Why did the Republicans lose?

As with the last US federal election, I didn't spend much time commenting about it. Not being in the States, I felt that there were already plenty of commentators (on every side) covering that beat well enough. Now that it's over, I don't feel quite as constrained. This wasn't a triumph for the Democratic Party — it was, however, a rebuke to the Republicans. They did a lot to ensure that they'd lose this one. Here's a particularly good example:

I was rummaging through my closet the other day when I came across an old T-shirt. Stamped across the front were the words "SCRAP THE CODE: The Armey-Tauzin Tax Reform Debates." On the back was a list of 25 cities on the "National Tax Reform Tour."

What a difference a few years makes. During this election season, Republican congressional leaders awarded members with a bronze bust of Ronald Reagan if they could prove they'd hosted town halls to explain to seniors how to sign up for the newly created Medicare Part D, which created a huge new prescription-drug entitlement in an already huge entitlement program.

And we wonder why we were beaten like a rented mule on Tuesday?

The party of "small government" became the party of wild spending. Twelve years is a long time to be in power (see Canada, Liberal Party of). There's a reason that parties get complacent and corrupt when they've been in power too long: they get lazy and they start to feel entitled to the power they wield and they lose whatever scruples they once may have had. It's like the old joke about politicians and diapers, except the joke is too kind to politics . . . it's always full of shit, but the longer a party has been in power, the more they're driven by the need to keep that power out of the "wrong hands".

The Democrats didn't need to do much to win this election . . . but the Republicans did a heck of a lot to lose it.

The Farm Bill probably provides the best example of where we've gone wrong, and what we need to do to hew back to our first principles.

During the 1990s, then-Sen. Phil Gramm accurately described U.S. farm policy as "enough to make a Russian Commissar puke." The Republicans assembled the "Freedom to Farm Act," which, starting in 1996, put U.S. farmers on a glide path toward an end to subsidies. Somewhere between the field and the silo, however, we became mired in the political mud. In 2002, we repealed the Freedom to Farm Act and in its place installed the "Farm Security Act" — those who value the adage about trading freedom for security can pause and shudder here — with even more lavish subsidies.

Now, with reauthorization of the Farm Bill on the horizon next year, we have to decide whether we will up the ante with Democrats in terms of red state/blue state politics in the heartland, or whether we believe our own rhetoric about free markets. This debate will have implications larger than the fiscal one. Most notably, it will determine if we are serious about the future of free trade.