Until the rise of the reformist conservative movement in the 1960s, everyone's image of a conservative was of a Tory who supported the status quo. Bill Buckley, Frank Meyer and Barry Goldwater changed things for most on the right but the old thinking was never fully displaced. And, after a short ride on the more radical side at the old Alternative and National Review magazines, no one has better represented what he calls "Tory notions" in America than the columnist, George F. Will.

The wise Mr. Will first came to the world's wider attention as a contributor to a Washington Post-organized Writers Group that was attracted to him as a reasonable conservative alternative to his old extremist crowd, the rising sap that would create the Ronald Reagan Revolution in the 1970s. While not excessively hostile to the more radical right, for that would produce an un-Tory aroma, Will considered it self evident to any reasonable person that it was just not possible to cut government, as the older gentleman and his acolytes naively expected. Sen. Goldwater had proven that forever.

But the Tory commentator, as the species requires, is flexible. For if he is not, time brings change and that soon passes him by, which simply is inconceivable for the wisest of the class. By the mid-1980s, a well-balanced fellow like Mr. Will could not ignore the fact that President Reagan did, in fact, cut government (by an average of 1.3% per year on domestic discretionary spending). So, he accepted him and his movement—but in true Tory conservative fashion. Reagan had so won the party by the mid 1980s that everyone called conservative agreed with him. Even fellow Tories like George H.W. Bush said he accepted the Reagan vision as his own. Obviously, Reaganism had become the status quo and, consequently, the new Tory doctrine.

Bush I soon changed his tune and went against the Reagan vision, especially on taxes. But he was unsuccessful. The Tory explanation followed by Mr. Will was that Bush was to blame because he had abandoned the status quo, had abandoned Toryism. Obviously, Bill Clinton was simply too much for any Tory, even though he pretty much followed a status quo record after a few initial missteps. In his most recent resetting of Tory political history ("Freedom vs Equality," The Washington Post, February 1, 2004, B 7), Mr. Will divines that Reaganism remained the Republican doctrine until 1994, up to the GOP success in winning the House of Representatives. Even then, Republicans were still able to triumph "by preaching small government conservatism, vowing to abolish four cabinet-level departments, including education."

All this changed in 2000. Somehow conservatives "knew" then that even voters rhetorically opposed to big government voted for the welfare state and its programs. Social Security and Medicare were the most popular programs in the government and people wanted more. So George W. Bush prospered by appealing to this new sentiment, expanding Medicare by $7 trillion with a new prescription drug benefit, promising to strengthen Social Security and increased education spending by 48 percent. Non-defense discretionary spending increased by 8.2 percent per year, almost doubling Clinton's rate. The result, as Mr. Will saw it, however, was not Democratic big government but Republican "strong government conservatism," the new status quo.

Small government conservatives foolishly thought that if the government spent more and more money, it would reduce the freedom and resources of individuals and communities to perform them, as Mr. Reagan had taught them. Rather, George Will now understood that government performance of these functions had become "antidotes to the culture of dependency" advocated by the left. Bush programs to create medical savings accounts, private investment of Social Security and school choice were examples of how the president was promoting freedom rather than dependency. He did not mention that all of these were radical conservative solutions long pushed by Reaganites nor that the educational right to choose under the Bush law remained within the existing government monopoly run by the same educational establishment. Rather than reducing government dependency, the new Bush drug law gave incentives to employers to push the one-third of the senior health insurance market then in the private sector into the government plan, as documented recently in both The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. The modest reforms, moreover, had been purchased by the Bush Administration at the cost of the largest expansion of the welfare state since Lyndon Johnson.

To Mr. Will, 2004 will be "the most nation-shaping election since 1932." It will be between a "strong government" Toryism that will provide federal education, health and pensions to people but will sacrifice "some equality" to retain some individual freedom--and liberals who want to "promote equality—equal dependence on government-provided education, health and pension entitlements." It is the choice between some government enforced equality or total government enforced equality. This is a long way from Mr. Reagan's idea of liberating citizens and communities from their government shackles but Will says that is because people do not want that much of a stark choice any longer. But why, then, with all of Mr. Bush's apparent foreign policy successes, is he even with or trailing a lackluster pack of Democratic opponents? At this point in Mr. Reagan's term, he was preparing for a blowout.

In fact, the electorate has not somehow become more welfare state-oriented. The same dichotomy of people wanting both low taxes and more welfare services existed then, as all of the polls at the time demonstrated. That is what fooled the Democrats into believing they would win in 1980. The difference today is Mr. Bush has conceded the liberals' position that more and more welfare state spending is necessary and good. He has undermined his call for lower taxes. If more spending is so critical, why not increase taxes, which are mostly paid by the wealthy? All the polls today show people say they are willing to increase taxes for these programs. Since domestic policy almost always triumphs, this nation-shaping election will almost surely go to the candidate with the more consistent message.

What Mr. Reagan proved was not that small government conservatism was any more popular in the 1980s but that leadership is necessary to preserve real freedom. What Republicans before him had proven was that in a battle between government equalizing everything or going half way, the spender with the clearer vision won. For Republicans to prevail, it is necessary to raise the bold colors of limited government and citizen and community responsibility as alternatives. Under bold colors such as those raised by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, conservatism triumphs. Under half-way Toryism, people choose pure compassion over hyphenated compassion and elect liberals. Even in 2000, Al Gore won more votes than George Bush. Toryism is not a new instrument of salvation for conservatism but the old time recipe for defeat.

By Editor