Politics / Looking Ahead
Norquist, Grover G.
Looking Ahead by Grover G. Norquist F or more than a year Republicans had been dreading the final two weeks of the 103rd Congress. Bill Clinton would win several legislative victories and pass...
...2,000 donors—and 16,000 volunteers...
...John Engler earlier this year pushed through bills to punish striking public employees and restrict the use of compulsory union dues for politics...
...After three temporary Democratic vacancies in the Michigan house left both state houses with a Republican majority, Gov...
...Both Engler and Gov...
...Add these states to New Hampshire, New Jersey, Arizona, and Utah, where Republicans already control the governorship and both houses of the legislature, and any debate Clinton enters on welfare reform, crime and parole, unfunded mandates, or health reform will come down to more than the two-dimensional struggle between a Democratic president and a more Republican Congress...
...Bush champions privatization and repeatedly states that "the goal is not to re-invent government, but to de-invent government...
...Bush's campaign chairman is Phil Handy, the driving force behind Florida's successful 1992 term-limits initiative...
...Chiles's recent career parallels Clinton's...
...Smith, who took only 18 percent of the vote, withdrew four days after the primary, freeing Bush to focus on Chiles...
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...When GOP congressmen picked up the fight again in the final weeks, direct mail contributions to the Republican National Committee shot up to $600,000 a day-240 percent of the amount it had targeted...
...For the third time, the press would herald the "Comeback Kid," and bright and early on one of these last days, a thousand-page "rewritten" health care bill would be unveiled...
...Virginia Gov...
...Gallagher and second-place primary finisher Jim Smith erred in harping on Bush's lack of experience in elective office versus their own lengthy political careers—forty-two years between them...
...GATT was put off until after the election, the Campaign Finance Reform legislation and the Lobbying Disclosure Act were successfully filibustered (in fact, Senate Republicans launched an unprecedented twenty-eight filibusters in these final weeks), and health care never got to the floor of either house...
...Republicans who voted for the revised crime bill were pummeled by phone and fax, much of it talk-show generated...
...Designed to help you and your friends count down the last 2 years of the Clinton presidency...
...George Allen, though handicapped by a Democrat-controlled state legislature, has passed a ban on parole for violent criminals that is far tougher than anything in Clinton's crime bill...
...Feeney and Bush met while leading efforts in Florida for school choice and term limits...
...Bush is long on activism as well as ideas...
...Legislation that the Republican National Committee had declared innocuous only a week before was held to a six-vote margin in the House thanks to an overwhelming response from conservative activists and business leaders and to the attention of radio talk show hosts such as Michael Reagan...
...Whoever finally wins it, the Florida governor's race between George Bush's son Jeb and the incumbent Lawton Chiles deserves to be studied, and not only because, as Bush's running mate has pointed out, "Florida is what the United States will look like in fifteen years: an older population with more immigrants and more Spanish speakers...
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...Loaded with fascinating historical information as well as upcoming events and Clinton quotes...
...Dick Armey, in turn, informed members in a "Dear Colleague" letter that Rush Limbaugh was devoting two hours to the Lobbying Disclosure Act...
...Bush, who needed to overcome both primary opponents and an incumbent's advantages, is refusing all taxpayer funding and has no limit on how much his campaign can spend...
...Activist groups let the Republican leadership know immediately that the Christian Coalition had sent out a thousand faxes, that 7,800 trade associations had been alerted by fax, that the U.S...
...W hen the 104th Congress convenes in January, Bill Clinton will face not only more Republicans but more aggressive ones, with closer ties to allies in the grassroots only a fax away...
...not enough to inform the public of the faults of legislation if members of Congress do not immediately learn that the public has changed its views...
...During the C-Span broadcast of crime bill debates, hourly contributions shot up to $400 an hour...
...The GOP is confident GATT will pass after the election, with no special favors to Katharine Graham—and no election bounce for Clinton...
...What's more, a second front will open up in state government, with the GOP expected to add six governors to its current nineteen, many of whom will have actual control over both houses of their legislatures...
...Chamber of Commerce (AWOL on previous fights) was weighing in heavily, and that every radio talk show host in the country had received several fact sheets...
...Senate Republicans had promised a filibuster if House Republicans kept the vote close...
