Towards a Goal of Smaller Government

After Republicans swept the House in last Tuesday’s elections, President Obama took “full responsibility” for Democrats’ losses, saying: I’ve got to do a better job.

While it’s true that the President and all politicians need to do a better job, I argue at The Washington Examiner that government is not about mobilizing up against two walls, but rather about staying true to some set of tenets.

One of the themes this election was a big step towards smaller government:

What politicians should have learned from the midterms is: This is not about you! This is about us!

Government is a collective tool that helps insure against the worst case scenario. Through government citizens fund minimal public goods like national defense, inasmuch as it’s necessary to keep interference out of people’s private lives.

By making governance about them — what they can pass, what they can do, how much of our lives they, the politicians, can touch – they forget that in this country it is government’s powers that are enumerated and citizens’ rights that are only marginally curtailed.

In the Nov. 2010 midterms Tea Partiers won big. The Tea Party is not a true political party, but rather a contract to keep politicians in line. At least five of the Tea Party’s eight tenets explicitly contradict what Obama has accomplished in his first two years in office.

Take note, political types. The times are changing, and your constituents are tired of your old pork-stuffing ways!