I often disagree with Rauch’s columns, but I rarely think they’re silly. This one is silly. He is arguing that the failure of Republicans to defend Janice Rogers Brown’s hostility to big government reveals their own ideological drift away from small-government conservatism. If you want to make the case for that drift, you can amass plenty of evidence. Just look at recent budget amendments. But Rauch ignores two points that, I think, together sink his case.

First, it is possible to oppose programs such as Social Security without describing them as part of a “socialist revolution” or suggesting that they amount to a “cannibalization” of our children, as Brown did. When Rauch has his libertarian moments, he doesn’t use that kind of rhetoric. Why should Republicans have to defend it?

Second, Republicans were defending Brown from the charge that she would strike down laws that conflicted with her libertarian policy views. That’s why Jim DeMint noted that Brown would uphold labor and environmental regulations. That doesn’t mean or even imply that DeMint thinks that labor and environmental regulations are, in general, a good thing.

Rauch is able to criticize Republican views on the proper role of government only by ignoring Republican views on the proper role of the judiciary within the government. He suggests that Reagan would have defended Brown’s views. Sharp ideological rhetoric was more common (and more tolerated) on all sides then than now. But while Reagan occasionally nominated a libertarian crusader like Bernard Siegan to the federal bench, even then they were the exception rather than the rule.