Paradigm Shift?

As we discussed a couple of days ago, both the Bush White House and congressional Republicans are letting taxpayer money be no object in their onrushing attempt to buy public forgiveness for the mythical federal "failure" to provide prompt, adequate relief to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. The final price tag, $62 billion so far, is being suggested to exceed over three times that amount, and no Beltway Pachyderm outside of a Tom Coburn here or a John McCain there is even pondering finding offsetting spending cuts elsewhere in the budget, such as the $24 billion in sheer, unadulterated pork that greased the bloated $286 billion highway bill.

But the potential disaster for conservatives - for all Americans, really - doesn't stop at the price tag, as today's Wall Street Journal points out:

Only in Washington, however, could so much government failure be used to justify expanding the size and scope of government. Some emergency money is essential. But Congress has already appropriated some $62 billion, with essentially zero accountability, to be spent by such models of compassion as the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Another $100 billion may soon follow. Ted Kennedy has proposed that Congress create another Tennessee Valley Authority for the Gulf region. Give them one more week to panic, and Republicans on Capitol Hill will be demanding another Great Society.

The Massachusetts Manatee isn't the only one. As the Journal also adds, "With media help, Democrats and the left have used Katrina to portray a systemic collapse of 'conservative' government," which they seek to remedy by rolling back all the conservative gains of the past two generations and returning to the undiminished, European style welfare state of yore.

This, in case anybody doesn't get it by now, was the strategic purpose of the DisLoyal Opposition's "blame game," and why it was abundantly foolish for the Bushies to refuse to not only enter that game but do so pre-emptively so as to get ahead of their despicable opponents. Now, absent serious right-wing intervention, a Republican Congress may not only rebuild the welfare state the right has spent the past forty years trying to reform (i.e. abolish and/or privatize), but effectively turn its freshly minted keys over to their foes as well.

Unfortunately there is no "serious right-wing intervention" to be had. There is, instead, President Bush's speech tonight:

Mr. Bush has a chance tonight to turn all of this around. Instead of channeling more cash through the same failed bureaucracies, he should declare the entire Gulf Coast region an enterprise zone, with low tax rates for new investments and waivers for any regulatory obstacles to rebuilding. He can also learn from California's 1994 earthquake experience - which former Governor Pete Wilson described here on Tuesday - and demand emergency powers to waive rules and allow bonus payments for contractors that finish projects ahead of time.

Above all, he can reframe the entire debate on how to help the poor of New Orleans.

Among the WSJ's other specific recommendations: housing and educational vouchers to let displaced hurricane survivors make their own choices instead of the Administration's stupid idea of turning military bases in the region into massive federally-subsidized trailer parks.

Anticipating just such a contingency, triumphfalist lefties are already trying to discredit such free-market solutions as "exploiting the tragedy to advance ideological agendas" - like they're not doing precisely the same thing.

It's like I always say - if you base your political/policy decisions on what the other side is going to say about them, you'll never advance past square one because the other side is never going to like your political/policy decisions. Why give your minority-party opponents a public relations veto over your contemplated course of action as if conceding their default popularity with the public at large that is belayed by their very minority status?

If President Bush were as much of a domestic policy visionary as he has been in foreign policy (in his first term, at least), he would recognize the Katrina aftermath as a golden opportunity to finish off the New Deal/big government paradigm once and for all.

Maybe he will.

But as George Clooney said at the end of Batman and Robin after giving the dying Alfred Mr. Freeze's special medication, "All we can do now is wait...and hope."

And hermetically seal our wallets.