• political rhetoric

Check out this sleight of hand:

Republicans lost control of Congress in 2006 because voters no longer saw Republicans as the party of limited government. They have since rejected virtually every opportunity to recapture this identity. But their failure to do so must not be misconstrued as a rejection of principles of individual liberty by the American people. The evidence suggests we are still a nation of pocketbook conservatives most happy when government has enough respect to leave us alone and to mind its own business. The worrisome question is whether either political party understands this.

Did you catch that? Apparently, some folks out there are "misconstruing" this election as a rejection of individual liberty. Who are these people? Armey seems to be inventing a straw man here. In fact, he invents a couple of them:

Armey argues that the Bush administration was unable to make tough spending decisions. I would agree. If you cut taxes and fail to cut spending, you end up with a big time deficit. But Armey insists on framing these decisions, once again, in terms of "individual" freedoms:

Too often the policy agenda was determined by short-sighted political considerations and an abiding fear that the public simply would not understand limited government and expanded individual freedoms.

Once again, Armey's argument seems to be that more "individual freedom" will steer us out of our current mess. But it seems to me that the "individual freedom" granted to both lenders and borrowers might be, at least in part, a source of the problem.

Very few people would argue for "big government" that gets in the way of "individual freedoms." This is not what I want. This is not what anyone wants. What people want is the safety net that comes with living in a developed country. What people want is a government that acts in everyone's best interests and not in the interest of those with the most money.

The recent sweep by Democrats wasn't driven by a group of people too dumb to know that their personal freedoms are being taken away. It was driven by a group of people who have a different vision of what the role of government should be. We can disagree about that role. Smart people often disagree with one another. But to argue that "my" way is against "individual freedom" and that "your" way provides "more freedom" is unfair and dishonest.

Armey claims that things will shift back to the right, "but it will require a new generation of leadership, the sooner the better." But it seems that a different kind of "new generation" won on Tuesday night.

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