Freedom Requires Restraint: Where Movement Conservatism Went Wrong—And How to Fix It

By Joseph Baldacchino

Russell Kirk

In the wake of the 2008 elections the Republican Party looked to be on its last legs. Not only had Barack Obama triumphed in the presidential race, picking up the electoral votes of such previously “red” states as Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida, but the Democrats had widened the majorities they had gained while taking over both houses of Congress two years earlier. Flush with victory, the Democrats, perhaps understandably, interpreted the 2008 election returns as a mandate for their “progressive” policy agenda, which they proceeded to enact into law with gusto, helping in the process to increase the total public debt outstanding from $10.6 trillion on Inauguration Day 2009 to $13.6 trillion a scant 22 months later .¹

Then came the mid-term elections of 2010, and the liberal ideological consensus that had seemed so palpable turned out to have been a mirage. Not only did the GOP garner the biggest mid-term gain in House seats achieved by either party since 1938, winning 56 percent of the 435 seats in contention, but the GOP also won an even larger 65 percent of this year’s thirty-seven Senate races.² Perhaps even more impressive were Republican gains in the state houses, where they are poised to dominate the congressional redistricting process for the coming decade by controlling 29 of the 50 state governorships³ and at least 57 of the 99 state legislative chambers.⁴

Will the apparent mandate for a pronounced rightward turn in matters of public policy prove any more lasting or substantial than the one in favor of progressivism that went a-glimmering in the 2010 election? If recent American history is any guide, the answer to this question is: Not very likely. Consider the elections of the past 30 years.

Certainly, 1980 seemed at the time to signal a sea-change in the nation’s ideological allegiances. Not only did Ronald Reagan, the undisputed leader of the conservative movement, sweep to victory over the liberal Democratic White House incumbent, Jimmy Carter, but he also brought in on his coattails Republican control of the Senate, marking the first time the GOP had won a majority of either congressional chamber since 1952. The Democrats, who had controlled the House consistently since 1954, resumed control of the Senate in 1986.

Committees on Enumerated Powers: How Congress Can Revive the Constitution

By Joseph Baldacchino

Under new rules recently adopted by the House of Representatives, the authors of all legislation introduced in the House must identify “as specifically as practicable the power or powers granted to Congress in the Constitution to enact the bill or joint resolution.” The purpose of requiring such citations is to impress upon the House the duty of each branch of government to police itself “and ensure that all their actions are constitutional.” While this requirement is in keeping with the admonition of George Washington in his Farewell Address that those entrusted with the administration of government “confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres,” there is a danger that such statements of authority will become merely pro forma in practice. To guard against such empty formalism, lawmakers might establish Committees on Enumerated Powers in the House and Senate as described below. The following is excerpted from an article first published in January 1995, when the Republicans, assisted by their “Contract with America,” were assuming simultaneous control of the House and Senate for the first time since the election of 1952. The article has long been available at the NHI website.
 
The Framers were acutely sensitive to the fears of many that a new federal government would erode the independence and authority of the states and the people. To protect against that possibility, they stipulated that the federal government would have only a short list of powers that were explicitly enumerated in the Constitution. “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined,” Madison explains in Federalist No. 45. “Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” Since federal jurisdiction extends “to certain enumerated objects only,” Madison stresses in Federalist No. 39, the Constitution “leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.”

The Constitution grants to the federal government all powers “necessary and proper” for executing its enumerated functions, but no authority whatever to rule on matters not explicitly delegated. The state and local governments, Madison explains, “are no more subject, within their respective spheres, to the general authority, than the general authority is subject to them, within its own sphere.” To underscore the broad-reaching residual sovereignty of the states, the Framers incorporated it in the Bill of Rights by reiterating in the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution . . . are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”