With the able assistance of Jack Hunter, Sen. Rand Paul has written a must-read book for conservatives wondering why we continue to send Republicans to Washington, D.C., who say all of the right things when running for office and then quickly fall in line with the “inside the Beltway” political elites who have controlled the Republican machinery in the post-Reagan period of American politics.

In a chapter entitled “Equal Parts Chastisement, Republicans and Democrats,” the author adroitly observes that there has been precious little difference between the current Democratic administration and its immediate Republican predecessor:

[I]magine Obama had governed from 2000 to 2008 exactly as Bush did—doubling the size of government, doubling the debt, expanding federal entitlements and education, starting the Iraq war—the whole works.  To make matters worse, imagine that for a portion of that time, the Democrats actually controlled all three branches of government.  Would Republicans have given Obama and his party a free pass in carrying out the exact same agenda as Bush?  It’s hard to imagine this being the case, given the grief Bill Clinton got from Republicans.

Bolstering his point that the “eight years of Bush were a dismal failure,” Senator Paul cites a 2004 editorial from The Economist, which notes that George W. Bush

has relentlessly expanded both the size and scope of central government—in order to advance the conservative cause.  Mr. Bush has tried to preside over the birth of a new political philosophy: big-government conservatism.

Rand Paul convincingly explains the confusion sown among conservatives by the significant influence of the neoconservatives, who claim to speak for conservatives on both domestic and foreign-policy issues.  As Paul notes, “many neoconservatives migrated to the Republican Party from the Democratic Left in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.”  The problem is that the neoconservatives do not share traditional conservatives’ disdain for big government.  In fact, for many of them, big government is fine so long as they are in charge of it.  I have always viewed this reinvention of conservatism as indistinguishable from Rockefeller Republicanism, which is simply a watered-down version of big-government liberalism.  The prevalence of big-government liberalism was the very reason why many young Americans became foot soldiers in the conservative movement in the first place.

Much more damaging than advocacy of big-government conservatism, however, was the neoconservative quest to build a global empire.  Neoconservatives successfully captured the foreign-policy apparatus of the Bush administration with Vice President Dick Cheney acting as de facto president during Bush’s first term.  Cheney, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and their neoconservative allies within and outside the White House orchestrated a preemptive war in Iraq as part of a grand strategy to use U.S. military power abroad to impose democracy on the Middle East.  Such schemes haven’t worked and won’t work, but that has never stopped the neoconservatives from pushing their party line.

Rand Paul illustrates the attitude of the GOP establishment in 2008 by citing its nomination of John McCain for president and its refusal to allow a limited-government conservative—Rep. Ron Paul, Rand Paul’s father—to speak at the Republican National Convention, owing to the senior Paul’s opposition to our interventionist policy in the Middle East.  Meanwhile, a big-government liberal, Sen. Joe Lieberman from Connecticut, was given a prime speaking role at that same convention in recognition of his strong support for the neoconservative foreign policy in the Middle East.

On foreign policy, the neoconservatives of the George W. Bush administration have more in common with the neoliberals of the Clinton and Obama administrations than with those traditional conservatives who believe American troops should be sent overseas only when our national interest is involved.

Much of Rand Paul’s book focuses on how he overcame enormous odds in 2010 to win—first, the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate against an establishment favorite, and then in defeating a popular Democratic candidate in the general election.  It is an object lesson in how citizens can take back our country from the political elites, one step at a time.  But Rand Paul also makes clear that he is not simply his father’s clone.  While Rep. Ron Paul is clearly identified with libertarianism, Sen. Rand Paul calls himself a “constitutional conservative” and seeks to blend libertarianism with traditional conservatism.  Rand Paul clearly admires Ayn Rand’s opposition to collectivism, but he quotes approvingly Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who believed that “if there were no God, all would be permissible.”  The atheist Ayn Rand cannot have agreed with the Russian novelist.  (Rand Paul puts to rest the story that he was named after Ayn Rand.  His parents actually named him Randal, a name his wife shortened to Rand.)

It is clear from Paul’s book that he is at his core a libertarian who understands the importance of a society guided by an ethical compass.  I happen to be more of a traditional conservative with libertarian instincts.  In the old days—during the Goldwater and Reagan periods of American conservatism—conservatives could have honest differences on the issues while still working together to advance our conservative principles.

With the rise to power of Machiavellian pragmatists like Karl Rove and the neoconservatives, a top-down habit of thinking has developed, which holds that all Republicans must spout the same talking points if they want to get ahead.  But the grassroots conservatives revolted in 2010 against that Beltway Republican crowd.  As a result, a new breed of principled conservatives like Rand Paul has gone to Washington, D.C., determined to return the United States to her founding principles.

One of my favorite passages from Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative is cited by Rand Paul:

The time will come when we entrust the conduct of our affairs to the men who understand that their first duty as public officials is to divest themselves of the power that they have been given.  It will come when Americans, in hundreds of communities throughout the nation, decide to put the man in office who is pledged to enforce the Constitution and restore the Republic.

Our country needs many more men like Rand Paul—men who run for office for the right reasons.  The Tea Party Goes to Washington is an important contribution to the growing body of literature explaining how the conservative movement was hijacked, and what we the people can do to take it back.

 

[The Tea Party Goes to Washington, by Rand Paul (New York: Center Street) 272 pp., $21.99]