Fiscal Conservatism Isn’t Just Dead, It’s a Zombie. You Gotta Go For Its Head.

“They are not men, Monsieur. They are dead bodies!”

That classic line from the 1932 horror film White Zombie is instructive in how to think about and deal with fiscal conservatives.

As pathetic as it was predictable, the moment President Joe Biden assumed office, Republicans raised from the dead their talking points of balanced budgets, deficits, and debt. Many of them are now party leaders who claim to have learned the lessons of the Trumpian revolution.

In fact, fiscal conservatives have learned nothing. They’re brainless.

No, that doesn’t mean Keynesian economics is right and deficits don’t matter. An economic reckoning is coming, and the political Right must educate themselves and the greater populace about the implications of our inflationary monetary system, how it benefits the corrupt elites at the expense of the people.

But as a political strategy, fiscal conservatism backfires on the Right every time. Record debt and spending are just part of the nature of government as we know it today, especially when Republicans are in charge. Ronald Reagan outspent Jimmy Carter, and the trend was solidified during the George W. Bush era of orgiastic spending on guns and butter.

What’s the win-loss record of fiscal conservatism? Trillions of dollars squandered on the Iraq War, the milking of taxpayers for Medicare Part D to keep prescription drug prices high, and the expansion of so many other facets of the welfare-warfare state ever since the Bush years would suggest no wins at all.

Actually, fiscal conservatism is quite effective at killing populist, nationalist, and social conservative causes. Trump’s border wall was going to break the bank, but somehow illegal immigration wasn’t. Pro-family natalist policies still don’t get a fair hearing in many conservative circles, but cutting the corporate tax rate was the top priority of the Trump administration in 2016.

Fiscal conservatism gets preached at campaign time or when Democrats have control of D.C., but it never gets put into practice except at the expense of the American people, never the well-heeled cronies closest to the Federal Reserve’s and Congress’ spigots.

For too long the authentic Right has let these fiscal conservative zombies scare them into timidity. It’s time to quit running and hiding from them. 

The only way to stop them, as the old zombie trope goes, is to remove their heads.

That might mean primarying an ineffective Republican member of Congress or diminishing the respectability of their institutional backers and think tanks.

Most importantly from the grassroots level, the Right must take up the strategy of populism, where the neverending wars and bailouts are lambasted for what they are, golden gooses for the managerial elite. 

This strategy can take shape at the local and state levels through nullification and other tactics of non-compliance with the feds. At the same time, proactive measures can be taken to ensure true competition in currencies, including Bitcoin and gold, so that the people may be better guarded against inflation. 

Populist leaders must also keenly understand the cultural terrain and take back institutional power from the public schools and centers of higher education. This can be accomplished through local school board elections, defunding insidious educational programs and establishments, as well as the promotion of homeschooling.

It’s important to reiterate that burying fiscal conservatism once and for all does not require abandoning economics. What this is about is doing away with any and all hindrances to defeating the Left’s cultural Marxism, wokeism, and globalism. 

The free market is not its own foundation. By naively succumbing to the same old fiscally conservative arguments, the Right will never be able to halt the Left’s destruction of the foundation of the traditional social order and civilization itself.