Kevin Drum is wondering whether Republican flip-flops on things like cap-and-trade or an individual health-insurance mandate are because they never really believed in them in the first place and they were just adopting a temporary position as a way of arguing against proposals they saw as more radical, or whether they really changed their minds once a president they sincerely despise became associated with these ideas. I'd add one more element to the picture: the difference between the elite and the mass.
Kevin points us to Norm Ornstein detailing the way Republicans, when McCain-Feingold was being discussed, extolled the virtues of disclosure as the appropriate alternative to limits on contributions. All we need, they said, is to have all contributions disclosed immediately on the Internet, and there will be no need to restrict contributions, since the transparency will prevent corruption. You know what's coming: Now that Democrats have an actual bill to mandate disclosure, congressional Republicans have decided that disclosure is a heinous plot to stifle free speech and have filibustered it.
So did they change their minds, or did they never believe in disclosure in the first place? And what about on the other issues? I think in this case, elite Republicans never believed in it in the first place. I can't prove this, of course, but with folks like Mitch McConnell, a good guide to their true sympathies is to ask, What do big corporations and extremely wealthy people think? The answer is that they don't like having their donations restricted, and they also don't like having their donations disclosed. Ditto with cap-and-trade: When it looked like we were inevitably going to do something about climate change, it probably seemed much preferable to an outright carbon tax, but now that there's a "doing nothing" option, they'll take that instead.
When you're wondering what they think, remember that these are highly involved and politically sophisticated people who have heard all the arguments. Rest assured, Mitch McConnell has spent a great deal of time thinking about campaign finance. But once these elites make an up-to-date calculation about what's possible, what the immediate battle is, and what they might be forced into, they then go out and make the best public case they can for their position. When they do that, they send a message to their supporters that this is what conservatives believe, and if you don't believe it, you must not really be a conservative. Not having thought about campaign finance as much as the elite has, rank-and-file conservatives see political figures they trust taking this new position and making the case for it, and they respond, "You know what? That's right -- disclosure of political spending is just a plot to silence people!" Or "Yeah, that's right -- cap-and-trade is just more government control over our lives!" The cynical flip-flop on the elite's part is followed by the sincere flip-flop on the mass' part.
