Yuval – Does Yglesias know something about you personally in regard to farm subsidies? That “he was all for it” seems oddly sweeping, as if it’s based merely on the fact that you’re a conservative. On the other hand, Jonathan Chait, has from time to time suggested that conservatives are pro-ag subsidy and liberals aren’t (sorry, can’t find a link right now). This always puzzled me because I think Yglesias and countless others are basically right when they complain that subsides are a bipartisan phenomenon of appropriators (though I would argue that liberalism is philosophically more conducive to this sort of thing because it offers no principled objection to lavish spending of this sort beyond a crude argument that there are others more deserving of welfare).
What I find weird — and I may have a bias problem — is that if anything liberals seem to me to be the Johnny-Come-Latelys on the issue of farm subsidies. For as long as I can remember ideological conservatives and libertarians have been denouncing farm subsidies as economically inefficient. This might be due to the fact that I came of age politically at AEI and around libertarian types.
But even Yglesias’ weird suggestion that conservatives (or, again, maybe just Yuval) were pro-subsidy when the GOP ran things strikes me as hard to defend. I certainly wasn’t , Rich certainly wasn’t, I know Ramesh and, I presume, the rest of the editors at NR weren’t. I don’t think the folks at the Standard were. Perhaps the Buchanites are in favor of subsidies (though not the current system) but their motives are philosophical, not partisan. In fact I can’t think of any conservative journalist (never mind libertarians) who wasted an ounce of energy defending the current system of farm subsidies.
So where does this idea that conservatives (as opposed to the GOP strategists) love ag pork on principle or as a partisan tool come from?