In Wonder Land, the WSJ’s Daniel Henninger writes that the major battle in the next presidential election is going to be about the size of government. As the Democratic contender, Hillary Clinton’s solution to the Obama administration’s six years of below-average economic growth resulting in flat incomes and flat jobs will be to make big government bigger.
Start to finish, the Clinton campaign will be about income maintenance, education subsidies, refundable tax credits, expanded Social Security payments and, needless to say, pumping more helium into the ObamaCare balloon.
But big government has become vulnerable. And nothing showcases its weakness more than the crumbling Leviathan facades of HHS, the IRS and the VA. And so, as Mr. Henninger writes, enter the Republican candidates, from Rand Paul, to Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina, who are “singing from the same small-government hymnal, and like Sen. Paul, all can make the message sound attractive, a rare thing for Republicans.”
The compelling, even exciting, argument for smaller government lies in those 400-page tracts of classical liberalism. The man who grew up absorbing these ideas into his bloodstream is Sen. Rand Paul. Blessed with natural communication skills, Sen. Paul arrives to present a defense of greater individual freedom as an intriguing alternative to the big-government status quo.
Read more from Daniel Henninger here.
