National Review's New Credo: Big Gov't & Perpetual War

[jamiroguy1]

THE PROBLEM OF NATIONAL REVIEW

http://acuf.org/issues/0312010news.asp

Where was the premier journal of the conservative movement during the greatest assault on limited government in the past forty years, as Congress was poised to pass a new $7 trillion entitlement to vastly expand the welfare state? In its relevant edition, National Review only had room for one short item about what was also the biggest news of the week, that Republicans had created a new Medicare prescription drug benefit with an unfunded liability larger than that for its historic bet noir, Social Security.

Curiously, National Review spent most of that little space criticizing Teddy Kennedy-who had nothing to do with the Medicare prescription drug bill's passage. It was as if NR felt comfortable living in the past with recognizable bad guys, not able to come to grips with the fact it was conservative GOP leaders who had designed the largest increase in entitlements since the Great Society. Indeed, there was no mention of conservative members of Congress or the president at all. It waited until the very last phrase of the editorial to call this terrible bill part of a "dismal milieu," as if nothing could be done about this mysterious specter in Washington. To NR, a "legislative juggernaut" had been created by the "White House" (not President Bush or Republican leaders) and the AARP to which conservatives should presumably acquiesce.

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