Bush's Great Escape
Barnes, Fred
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL. 24, NO. 1 / JANUARY 1991 Fred Barnes BUSH'S GREAT ESCAPE The elections of 1990 have weakened Republicans, but less than they had feared. Voters have given President...
...In state after state, governors who'd raised taxes either didn't run for reelection or ran and lost...
...Under normal circumstances, this would have happened...
...Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas and Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas also suffered...
...While his aides gathered (and sometimes bickered) at Vice President Dan Quayle's house, he stayed home and relished his victory in the expectations game...
...For Bush, the issue is significant because it appeals to the wing of the conservative coalition in presidential races with which he has little affinity, Reagan Democrats...
...But he'd better adhere to his own personal position on abortion...
...Buchanan, by the way, took no Fred Barnes is a senior editor of the New Republic...
...Helms pulled off the toughest feat in electoral politics, driving up the turnout...
...Phillips makes much, in Newsweek, of Democrat Paul Wellstone's ouster of Republican Senator Rudy Boschwitz in Minnesota...
...Here are the issues: Taxes...
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...But Helms made sure the situation wasn't normal...
...Stern opposition to hiring quotas for minorities and women not only helped GOP Senator Jesse Helms win re-election in North Carolina, it aided Republican Pete Wilson's victory in the California governor's race...
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...Voters went considerably out of their way to say they don't want their taxes raised, sharply or marginally, especially when the purpose is income redistribution, and even when the new tax burden supposedly falls on the rich...
...Contrary to the belief of Bush's advisers, Buchanan could cause the President real trouble by accentuating the differences between Bush and conservatives...
...The rollbacks were simply too draconian...
...By 50-40 percent, New Jersey voters are sour on Bradley in the White House...
...He might apologize for having accepted a budget agreement loaded with tax hikes, but I guess it's too late for that...
...If Bush doesn't attract them, he's in hot water...
...That was supposed to end his chances of whipping Democratic Governor Jim Blanchard, who'd vetoed bills restricting abortions...
...That's the price of victory in 1992...
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...Though Bush may be queasy about his pro-life stand, these results showthere's no reason to be...
...Too bad it wasn't on the ballot...
...I think this one will too...
...One clever tactic used against Big Green was to link it to an unpopular person—in this case, State Assemblyman Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda's ex-husband...
...If he does, Bush will position himself on four issues from the 1990 campaign in a way that unites Republicans and gives him a broad, unassailable base in the party...
...Bush shouldn't try to duplicate Helms's crude exploitation of the issue...
...In fact, he'd be wise to curb White House aides eager to spread the word that members of Bush's family—Barbara, for instance—are pro-choice...
...The lesson is that pro-life Republicans and Democrats, if they don't flinch or flip-flop, are not hindered at all...
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...Voters are more worried about warding off new taxes than uprooting old ones...
...His party is badly divided...
...The rejection of Big Green and Forests Forever in California shouldn't be treated lightly just because it occurred so far from Washington and hasn't excited the national press...
...Still, my guess is that a less sweeping rollback would have won in Massachusetts...
...Florio did...
...In choosing between taxers, voters in a Democratic state will invariably pick the Democratic taxer...
...In Michigan, Republican John Engler not only stuck to his pro-life guns, but chose an anti-abortion running mate as well...
...He needs to repair the damage, particularly by restraining his Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing Clean Air provisions with anti-business fury...
...And he is poorly positioned on issues...
...Of course, he'll have to abandon any hope of hearing kind words from civil rights leaders in 1992...
...More than any politician in America, Bush needs to understand the lessons of the 1990 election...
...On the other hand, he shouldn't ignore the magnitude of Helms's achievement...
...For Democrat Harvey Gantt to win, he needed black voters (nearly all of them Democrats) to comprise 25 percent of the electorate...
...Voters figured out, as they usually do, that tax increases never concentrate on the rich...
...This is an issue for the 1990s...
...Bush has to do something tangible to show that he means it this time...
...Trouble will come only if he wavers...
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...The issue of quotas is explosive and emotional...
...And they're an important part of the political base he needs to build...
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...Quotas are a moral issue...
...Bradley and Gephardt weren't likely to challenge Bush in 1992 anyway...
...The anti-Big Green cry was "No on Hayden...
...But I'm betting against it...
...The lesson here is so unequivocal that even Democratic Governor Jim Florio of New Jersey, author of the biggest tax increase in the history of any state, understood...
...Wellstone "campaigned for taxing the wealthy," Phillips notes...
...As it turned out, whites voted in such large numbers that blacks made up only 19 percent...
...In Ohio, pro-life Republican George Voinovich easily weathered pro-choice attacks by Democrat Anthony Celebrezze, who'd recently reversed himself and joined the pro-abortion side...
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...The pro-abortion movement defeated abortion restrictions, even parental consent, in Oregon and elected a few more of their crowd to Congress...
...Republican Bob Martinez of Florida managed to repeal the tax increase that had gotten him into hot water, but he lost anyway...
...The initiative lost by 63-37 percent...
...Since Florio wasn't on the ballot this fall, voters had only one recourse—vote against Bradley, who refused to express any opposition to the Florio levy...
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...Now it's time to tend to another important segment of any Republican presidential candidate's base, the business community...
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...These would offset the tax increases in the budget pact...
...But 1990 was hardly a big pro-choice year...
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...Bradley's mistake was not portraying himself on TV (he had $12 million to spend) as father of the 1986 tax reform act, which dropped personal income rates dramatically...
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...Two days after the election, he renewed his no-new-taxes pledge...
