September 23, 2008 11:02AM # Slow Learner By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE Newt Gingrich [tells the *Washington Post*](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/19/AR2008091903997.html), “We have now launched big-government Republicanism.” Referring to the Bush administration’s bailout-and-takeover plan for the financial sector, he said, “If we saw France do this, Italy do this, we would have thought it was crazy.” He has a point. But some of us identified “big-government conservatism” as the operating system of the current Republican party a long time ago. I wrote about it in [the *Australian*](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2978) in early 2003 and in [the *Washington Post*](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3351) in late 2003. Or check out Bill Niskanen’s comments in this [2004 *Los Angeles Times* article.](http://articles.latimes.com/2004/feb/03/nation/na-budget3) Of course, Ed Crane [saw it coming](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4967) in 1999. And Mike Tanner wrote a whole book about it — [*Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution*](http://www.catostore.org/index.asp?fa=ProductDetails&method=cats&scid=37&pid=1441337) — in 2007. Or you could read Mike Tanner’s critique of [“Gingrich’s Big Government Manifesto”](https://www.cato.org/2006/09/07/gingrichs-big-government-manifesto/) back in 2006. ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).