The Liberty Papers

In separate pieces, two Cato scholars — Michael Tanner and Jeffrey Taylor — lay out enough evidence to make you wonder why anyone considers Mitt Romney an economic conservative.

First, Tanner suggests that people actually look at his record as Governor:

For some reason, Romney has been able to claim the Reagan mantle despite his support for:

• A health care plan virtually indistinguishable for the one proposed by Hillary Clinton;
• Support for No Child Left Behind, calls for increased federal education spending, and a proposal to have the federal government give a laptop computer to every schoolchild in America;
• Calls for increased farm price supports;
• Support for the Medicare prescription drug benefit; and
• An undistinguished record on taxes and spending as Massachusetts governor, earning a C on Cato’s governor’s report card, and including support for $500 million in increased fees and corporate taxes.

Then, Taylor asks a question that nobody asked last night:

What does it say about the Republican Party when the leading fusionist conservative in the field – Mitt Romney, darling of National Review and erstwhile heir to Ronald Reagan – runs and wins a campaign arguing that the federal government is responsible for all of the ills facing the U.S. auto industry, that the taxpayer should pony up the corporate welfare checks going to Detroit and increase them by a factor of five, that the federal government can and should move heaven and earth to save “every job” at risk in this economy, and that economic recovery is best achieved by a sit-down involving auto industry CEOs, labor bosses, and government agents armed with Harvard MBAs to produce a well-coordinated strategic economic plan? That is, what explains the emergence of economic fascism (in a non-pejorative sense) in the Grand Old Party at the expense of free market capitalism?

I would say that it means that Newt Gingrich was right when he said earlier this week that the era of Reagan is over.