The right side of the blogosphere is once again up in arms over Bush's free-spending ways, with the most recent tiff occasioned by revelations that the Medicare prescription drug entitlement will cost $540 billion over 10 years - over one-third more than as advertised. (Allegations that the administration knew the correct figure last fall aren't helping the Bush administration's credibility deficit any either.) A far less costly budget surprise, but a far more symbolic one for conservatives, came when we learned that Bush planned to seek an increase in the NEA's budget. Andrew Sullivan aptly commented that "the Bushies seem to have lost their political touch to a worrying degree." (Also check out Catallarchy's Art by Fiat post.)
Stephen Green predicted "that if Bush doesn't change his ways, more than a few voters will simply sit on their asses come Election Day." To which James Joyner replied:
I'm not sure how much of a "base" true fiscal conservatives are. Especially when the likely opponents--Kerry? Edwards?--are likely to be even more irresponsible.
The two constituencies that most matter to Bush are people like who put security #1 and the social conservatives. Bush has done a damned good job at keeping both happy. His dad, by contrast, was cutting the defense budget, raising taxes, and appointing milquetoast judges.Fair enough, but here's my take. Karl Rove supposedly believes that Bush lost the 2000 popular vote because 4 million evangelical voters stayed home. Will those 4 million evangelicals come out this time? James says that Bush has done a good job keeping the evangelical base happy. How? What has he done in a concrete way that will get them fired up? (Some of them doubtless will be motivated by 9/11, but how many?)
Because the right half of blogosphere skews towards libertarians with a preference for small government and limited spending, you can't judge the socially conservative segment of the electorate by the blogosphere. Instead, I turn for data to the op-ed columns of the social conservative leadership. Lately, a lot of those leaders seem pretty unhappy. Check out, for example, Cal Thomas on spending or Phyllis Schlafly on Bush's immigration proposal. Marvin Olasky recently felt compelled to write a column imploring his fellow "Christian conservatives" to "remember that we're better off now than we were four years ago (when Bill Clinton was in office) or than we will be a year from now, if millions of us stay home in November and John Kerry or someone else takes over." Sounds like there's trouble in Paradise to me. [Update: Joe Carter (an actual evangelical) thinks Bush has done plenty of concrete stuff for the base. Check out his list here.]
Let's suppose, however, that Bush gets a fair number of Rove's stay-at-home evangelicals to come out for him in 2004. Will they be off-set by stay-at-home fiscal conservatives? How many fiscal conservatives are there who are (a) mad enough at Bush about his spending ways and (b) insouciant enough about the war on terror to trust a Democrat with national security to stay at home? I don't know the answer to that question - and I doubt whether anybody does at this point. What I do know is that the answer to that question likely will decide the election of 2004.