Interesting that you should bring this up.
In the latest "Limbaugh Letter" (Rush's newsletter, quite entertaining), the title article is "Whatever happened to limited government?" and he hammers on Republicans that are voting for "Big Government" programs. A funny quote from the article:
Quote:
The truth is, this big-government conservatism looks a whole lot like big-government liberalism. No matter how you slice it, folks, it isn't conservatism! Conservatism, the ideology of limited constitutional government, doesn't change because a majoirty in this Congress, including way too many Republicans, are spending like a drunken Ted Kennedy.
This is meeting the Democrats halfway, not to advance our agenda, but advance theirs. This strategy may be politically useful, short-term, to certain incumbent Republicans, but it's not how you build and sustain a political movement. Adopting liberal initiatives as a way of denying liberals their talking points is what I've called "the Biiiiig Theory," the effort to take issues away from the Democrats by adopting some of them. But giving the Democrats a percentage of what they want does nothin gbut water down our own beliefs. Far worse, it confiscates the people's treasure to create more dependency...with Republican endorsement.
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I think he hits the nail on the head. By attempting to look more "compassionate" than Democrats, Republicans are in fact becoming Democrats. In an effort to look less like flower-power tree-huggers, Democrats are becoming Republicans. They're both meeting in the middle and becoming the "Let's Just Keep Ourselves in Office" party. The need for a legitimate third-party (or second party, to the Republicrats) is becoming much greater.