Stan Collender wants to shriek after reading a New York Times piece about George Allen:
Former Virginia Governor and Senator George Allen…used to campaign as someone who would make the hard choices and cut spending, that is, as a fiscal conservative. But as [Jonathan] Weisman’s story definitively shows, Allen this year is campaigning against the $55 billion in military spending reductions that will occur if the sequester occurs as scheduled on January 2, 2013.
I understand: Allen is running for office in Virginia where federal spending is very important to the economy. But the former proudly self-professed fiscal conservative is now trying to run to the left of the Democrat by insisting that he would not have made the hard choices after all and that not a penny of the sequester spending reductions for the Pentagon should go into effect.
I’m not trying to pick on Stan here, but come on. Can we all stop pretending that we don’t know what Republicans have always stood for? They’ve always been the party of cutting spending but not on the military. They’ve always been the party of small government except on defense. They’ve always been the party of keeping the government out of your life unless the subject is more cops and drug warriors.
Liberals endlessly try to score debating points on these topics, but it’s kind of silly. Allen isn’t running to the left. Republicans have always been the party of law and order and a strong military, and they’ve always been willing to spend lots of money on it. You can attack this as wrongheaded, but it’s not some kind of inexplicable hypocrisy. Republicans are opposed to social spending, not defense spending. Always have been, always will be.
