(Unless I’ve lost count.) I think it’s not quite fair for Sager to say that I’m happy to live with “big government conservatism” “so long as it keeps Republicans in power. “I wrote a cover story for NR criticizing big-government conservatism and big-government conservatives. Nor is it fair to associate big-government-conservatism-for-Bush’s-sake with NR generally. The magazine opposed Bush’s education bill, his steel tariffs, his expansion of national service programs, his regulation of campaign finance, his agriculture bill, and probably a few other initiatives that I’m not thinking of at this moment. It even opposed his federalization of airport security. (And I agreed with all of these positions.)

Perhaps more to the point–and I’m responding here to Andrew Sullivan, too–for seven years I’ve been arguing that a strategy of expanding the new investor class is conservatives’ best bet for creating a constituency for limited government–and thus strengthening some needed libertarian elements within the conservative coalition while also strengthening the coalition overall. This strategy is certainly open to criticism. But it seems a more intelligent way to go about shrinking the federal government than wishing away political realities.