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...Had Bush gotten a cap-gains cut in the budget deal in the first place, he'd never have driven away House Republican Whip Newt Gingrich and other conservatives...
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...But he lost 61-39 percent to Branstad, a crushing defeat for the pro-choice movement but one the press as usual ignored...
...In Pennsylvania, Governor Bob Casey, a pro-life Democrat, won re-election with 68 percent of the vote against a pro-choice Republican...
...Exit polls found that home state voters think they'd make lousy Presidents—by a 54-38 percent margin in Clinton's case, 49-41 percent in Bentsen's...
...That's silly but harmless...
...He won't win any pro-choice votes that way, but he's sure to irritate his pro-life supporters...
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...Politicians may be slow to realize it, but it's now acceptable to question the claims of environmentalists...
...But now it's all but certain they won't run for the Democratic presidential nomination...
...Abortion...
...While his leading foes are momentarily neutralized, Bush is not firmly fixed on the track to re-election—far from it...
...That's nonsense...
...Two days later, there Was more good news for Bush...
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...Bush needs to treat it with sensitivity...
...Higher taxes were imposed on those making as little as $35,000 ayear...
...To raise real revenue, you've got to hit the middle class...
...He Brought out lower middle-class white voters in droves, the sort of voters who normally are indifferent about going to the polls in mid-term elections...
...That will reinforce his image as an empty suit, an ideological eunuch...
...When Bradley nearly lost, Florio blinked, promising to revise his tax boost...
...D espite all this, Bush would be nuts to rest on his laurels...
...That would be unpresidential...
...Besides, Budget Director Richard Darman would pout...
...That's true, but Boschwitz had just voted for a huge tax increase in the budget agreement and then campaigned on the slogan, "It's Time to Govern...
...Instead, he was seen as, at best, neutral on high taxes...
...But his credibility, after he reneged on his earlier pledge, is shot on this issue...
...Turnout jumped from 34 percent of eligible voters in 1986 to 40 percent in 1990...
...The smartest tack for Bush is to lean on Congress to pass an anti-recession agenda of tax cuts, including cuts in capital gains and the Social Security payroll tax, and increases in the personal exemption...
...They're a pivotal group in 1992...
...Patrick Buchanan, the most visible conservative in the country, signed a new three-year contract with CNN...
...it won't go away...
...Voters, who aren't stupid, translated this correctly as "It's Time to Raise Taxes...
...By 53-41 percent, New Yorkers said Cuomo wouldn't be a good President...
...Advocacy of tax cuts, if Bush sticks to it, will unite the Republican party and begin to create a solid base of conservative Bush supporters...
...His opponent, Lawton Chiles, talked up smaller government and said spending should be cut before taxes are raised...
...In presidential politics, trouble in the spring can lead to defeat in the fall...
...So Bush should base his opposition on moral values, namely fairness and unfettered opportunity...
...In Iowa, pro-life Republican Governor Terry Branstad was challenged by a Democrat, Don Avenson, who'd made abortion rights his paramount issue...
...His political base, to the limited extent Bush has one at all, is fragile...
...Voters have given President Bush a four-issue agenda he would be wise to follow if he hopes to win them over in 1992...
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...14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1991 Bush imbibed the tax lesson instantly...
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...That got him the Democratic nomination over Attorney General Tom Miller, who's pro-life...
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...With the defeat of every major environmental initiative in every state, Bush is no longer required to pander to the environmental lobby...
...Bush alienated a lot of the business crowd by foisting billions in costs upon them...
...With Cuomo, it's iffy...
...Quotas...
...Bush is free to call the GOP a "big tent" under which pro-lifers and pro-choicers can gather...
...This was the most lopsided victory in a Pennsylvania governor's race in fifty years...
...Ask Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, if you don't believe me...
...If he doesn't, he may crash in 1992 and become, as Kevin Phillipsputs it, "the last President of the Republican White House cycle that began 22 years ago with Richard Nixon...
...Three potential Democratic presidential candidates—Governor Mario Cuomo of New York, Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, and House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri—won unimpressively...
...George Bush had a pleasant election night...
...If he appeals to racism, the issue will blow up in his face...
...This doesn't preclude Buchanan from taking a leave to run against Bush from the right in the GOP presidential primaries in 1992...
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...Now it's too late for Buchanan to be undermined at CNN by pillow talk...
...His party did better than anticipated, his Democratic enemies worse...
...Big Green leaned heavily on two false propositions, that pesticides cause cancer in people and that global warming is happening...
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...Engler won...
...For almost two decades, political trends—tax revolt, Reaganism, term limits—have run west to east in the United States...
...It's also true that all but one state referendum rolling back taxes lost...
...In building a solid political base, he's bound to make some people mad...
...If Bush had any sense, he'd find an environmentalextremist of his own to play off...
...Extremism in defense of trees, owls, and organic cauliflower is out—that's plainly a lesson of the 1990 election...
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...He signed his contract hours before Ted limier announced his engagement to Jane Fonda...
...Phillips argued lamely, on National Public Radio, that Bradley was also hurt because he authored the "bubble" in federal income tax rates that makes upper middle-class people pay a 33 percent marginal rate...
...In New Jersey, the soak-the-rich populism that Phillips says is the wave of the 1990s took a horrible beating...
...It's fine for Bush to call himself the Environmental President...
...Cuomo and Bradley got thumped in the exit polls, too...
...He did this with the Clean Air Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act...
...In Kansas, Joan Finney, a pro-life Democrat who attracted the wrath of the National Organization for Women, handily defeated pro-choice Republican Governor Mike Hayden, despite being outspent $2 million to $300,000...
Vol. 24 • January 1991 • No. 1
