Legal Commentary

The Limits of GOP Ideology

By Big Tent Democrat

Discussing Rand Paul, Ross Douthat writes:

This was all that Rand Paul needed to admit, after his victory in Kentucky’s Republican Senate primary, when NPR and Rachel Maddow asked about his views of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. “As a principled critic of federal power,” he could have said, “I oppose efforts to impose Washington’s will on states and private institutions. As a student of the history of segregation and slavery, however, I would have made an exception for the Civil Rights Act.”

[. . .] it shouldn’t come as a shock that [Rand Paul] found himself publicly undone, in what should have been his moment of triumph, because he was too proud to acknowledge the limits of ideology, and to admit that a principle can be pushed too far.

(Emphasis supplied.) Douthat is disingenuous here. The questions to be asked are obvious - what other "exceptions" should conservatives concede? Does Deep Water prove an "exception" is necessary for government regulation of commercial activities that affect the environment? Does the 2008 meltdown prove that an"exception" for government regulation of financial markets is in order? The "exceptions" swallow Douthat's conservative principles. Republicans and conservatives like Douthat have long expressed a desire to relitigate the New Deal. In describing the New Deal, Prof. Bruce Ackerman wrote:

[FDR's] eight appointments to the Supreme Court repudiated the laissez-faire constitutionalism of the preceding era and created the activist national government we know today.

Obviously enacting the New Deal was part of that. And in order to enact the New Deal (and appoint 8 SCOTUS justices), FDR and the Democrats had to win elections and win the argument against the Rand Pauls and Ross Douthats of the time.

FDR won the argument. Republicans want to win it by stealth. Rand Paul is a mainstream Republican in his views. What makes him unusual is he is honest about what Republican views mean. Douthat prefers the stealth approach.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on May 24, 2010 (boomark / email).