Welcome, Conservatives!

By Rick Perlstein
December 9th, 2008 - 1:47pm ET

Ideology is a supple instrument, especially in the hands of conservatives. We know, all of us, in our bones, that the most bedrock principle in the conservative firmament is that low taxes are always and everywhere good. Except, you know, it was only invented as a bedrock principle the day before yesterday (before then the "principle" was that balance budgets are always and everywhere good; you should hear how the right squealed over JFK's tax cut proposal in 1963!). In England, Tory prime minister Stanley Baldwin responded to the Great Depression by immediately ordering up socialist-style nationalization of industries and capital controls, without a second thought; "small government" simply wasn't a principle baked into the tea cake of British "conservatism."