Bush's Big Gov't Leads to Backlash Against ... Teddy Roosevelt?

[Lemur]

Looks as though conservatives have had enough of big government conservatism, and they're not gonna let Teddy Roosevelt do it any more!

From the American Spectator:

As Roosevelt said in his "New Nationalism" speech in Kansas in 1910, he sought "a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country." In short, he was no conservative. Theodore Roosevelt was a big government man, and many of our current troubles can be traced to him.

From Lew Rockwell:

Socialists of all stripes praise TR’s "conservation" policies, nevertheless, because he strenuously opposed the privatization of government-controlled land. Private property is the mortal enemy of socialism. In reality, TR’s "conservation" policies were just another Republican party mercantilist scheme. Mostly western "lobbying groups hoped to enrich themselves with . . . free dams, free waterway improvements, cheap water, cheap timber, cheap access to grazing lands, and other goodies, at somebody else’s expense."

[doc_bean]

Right, the great depression and the subsequent governments of FDR had nothing to with it....

Even I know that much and i ain't even a 'merican.

[Moros]

Even I know that much and i ain't even a 'merican.

Perhaps that's the reason why.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I'd take TR's interference over what we have now, or had after FDR (gee, thanks for a crapload of entitlement programs!).

Crazed Rabbit

[Don Corleone]

I don't know that it's a backlash against TR so much as heading the White House off at the pass. The Bush administration has decided to buy it's way back into favor with the American people. In selling this while still maintaing some shred of credibility in calling themselves Conservatives, they've started a PR blitz comparing TR to GWB. As a popular folk hero for Conservatives and one of the more palatable rightys for most Democrats, this is a shrewd move... "Hey, TR had wars and big government, and so do we".

There are some fundamental issues with this comparison however:
-TR was actually acting in the US's strategic interests by sending the Great White Fleet around and mucking around with insurrectionists in Panama. We got leases to Navy bases around the world from the former, and a canal that cut shipping lanes in half from the latter. Bush's two big overeas adventures: Afghanistan and Iraq have been a mixed bag. We have eliminated the domestic risk posed by the Taleban and effectively confined them to within the borders of Afghanistan. But when it comes to Iraq, due to unclear goals, unclear expectations and the lack of a winning strategy in the prosecution of these undefined goals, we've not gotten much over there (before everybody starts screaming at me, I'm not raising the question of 'should we have gone, I'm saying okay, look at Iraq 2 months after the war and look at it now, what have we been able to accomplish')

-TR was first and foremost the well deserving and proud recipient of the titular 'TrustBuster'. He introduced and shepharded most of the anti-Trust legislation that was in existence in this country. The Bush Attorney General's office (Ashcroft and Gonzalez) has shown little interest in upholding these laws. If anything, anti-trust controls have been seriously weakened in the past 6 years.

-TR was an enviornmentalist and a conservationist (yes, even we hunters have an appreciation of the environment). Bush has reversed the policy of nationally protecting tracts of lands. I'm not saying that TR was right and GWB was wrong (I stand somewhere in between). I'm just saying the two have incompatible views on this particular subject.

Not being a bunch of idiots, the American Spectator and National Review realize the subtleties of the arguments that GWB is no TR are lost on the American public at large. In an appeal to your average voter, it's easier to denigrate TR (and hence, Bush's big government conservatism) then it is to explain why the TR metaphor is inappropriate for GWB.

[yesdachi]

The government’s involvement in 1910 was drastically different than it is today and in 1910 the government needed to be more involved just like TR said. I have no stats but I can imagine there were far fewer gov programs, agencies, employees, etc. than there are now.