The Fiscal Conservative is Dead and Boomers Killed It.
When we look around the country at people labelled as conservatives we see President Donald Trump,Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro and a gaggle of countless cringe inducing columnists and pundits. With the occasional exception of Shapiro none of these people are fiscally conservative, none of them truly advocate for smaller government. What they do argue for is blind military and police worship, a continued toxic relationship with countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia, and a government that involves itself in every aspect of our lives as long as it’s not helping poor people, women, LGBT, or people of color.
It’s been decades since we’ve had a fiscally conservative president or a fiscally conservative congress. I blame my parents’ generation for this. Instead of going down the route of smaller government or down the route of progressivism they took a middle road that ended up being the worst of both worlds. They continued to elect politicians that lacked experience, integrity, and any serious economic or even social views. Instead they sold themselves and their kids out to corporate interest and the military industrial complex.
Let’s start with the Superman of the modern GOP Ronald Reagan. Economically (and in every other way) Reagan was a disaster. Under his “leadership” The United States went further into debt (to the tune of two hundred billion dollars), he “borrowed” money from the Social Security trust fund in order to pay off some of the debt (this didn’t work and that money was never returned). All of this in addition to a criminal foreign policy that involved supplying arms to terrorists and propping up authoritarian regimes all over the world. None of this was done in secret, it was reported by the media at the time, Reagan openly admitted to all of it, and even campaigned on it to an extent and boomers loved it. Reagan won re-election in 1984 by the 2nd largest plurality in the history of American presidential elections. Boomers fell for it because Reagan could speak well, he played to people’s fears, and was the start of what I see as a decline in American discourse.
His immediate successors George HW Bush and Bill Clinton weren’t much better, both increased taxes, increased the deficit, and were fiscally irresponsible. However a new low point for both baby boomers and conservatives was reached when George W Bush was elected president. George W Bush increased the size of the government more than all but 2 (FDR and LBJ) of his predecessors. His “No Child Left Behind” Act not only increased the size of the Department of Education but was and continues to be a disaster that cripples talented educators and destroys creativity in children. This alone should be enough for conservatives to write him off especially considering back in 1979 when the Department of Education was created many conservative politicians opposed it. But they didn’t care, at least he wasn’t a Democrat.
His expansion of the Department of Education was hardly the end of his big government spending, he also expanded government run healthcare (again something conservatives should be against) with Medicare Part D. While there are very intelligent arguments in favor of Medicare they aren’t coming from conservatives (and they shouldn’t be). Medicare Part D adds 50 billion dollars a year to the federal budget, which increases our debt, and goes against the very nature of fiscal conservatism.
This mentality has done nothing but increase during the Trump administration. Since Donald Trumps campaign for president began, the baby boomer conservative decided that building a wall along the Mexican border which will cost anywhere from 8 to 70 billion dollars.
The Baby Boomer has ruined the Republican party and has ruined conservatism. I may have issues with progressives but at least most of the time they have some ideological consistency. The modern day conservative wants government to prop up their failing businesses, pay for their healthcare, pay for ludicrous defense budgets, and only wants tax breaks on the rich. But god forbid the government pass a law protecting a minority.
Believing in small government means believing in it one hundred percent of the time not only when the government isn’t helping you.
Much credit to my friend Danny for designing the above image. Please check out his instagram
