Republican presidents more harmful: a Republican president can often enact a more liberal agenda than a Democrat could because many Republicans in Congress are more loyal to party than to principle.(POLITICS)

Over the past few generations, congressional Democrats could customarily be relied upon to promote a liberal agenda while their Republican counterparts developed the reputation of being stalwart opponents of our nation's slide into big government and internationalism. The record shows, however, that during the past 50 years, congressional Republicans have exhibited such opposition only when a Democrat occupied the White House. Because recent Republican presidents have capably talked a conservative game while acting as convinced liberals, they have won support for leftist programs not only from congressional Democrats, but also from easily persuaded middle-of-the-road and liberal Republicans.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan took office amid widespread expectations that he would engineer substantial cuts in federal regulations and nondefense spending. But at the time, Hoover Institution researcher Thomas Gale Moore promptly predicted that those expectations were completely illusory, based upon Reagan's performance during his eight years as governor. Moore then looked back over several decades and concluded that "a voter who wants a liberal policy should vote Republican; conversely, if he yearns for a conservative policy, he should cast his ballot for a Democrat." It may come as a surprise to many, but his conclusion is remarkably accurate.

Ongoing Pattern

The pattern detected by Moore has once again become obvious during the administration of George W. Bush. Helped by the liberal mass media, the president has successfully stolen the word "conservative" while promoting increases in government that most Republicans in Congress would never have approved had a Democrat proposed them. The first Bush term saw more than $2 trillion added to the national debt that now exceeds $8 trillion. Instead of using his influence to try to put the brakes on profligate spending by Congress, he has abetted it. The latest Bush budget actually calls for 38 percent more spending than the largest of Clinton's eight budgets.

All of this becomes more astounding with the realization that Bill Clinton was able to point boastfully (if dishonestly) to budget surpluses during the waning years of his presidency. Those "surpluses" were products of accounting gimmicks. But the fact remains that under Clinton federal spending was more restrained than it has been under Bush. Nor is there hope for fiscal sanity in the future because the Congressional Budget Office predicted in 2005 that recently approved Bush programs would escalate the debt by more than $5 trillion over the next 10 years.

The Bush spending binge has included increases for social programs, farm subsidies, the National Endowment for the Arts, foreign aid, and virtually everything else. Federal outlays for education rose enormously when Mr. Bush signed a bill sponsored by ultra-liberal Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), whom he praised for the effort. And our military is now bogged down in a costly (in both fives and fortune) UN-authorized war against Iraq that was based on false claims about weapons of mass destruction, aid to al-Qaeda terrorists, and threats aimed at the United States. Wouldn't Republicans in Congress have stopped a Democrat such as Bill Clinton from much, if not all, of this?

Before Bush