A commenter over at the Marginal Revolution argues that the public is hooked on government intervention, but that least the Democrats are honest addicts:

Conservatism is a schizo business at best, what with the rhetoric of ‘small government’ on one side, and Republican administrations remaining politically viable by turning around and inevitably expanding government just to remain in office. Hence, the existence of things like Bush’s 700 billion dollar pill bill, which had the effect of shifting enough people to his side in the over 60 demographic that he won in 2004. Or the putting through bills that provide price supports for agriculture, without which the red states would be the purest blue. Conservative senator Saxby Chambliss, for instance, would be history if it weren’t for his carefully making sure Georgia cotton farmers benefited from the New Deal agricultural policies, and has touted this in order to survive in his election campaign. Funny, he didn’t tout showing his conservative courage and cutting off the Georgia cotton farmers. I wonder why? Social security, medicaid and medicare – the latter two crafted in the spirit of the New Deal – have somehow miraculously survived Nixon’s, Ford’s, Reagan’s, Bush I’s and Bush II’s administrations – I wonder how?

I ran into Farago’s site while trying to understand GM’s plight, which was brought home to me by the observation by a friend some weeks ago that what was once the mightiest company in the world — GM — is now grotesquely dwarfed by Australia’s BHP and he half-seriously suggested it was committing voluntary suicide to be rid of the UAW. What struck me in the course of researching the problem was the relative scarcity of discussion on the subject. I’m sure it’s out there, but it’s down deeper than the half-hour of research I can do to chase down a single angle. But my short impression is that the auto industry’s problem is tangle of management, labor and political failure. It can’t be allowed to fail for political reasons and would probably be propped up even if John McCain had won. But it is unlikely it can be saved either. So we keep taking the useless pills simply because we can’t stop.