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...He has more than 29,000 donors, only 4,000 of them out of state—in 1986, Martinez campaign had only...
...In the event, the final two weeks of the 103rd Congress could not have gone much worse for the Democrats...
...Chiles actually ran to his right on fiscal issues, promising to be a New Democrat...
...As this issue goes to press in late October, Bush is running 10 points ahead of Chiles...
...Senator Chafee and the usual suspects would be trotted out to pronounce the legislation "bipartisan" and "moderate," and Republicans would help pass a government takeover of one-seventh of the nation's economy...
...The incumbent-protecting law Chiles pushed through for himself may represent his last chance to pull his fat out of the fire...
...Tom Feeney as his running mate...
...Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin threaten to move the welfare debate beyond Clinton...
...One national Republican phone bank typically raised $150 an hour...
...He pledged to downsize government, but instead "right-sized" it after the election...
...He is leading with such issues as parental choice in education, term limits for all politicians, support for a Florida initiative to subject all tax hikes to a referendum, and withdrawing Florida from Washington's welfare program...
...Republicans credit their success to lessons learned in the ten-day national debate last August over the crime bill...
...The crime bill fight, however, showed that it is Grover G. Norquist is the president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...However, Florida's campaign laws—pushed through by Chiles—give the incumbent a last-minute advantage...
...Bush's Reaganite focus on ideology was underscored by his choice of Orlandostate rep...
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...Rather than vote for tort reform, they can enact it...
...And on the morning of September 27, there was Gingrich, attacking—from a standing start—late-in-the-thy changes in the Lobbying Disclosure Act...
...Like Clinton, he ran to the center and then governed hard left...
...Taxes continue to be a dominant issue...
...Chiles, who faced no serious primary opposition, accepted a $5-million spending limit in return for taxpayer funding of his campaign...
...Many of the forty-six House Republicans who voted for the final crime bill now explain they did so on the mistaken assumption that the bill was still popular...
...Chiles defeated Bob Martinez in 1990 after Martinez, elected in 1986 as an anti-tax candidate, supported an expansion of the sales tax, a tax hike that "bushed" him...
...Free-trade Republicans were all set to support Clinton on GATT—until it was discovered that the Clinton forces had sneaked in several multi-million dollar subsidies to favored media outlets...
...Now even Republican technocrats see the virtue of fighting on principle...
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...According to House Republican leader Newt Gingrich, the country's turn against the crime bill demonstrated that "the system will carry substantially more information than we thought...
...701 N. Central, Bldg 3, Ste.300, Richardson, 1X 75080 @ 1994 Lame Puck, Inc.TM The American Spectator December 1994 63...
...An energized Democratic base would turn out in record numbers on November 8, while dispirited Republicans and conservatives stayed home because there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the parties...
...With the possible exception of Steve Merrill of New Hampshire, Jeb Bush has run the most consistently conservative, anti-big government gubernatorial campaign this year...
...But the law gives Lawton Chiles one dollar from the taxpayers for every dollar Bush raises beyond the $5 million...
...Every Republican governor with support in his legislature will be free to enter the debate...
...Six votes was close enough, and forty-six senators ended up voting against cloture, killing the bill...
...Bill Clinton would win several legislative victories and pass GATT...
...Republicans learned that fighting Clinton's initiatives was not only good policy and good politics, but great for fundraising...
...We learned that if you inform the public, they will react...
...Republicans could take 62 The American Spectator December 1994 power in both executive and legislature with a four-seat pickup in the Ohio house, one seat in Pennsylvania, one seat in Michigan, three seats in Wisconsin, nine seats in Illinois, or twelve seats in Florida...
...These changes would have given a Clinton political appointee the power to regulate grassroots lobbying organizations and even demand to see their donor lists...
...When the compromise was struck and the bill passed, donations fell to $40 an hour...
...Better than outlining a vision of welfare reform, they can pass it...
...One of Bush's primary opponents, state insurance commissioner Tom Gallagher sought to capitalize on the public's fear of crime by calling for a one-point hike in the sales tax to pay for more prison space—and promptly lost five points in the polls...
...Any of these GOP governors could become as fierce a competitor to Clinton as Newt Gingrich or Bob Dole or Phil Gramm...
Vol. 27 • December 1994 • No. 12
