For over a decade, the fiscal conservative elements in the broader conservative movement have increasingly narrowed their message towards a pure tax-cutting model. Leaving aside the seemingly endless toxicity of the social conservative focus, the cut-taxes message has provided the dominant theme in conservative circles since the 1980s. But, as Kenneth Anderson at the Volokh Conspiracy points out, the tax-cutting focus may be far too simplistic a calculation.

What happened? According to Voegeli, two things. One is that scarce tax dollars in Texas are spent on priorities that have broad appeal, while California spends far more of its tax dollars on transfer payments to particular groups with political clout. Second (and a subset of the first, really) is that the tax dollars in California go to public employees, public employee pensions, public sector unions — nominally to the service providers of the “high benefits” received in exchange for high taxes. Voegeli reports that they soak up the additional revenue but provide increasingly poor services at an ever increasing cost.

What that means is that it is important for conservatives to go beyond simply criticizing the cost of government and demanding more tax cuts. In a time of trillion-dollar federal deficits and state budgets held together by little more than duct tape and wishful thinking, the tax cuts message isn’t likely to go anywhere. And in a time of economic instability and distress, the spending cuts supplement isn’t likely to be a big seller either. But conservatives can and should put themselves forward as harsh critics of failures in the quality of the services that government is committed to provide. When government money is diverted from providing services to simply paying off Democrats’ political allies (look what happened to Chrysler’s and General Motors’ creditors compared to what happened to the auto workers’ unions), Republicans should use that as the first critical talking point instead of just fixating on the overall price tag of the economic bailout.

And if Democrats want to try to sell us a map towards single-payer health care, for example, then they should be forced to do more than throw hysteria about evil insurance companies who deny benefits. Democrats should be forced to explain, in detail, exactly how government health care would be required to provide quality care in sufficient quantities to avoid British or Canadian-style rationing systems. And Democrats should be forced to respond to revelations of their continuing payoffs to tort lawyers and public sector unions built into their deceptively labeled “health care reform” bills. This would be a far more effective basis for opposition than simply screaming “socialism” and holding gimmicky “tea parties” infested with RonPaul! fruit-bats. At the end of the day, Republicans might even find themselves able to adapt and improve some health care reform proposals (think about using conservative Democrats’ mostly-abandoned co-ops idea as a starting point) and win a contest focused on value instead of just shooting for lower costs and lower taxes alone.

At the end of the day, a good analogy for government might be an ala carte restaurant. The key issue isn’t the price tag alone, otherwise Chef Ramsey would be out of business, folks. It’s about the quality, stupid.