Over at The American Prospect, Ezra Klein has an interesting article (subscription required) on what he calls, "The Rise of the Republicrats." No, he's not trotting out the old warhorse about there being no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. He's looking at how the Republican Party has abandoned all pretense of being the party of small government and has instead embraced the Leviathan state -- leaving the Democrats, the usual champions of the Leviathan state, in something of a bind.

It's a subject near and dear to my heart (and I make a brief appearance in the article).

Klein argues:

The dilemma for conservatism is obvious: How can a pro-business, pro-tax cut, and anti-entitlement creed such as today's conservatism cater to this constituency [Southern, working-class, white, socially conservative] without abandoning everything it has believed for 40 years? For much of the old guard, such a radical re-imagining of conservatism may prove impossible. But some younger, less tradition-bound conservative thinkers are sketching out a pro-government philosophy that supports conventionally progressive proposals like wage subsidies and child-tax credits but places them in a new context -- as rear-guard protective actions in defense of the nuclear family. That is, whereas progressives argue for economic justice for a class or classes, these conservatives are arguing for economic favoritism for families, buttressed by government policies that encourage and advantage them as the central structure of American life. It isn't hard to see the potential appeal of that approach, and it could corner Democrats and liberals into being the party of the poor, while the GOP becomes the party of parents.

Klein's certainly right about what's happened to the Republican coalition -- i.e. that it's shifted away from the West and toward the South, and away from economic conservatism and toward economic populism married to cultural populism.

At the same time, I think it's faintly ridiculous to attribute the slide toward big-government conservatism to a younger generation "re-imagining" what conservatism means (Ross Douthat's and Reihan Salam's proposal for the GOP to become the Party of Natalism was interesting, but it isn't quite policy yet). Instead, big-government conservatism has grown out of purely cynical machinations by Republican politicians and public intellectuals who were neutered during the Gingrich years, and are now desperately trying to cling to power and relevance.

Big-government conservatism hasn't meant stealing from the rich to give to the middle class. It's meant meaningless gestures on education (No Child Left Behind), massive government giveaways to corporations and the elderly (the Medicare prescription-drug bill), and pork-laden highway and farm bills. The fact is that while there are Republican politicians who have signed on to this Protecting the Nuclear Family Through Big Government way of thinking -- chief among them Sen. Rick Santorum, who might not be with us much longer -- they don't set policy in the GOP. And if they started to, the party would split in half. Or in thirds.

It's also a strange assumption that the Democrats aren't the ones better poised to become the middle-class Mommy Party. It's only the War on Terror, and only by a few points, that has kept the GOP in power since 2002. Entitlement reform, child tax credits, middle-class "values" talk -- these are all hallmarks of the Clinton Era Democratic Party. The only thing standing in the way of the Democrats returning to power in the guise of such a party is -- well, the Democrats. It's the progressive netroots who want to purge the Democratic Party of all Clintonian (read: election-winning) tendencies domestically, and of all hawkish (read: election-winning) tendencies on foreign policy. A revival of the moderate wing of the Democratic Party (the Big-Government-Republican wing of the Democratic Party, if you will) is the only thing that will keep the Democrats from becoming, as Klein puts it, "the party of the poor." (The real danger, I might add, is becoming "the party of the poor and the pacifists.")

How the Democrats choose to react to the changes taking place in the Republican coalition and the Republican policy program is their business. (Though, I'd agree with Klein that moderately small-government voters -- particularly in the West -- are a group they should be looking to court.)

But the idea that small-government conservatism is dead, or that the libertarian wing of the GOP is just going to roll over and play dead, is mistaken. Small-government conservatism is far from obsolete. In fact, given the entitlement crisis we're all headed toward, especially we in the younger generation, it's more vital than ever. Market-based health-care reform, private Social Security accounts, school choice -- all of these ideas form the core of a policy platform that, if pursued skillfully, should appeal tremendously to the rising generation of voters, as well as to most of the GOP's traditional base. (Bush's Ownership Society actually gets at the core of this concept, but has been pursued ineptly.)

Anyway, pick up TAP and read Klein's whole, insightful article. Just don't mistake Republican incompetence, opportunism, and corruption for a new conservative ideology.