A Republican who claims to believe in small government is like a Pope who claims to be an atheist
The right has a thesaurus of insults it hurls at the left. They accuse liberals of being “socialist,”, “communist,” “statist,” and “woke.” Their overarching claim is that "nanny state" Democrats are the party of “big government” — while they sell themselves as the “small government” party of liberty, religious freedom, and laissez-faire, free market, “American Dream” libertarianism.
It is complete bullshit. Their claims have the credibility of a Dr. Oz-promoted miracle diet — not that the MAGA base cares. They revel in GOP promises as patently false and cheaply seductive as the heaving bosom of a gossamer-clad femme fatale, promising concupiscence on the cover of a hard-boiled, dime novel. Like the marks in a successful con game, they imagine themselves on the verge of wealth as they camo-up and open-carry war weapons across Arizonan parking lots to thwart Frank and Mabel’s attempt to vote.
And if individual threats of violence are not enough, Republicans marshall all the assets of big government to gerrymander minorities and Democrats into irrelevance while throwing up obstacles to those who try to vote. And after the dust settles, they will not accept the results of the vote if they lose. The GOP are huge fans of big government when it is used as a weapon to bloody their political opponents. And as a tool to vacuum up cash.
Take Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a Republican tick buried in America’s body politic. This business-friendly, anti-government zealot has been cashing taxpayer checks since 1959. In 2022 money, after 16 years in the Iowa Legislature, six years in the US House, and 41 years in the US Senate, Grassley has lifted $8,821,280 from the public purse. In addition, he has received tens of millions in expense reimbursement, staff allowances, and office expenses. And, although 89, he looks healthy. And he wants another six years. ($1,044,000)
Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
When Republicans extol small government, they mean a government that will not impede corporate America’s ability to maximize the bottom line. Business-friendly politics are not small government in their effect. They are a decision by one political party to value healthy profits over healthy people.
If you have to live downwind of a coal plant or cheek by jowl with an unregulated hog farm — if your workplace is unsafe, or if you are denied a job because of who you are — the government responsible for your harassment is not small. A decision to do nothing is still a decision.
Republicans do not stop there. They burrow into every aspect of American life. Theocratic racists design school curriculums to promote Christianity and bigotry. Non-Christians, anyone outside the heteronormative bigender fiction, and minorities suffer the fallout. One religion is granted most favored status and shoehorned into science class. And athletic coaches cower their players into prayer on the 50-yard line.
The GOP denies women autonomy over their bodies and reproduction. Dooming women to the status of baby factories is not just big government — it is Big Brother. And just because both parties are for a robust and intrusive government does not mean they are the same. Big government liberals lobby for universal healthcare. Big government conservatives enact laws to run interference between a woman and her doctor.
Anti-choice laws do more than force women impregnated by rapists and family members to bear unasked-for children. They put women suffering ectopic pregnancies, or other threats to their health, at risk. They interfere with the potentially life-saving treatment of pregnant women with cancer. And they force women to give birth to dead babies. It does not get more big government than that.
Republican big government locks up a far higher percentage of Americans than any other country imprisons its citizens. It allows the state to kill people. It fights a war on drugs — so expensive, so poorly conceived, and so pathetically executed — it might have been designed by the Russian military. And then there is the border wall, and millions more pissed down the drain.
During COVID, red-state governments forbid blue-run cities to make sensible decisions to keep their populations healthy during a fatal pandemic. Left-wing governments said, “self-quarantine, wear a mask, keep your distance, and get vaccinated.” Right-wing governments said, “just die — and if you take some innocents with you, oh well, that is the price of ‘freedom’.”
Liberals say your rights do not permit you to pee in the pool. Conservatives say to hell with your fellow citizens, pee where you want.
There are c.330 million Americans. Small government is not an option in the US. Liberty is reserved for the wealthy, while the general population will either benefit from the expansion of a health and welfare state. Or live under the yoke of other people’s religious freedom, with their bigoted ideas of social norms, subject to the developed world’s highest murder rate, poisoned by the air and water, suffering the depredations foisted on them by a big government beholden only to its corporate and plutocratic paymasters. Choose wisely.
And as for the Republican boast that they are the party of Lincoln? If “Honest” Abe were alive today, the GOP would throw him out on his ear for suggesting that slavery may be a no-no. And he would be campaigning, along with the resurrected Jesus, for the Democrats under the banner of “Big government of the people, by the people, for the people.”