Who would’ve imagined that a Republican congress, the supposed party of “small government” and federalism would so wantonly embrace social engineering via federal mandate? If I have a major disappointment with the modern Republican party, it’s that they no longer offer a consistent policy alternative to the Democrats, at least not on policy principles. We’re reduced to ideology.

See, liberals and/or supporters of the federal government also want healthy marriages and aid for the poor. Now it’s not a debate about whether we should do these things, but of what particular constituency we’ll “please” with a particular policy proposal. Republicans like Santorum want to please their faux-religious arch-conservative supporters like the AFA. Liberals want to… well, I dunno, since the people they tend to please on these marriage things don’t write big campaign checks. They do make people like Heidi happy, so I know there’s a constituency there…

Used to be that one party would oppose a program on the principle that the federal government shouldn’t be interfering in social policy. The other would support it and we’d get a robust debate (even if it was just in the magazines and policy papers) about balancing those fundamental principles. Now, that discussion is useless because we know that big government lies at the end of all possible roads. Sad, really.