping principle for power, you end up with neither.

The Republican congress was hopeless: the biggest spending congress in history, betraying whatever small government principles to which Republicans ever laid any claim. As Brad Thompson pointed out in a series I ran last year at Not PC on the collapse of American conservatism:

"Government spending increased faster under George Bush and his Republican Congress than it did under Bill Clinton.."

"More people work for the federal government today than at any time since the end of the Cold War..."

"If post 9/11 defense spending is taken off the table, domestic spending has ballooned by 23 percent since Bush took office..."

"...despite President Bush’s much vaunted tax cuts, Americans actually pay more in taxes today than they did during Bill Clinton’s last year in office..."

Asks Thompson in the introduction to his analysis of the Decline and Fall of American Conservatism, "What happened to the idea of limited-government conservatism? Have the conservatives been corrupted by power, or is there something in their basic philosophy that has led them to embrace big government?"

That's the question answered in his article, summarised in the following posts:

'CONSERVATISM: A NEW OBITUARY,' THE SERIES SO FAR:

• Part 6 - The Consequences of Conservatism
  
• Part 5 - The "Neocons" in Practice: Adding Cynicism to Love
  
• Part 4 - The "Neocons"
  
• Part 3 - "Compassionate Conservatism" in Practice
  
• Part 2 - "Compassionate Conservatism"
  
• Part 1 - Two Bands of Thieves
• Introduction
  
• The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism - C.Bradley Thompson, The Objective Standard