Do conservatives need to give up the hope for government downsizing?
Certainly, John McCain didn't run a real small government campaign. Oh, he made dozens of limp gestures towards earmarks and pork. Earmarks and pork, however, are a vanishingly small part of the big government pie. Saying you're going to shrink government by eliminating earmarks is like saying you're going to lose weight by getting your hair cut. It might make some small gains in the right direction, but it has little practical effect and is energy expended in the wrong direction. What else did the McCain campaign have to burnish its small government cred? Not the McCain health care plan. Not the McCain energy plan. Not even the McCain tax plan, which, while an effective sop to the Club for Growth wing of the Republican party, wasn't exactly explicit about which programs were going to be slashed to shrink the government in line with those tax cuts. Certainly, the ultra-neoconservative vision of endless war and military adventurism can't be squared with a dedication to small government. The big government on the right, big military, won't ever be meaningfully confronted by conservative ideology, of course. But neither can it be used positively to demonstrate fidelity to shrinking government.