The Palin Hope

The American Conservative Union Foundation

by Donald Devine
Issue 116 - September 24, 2008

The selection of Sarah Palin as vice-presidential nominee can only be compared to Ronald Reagan’s speech for Barry Goldwater in 1964, only she was already a governor when she first entered the nation’s consciousness. Both revived faltering presidential campaigns but much more importantly they offered hope for a very battered philosophy of limited government that seemed to have run its course in the days of reckless spending and regulation that preceded their dramatic arrival on the national scene.

Let us be very frank. National government non-defense spending has hemorrhaged to historic highs during the last seven years under George W. Bush and Republican Congresses. Spending increased by an all-time modern high of 25 percent over his first term and an additional 14 percent so far the second, vastly exceeding any period since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society – plus adding the largest new entitlement since Goldwater’s opponent, in the form of Medicare prescription drugs. As far as regulation is concerned, the last year of the Carter Administration produced 73,258 pages of regulation, which Reagan cut back to 50,616 pages. By the end of the Clinton years, the number of pages was back up to 64,438. But the Bush Administration ended 2007 with 72,090 pages – almost back to where Reagan began...

...Along came Governor Palin. There she was in Dayton being announced by Sen. John McCain, setting her philosophy and credentials simply and concisely. She introduced herself as “your average hockey mom” but in presenting her family proved she walked the walk of traditional values. She was “elected to the City Council and then elected mayor of my hometown, where my agenda was to stop wasteful spending and cut property taxes and put the people first.” Could Reagan been more simply eloquent? “As governor, I've stood up to the old politics as usual, to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the Big Oil companies and the good-old-boy network.” Conservatives did not need more, but she was just as eloquent and committed to principle in her speech to the Republican Convention.

Maybe there was some future for limited government conservatism after all...