Notes From D.R. | Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

Jed Babbin on an ideological crisis at NBC News.

WALL-E tops the charts.

Ross Douthat on "Sam’s Club Republicans."

Model Ruslana Korshunova passes away at 20.

Jeff Jacoby on Barack Obama and the Heller case.

The Barack Obama-James Dobson feud heats up.

UPDATE: More from Ross Douthat, the Washington Post and World Net Daily.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton say they’re unified. Yeah, right.

David Brooks on the future (if there is one?) of the American conservative movement.

UPDATE: Brooks pulls double duty. Awesome!

Peggy Noonan and John Fund try to rally conservatives behind John McCain.

No matter who wins the 2008 election, it’s obvious that the era of “limited government” is over.

Whether John McCain defeats Barack Obama or is defeated by him, it’s embarrassingly clear that in the 2010s, the Republican Party can no longer position itself as the enemy of big government. No one will buy that argument anymore, not after eight years of big-government, big-spending George W. Bush.

Limited government was a major GOP marketing slogan during the 1980s and 1990s. Ronald Reagan declared that government was the problem, not the solution to problems. Newt Gingrich peppered his speeches with small-government rhetoric. Reducing the size and scope of government was an appealing idea–but the problem was that Republicans really didn’t believe in it.

How else does one explain the big-government madness of 2001-2006? The GOP controlled the White House, the House and the Senate during those years (although they temporarily lost control of the Senate after Vermont Sen. James Jeffords abandoned the GOP in ’01), but they did next to nothing to reduce government spending and waste. The GOP seemed to say to their Democrat counterparts, “Anything you can do, we can do better!” Of course, they ended up doing it worse.

No wonder the electorate returned the House and Senate to Democrat control two years ago. If Congress is to be controlled by out-of-control spenders, then why not let the party known for out-of-control spending run the show, instead of the party known for its hypocritical rhetoric?

Limited government is a dead concept. No one in Washington truly believes in the idea: at least Democrats are honest about their loathing of small-government principles. When supposedly fiscally conservative Republicans went to Washington, something happened to them. Their knees became weaker as their desire for power became stronger: the urge to buy votes, to curry favor, to be liked compelled them to spend and spend and spend until there was virtually nothing left in the Treasury.

From now on, “fiscal conservatism” will have to mean more responsible spending, not less spending. The GOP cannot be trusted to reduce the size and scope of government. Even if the GOP regains control of the House and Senate under an Obama administration, the specter of big government will still be with us. Even if Bobby Jindal wins the White House sometime in the 2010s, he won’t be able to fully restrain Washington.

The GOP won’t be a dominant party again until it figures out what it truly adheres to and what it doesn’t really believe in. It’s clear that the party doesn’t actually embrace the concept of smaller government, so why not drop this concept from conservative rhetoric? Going forward, the GOP should market itself as the party committed to intelligent spending, not the wasteful and slothful spending of the Democrats.

If Republicans try to peddle limited-government rhetoric in the 2010s, they will continue to lose elections. Bush has completely destroyed the GOP’s credibility on limited-government issues. The GOP will never be able to resurrect the party’s pre-Dubya image, so it’s foolish to even try.

The GOP will still be able to sell certain conservative concepts after Bush has left the stage. Controlling federal taxation to stimulate the economy and ultimately send more money to Washington’s coffers? That will always resonate with voters, just as protecting the unborn child’s right to live and keeping the country safe from further terrorist attacks will always resonate.

However, the party cannot seriously present itself as an entity that supports limited government. In fact, if one is intellectually honest, one has to ask whether most Americans really want limited government.

Do average Americans hate the federal government? In the 1980s and 1990s, the answer was clearly yes. In the late-2000s, it’s hard to make the same claim. Today, it seems that most Americans accept government as a necessary evil; ideally, they’d like government to be smaller, but they understand that this will never happen in reality.

Since limited government is a fantasy, average Americans simply want the federal government to be run competently. Bush’s low approval ratings stem in part from the perception that he hasn’t managed the government effectively, despite his successes in the War on Terror. If Obama manages to succeed Bush as President, and governs as incompetently as his thin resume and lack of experience would indicate, a “reality-based” Republican Party would be well-positioned to exploit Obama’s errors.

If Obama drops the ball on a grand scale, he will make voters temporarily forget Bush’s perceived ineptitude, just as Jimmy Carter’s incompetence caused voters to temporarily forget Richard Nixon’s flaws. Reagan seized upon Carter’s failures to become President, rehabilitating the GOP’s Watergate-wounded image in the process. If Obama reveals himself to be a “hot mess” as President, the GOP could find itself back in the high life again.

Conservative Republicans should work their tails off to elect McCain President: he is simply more qualified than the wet-behind-the-ears Obama. However, if fate decrees that Obama is to succeed Bush as President, then conservatives should prepare to take advantage of the opportunities that an ineffective Obama administration would provide.

Monica Crowley on President Bush’s accomplishments. She’s right that the "progressives" who insist that Bush is the worst President of all-time are mistaken, but on the other hand, Bush cannot be rationally compared to the excellence that was Ronald Reagan. History will record Dubya as being about the same as his father in terms of achievement.

The US announces plans to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

In an outstanding decision, the Supreme Court rules that the Second Amendment means what it says.

UPDATE: More from Todd Feinburg, Scott Allen Miller, Linda Chavez, Ted Nugent, Michael Reagan, Power Line and the Wall Street Journal.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declares war on conservative-themed talk radio.

Karl Rove and Daniel Henninger on Barack Obama.

UPDATE: Robert Novak on "Obamacons."