Obama's making the case for conservatism better than Mitt Romney ever did

Conservatives argue that the more government you have, the more opportunities you will have for it to grow out of control. That is why my frequent correspondent Charles Flemming cheers every story I write about Washington gridlock. He wants less government, so he’s fine if it does nothing.

Another conservative correspondent points to economist James Buchanan, who won the Nobel Prize in 1986 for his work studying economic incentives in government. His argument was that politicians are not benevolent agents of the common good but humans acting in their own self-interest or for a special interest. “If there is value to be gained through politics,” Buchanan wrote, “persons will invest resources in efforts to capture this value.” Since Democrats and Republicans alike are sinful, each side will find ways to work that is self-interested, rapacious, and boundary breaking. Keep the government small to limit the damage.

Whether these scandals are the result of base motives or a desire to act for the greater good, the eventual result is the destruction of individual liberties. Your IRS comes down on you because you have the wrong ideology or, in the name of protecting the citizenry, the Justice Department starts listening to your phone calls.

The confluence of these moments of government overreach may not swell the ranks of conservative clubs, but it could have an effect on policy. As Sen. Lamar Alexander has long argued, conservatives believe not only in limited government, but limitations to sweeping acts by government. Large comprehensive bills like the proposed immigration reform and the Obama health care plan lead to too many unintended consequences. Alexander quotes Irving Kristol, who called himself a “policy skeptic.” His skepticism is rooted in what appears to have happened at the Justice Department, IRS, and EPA: Big sprawling government inevitably gets out of hand. Seventy-three percent of the public already says they distrust the government, according to a Pew Research Center poll.