Republicans are hypocrites when it comes to promoting smaller government.

Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, claims that the GOP’s “small government” talk is hollow. I couldn’t agree more, and therein lies the secret behind Obama’s win in 2008. Obama did not win because young people were finally mobilized to vote, nor because of his campaign’s mastery of social networking tools, nor because people believed in his policies, but because of Republican hypocrisy, which culminated in Republicans nominating the prime example of that hypocrisy–John McCain. What’s amazing is that McCain got as many votes as he did, since many conservatives were tempted to sit this one out, and probably would have had it not been for the addition of Sarah Palin (who many political pundits mistakenly believe hurt the McCain ticket, when the opposite is true).

Conservatives, contrary to mainstream belief, did not like Bush very much for exactly the reasons stated in Zelizer’s piece. Again, Bush’s success was driven more by a fear of what a President Al Gore would do as opposed to the great things Bush would accomplish. Many conservatives look at the Bush presidency and think “Well, at least it wasn’t as bad as what we would have gotten with Gore or Kerry.” Conservatives have been appalled at the increases in spending under the Bush administration. We see differences between Bush and Obama in terms of social policies, but unfortunately the criticisms we have of Obama’s spending plans are the same criticisms we have of Bush’s track record on spending. The tragedy for conservatives is that people mistakenly believe Bush’s economic and spending policies were conservative, when they were nothing of the sort.

Perhaps we’ll see a candidate emerge on the Republican ticket in 2012 that espouses conservative beliefs of small government and a “separation of business and state” but whether or not such a candidate would have the will to implement those policies once in power is a prospect one can only hope for with dimishing faith.