Are Tea Party politicians disingenuous? Are they advocating policies that would hurt their constituents? That’s the question asked by Maryland Juice David Moon in response to my last blog post. Of course some (most?) politicians are disingenuous or hypocritical some of the time. They all compromise their values. But I think it’s too simplistic to say that they are advocating policies that would hurt their states’ residents. Those of us in the limited government camp truly believe that shrinking government or reforming the way it provides services would be beneficial to most Americans, even those who currently use government services.

In my previous blog post, I replied to an argument made by Moon about how Red States are just a bunch of welfare queens since they rely on Blue States for government subsidies. In his reply, Moon refines that argument to say that Red State politicians, not voters, are advocating policies that would hurt their constituents and thus are being disingenuous. I’ll leave aside the fact that Moon spent most of his time implying that I’m nothing more than a shill for the Koch brothers. I’m far more interested in discussing policy than in questioning the motives of people with whom I disagree, so I’ll stick to outlining why I think Moon is wrong and not question his character. (BTW, Mark Newgent of Red Maryland has an excellent post on this topic, and I’d urge everyone to read that to get his take on why Moon’s analysis is wrong.)

I’ll always support the notion that painting with a broad brush doesn’t do much to advance a discussion. Is every politician in a state that votes for a Republican presidential candidate a fire-breathing libertarian who would gut government services, thus making them a hypocrite? Of course not. Take a state like Alaska. It votes reliably Republican. Its most famous politician is Sarah Palin, who does engage in the rhetoric of smaller government. But Alaska’s voters also elected Republican Don Young to Congress, a man who does not hide his desire to increase federal transportation spending and increase the federal gas tax to pay for it. They also elected Big Government Republicans like Frank Murkowski, Ted Stevens, and Lisa Murkowski. These politicians, while in certain respects conservative, made no secret of their love for government spending.

There’s also the matter of what type of government spending we are talking about. Conservatives aren’t generally against all government spending. They like military spending, for instance. If a conservative politician fights for more military spending and that helps increase spending on a military base in his state, is that really hypocritical?

Furthermore, just because the federal government spends money in a state doesn’t mean the state’s politicians like that. Consider Yucca Mountain, the nuclear waste repository, in Nevada. That would mean a huge amount of federal spending in that state and yet it’s difficult to find any elected official there who supports it. In many Republican states in the West, the federal government owns the majority of the state. The federal government spends a lot of money on the Forest Service in Idaho, but that doesn’t mean the state’s politicians like this situation.

In the end, though, the most telling argument against what Moon is saying is that, at least for this conservative libertarian, I don’t think that cutting government spending would hurt those who currently rely on it. Reforming Social Security, such as Rick Perry is suggesting, could easily be done in a way that would lower the cost of the program while preserving services for the needy. Cutting and reforming Medicaid, a program that offers a horrible quality of care, would likewise benefit those in poverty. Ending farm subsidies would be good for farmers and for consumers. They Paul Ryan Medicare reform plan would be good for Medicare recipients. I could go on, but for a politician to be disingenuous, that politician would have to believe that what he’s saying is wrong. I don’t think that these Tea Party politicians who are advocating cutting spending think that their proposals will hurt those whom they represent.

You can disagree with the ideas presented by these politicians. You can argue that their ideas will indeed hurt their constituents. But to prove disingenuousness or hypocrisy, you have to show that what they believe isn’t reflected in how they act. In my blog post on Friday, I’ll do just that for a couple of Republicans who are running for President.