Me-Too Republicans
Barnes, Fred
Me-Too Republicans Bereft of leadership and vision, congressional Republicans have failed to act as an opposition party. Lucky for the GOP, there's life beyond the Beltway. by Fred...
...And if not that, they're willing to settle for the illusion of governing...
...Or the GOP strategy for generating long-term economic growth...
...Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin and John Engler of Michigan have moved boldly to uproot the welfare system...
...But Lucas wasn't interested in agreeing with Webber...
...If Republicans had championed a serious, non-gimmicky position on crime—more police, fewer non-violent criminals in prison to make room for violent ones, less emphasis on the death penalty—they wouldn't have been vulnerable to Clinton's ambush...
...Republican national chairman Haley Barbour, in a speech on April 15 in San Francisco, declared tax rates "too high" and blamed them for driving up the base unemployment rate...
...operations" and to "bar U.S...
...And he had a five-point program on crime that would make any Republican proud," said GOP consultant Cole...
...He doesn't want to tie the president's hands, McCain said...
...The economy was growing then...
...Many of them think George Bush lost in 1992 because he wasn't enough like Clinton, and they don't want to be seen making that mistake...
...But where are Republicans on the tax/growth issue...
...Clinton barely worked up a sweat...
...He supported the Balanced Budget Amendment...
...For example, Clinton's penchant for multilateralism is increasingly unpopular...
...commanders...
...Imagine...
...I've met with over 400 candidates in the past year," said Rep...
...The American Spectator July 1994 23 They'll unite behind ten pieces of legislation that a Republican Congress, if elected, would instantly enact...
...But what Republicans have proposed is anything but radical...
...Bennett took sharp exception...
...Both would merely reform it...
...On What, nine months after Clinton unveiled his plan, is the Republican position on health-care reform...
...It wasn't...
...And Clinton jumped on the gun control bandwagon...
...Gergen prompted Clinton to fund all 100,000...
...Instead, Republicans on Capitol Hill have become, on issue after issue, me-too Republicans...
...They're a tidal wave congressional Republicans aren't riding...
...20 The American Spectator July 1994 trumpet distinct and appealing alternatives vanishes...
...In a May 10 paper on "replacing the welfare state with an opportunity society," Gingrich noted term limits are supported by 65-85 percent of the public...
...Thus, the problem...
...forces from any standing U.N...
...Ronald Reagan adopted Kemp-Roth ingovernors and mayors aren't national figures...
...Sociologist Charles Murray has identified illegitimacy as the prime cause of the social pathology of the underclass...
...All this was proved wrong, however, in the special congressional election last May for the seat vacated in western Oklahoma by Democrat Glenn English...
...Guess whose part will be bigger...
...Lake asked...
...He introduced a Peace Powers Act to "prohibit U.S...
...Neither would uproot the system and eliminate its corrupting influence on millions of poor Americans...
...By 1995 or 1996, Clinton's policies of high taxes, more regulation, and sweeping mandates are bound to slow growth and perhaps provoke a recession...
...It had emerged briefly in the Democratic primary when Dan Webber supported the idea of U.S...
...Term limits for members of Congress may or may not be included...
...Term Limits Newt Gingrich, the soon-to-be Republican leader in the House, plans to invite all GOP congressional candidates to a campaign rally on the steps of the Capitol on September 27...
...By schmoozing rather than confronting Clinton, they've blown their chance so far...
...They accept, by and large, the Beltway conventional wisdom: foreign policy doesn't grip voters, sweeping rejection of Clinton's health plan is politically dangerous, term limits are passé, and the growth/tax issue is moribund...
...In the absence of any GOP position at all, Clinton will get credit for whatever passes...
...The timely intervention last May by Sen...
...Murray would end welfare entirely...
...issue...
...Still, he left Lucas an opening by not ruling out a value-added tax...
...Clinton paid no attention...
...McCain said...
...Or the Republican scheme for limiting the terms of senators and House members...
...The economy was growing then...
...As a result, issue after issue slips from their grasp...
...This was Empower America's first major policy foray after a year of dawdling...
...No one but congressional Republicans can transform the national debate...
...capital gains for inflation (only prospectively, not on capital gains already accrued...
...Term limits are a tidal wave that is unstoppable...
...He did the country a great service," Clinton said of Murray in December 1993...
...Nobody would sign off on that," said Republican consultant Jeffrey Bell...
...We have to be constructive," he said...
...So far they've declined...
...Their job, Bennett said, is to help govern...
...Paxon, a career politician, is a convert, but he's convinced few of his colleagues, who fear for their jobs...
...He called Kasich in May, but merely to prod him to back the ban on assault weapons...
...Bush would end the basic federal welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, altogether...
...She said they should represent the Republican Party as progressive, enlightened, and humane...
...I want to salute President Clinton and Mrs...
...The Lucas campaign, which polled nightly, found the issue registered "the first night the mail hit," said consultant Tom Cole...
...This year, Kasich added a $500-per-child tax credit, accelerated depreciation, and indexing of...
...We were against it," said Cole...
...Republicans aren't so audacious...
...I haven't abandoned it...
...He [Webber] ran away from it...
...So much for the Peace Powers Act...
...They had a wellpublicized proposal, Kemp-Roth, in play when it did...
...About what...
...Webber, running as a conservative Democrat, sought to make himself as small a target as possible...
...It's because their tax cut is so tame...
...This is all the more reason for them to flesh out bold alternatives and a counter-vision to Clinton now...
...What, nine months after Clinton unveiled his plan, is the Republican position on health-care reform...
...What will Republicans have in store when that occurs...
...McCain said he "tried to be polite...
...Kasich is certain Clinton will pilfer the Republican tax cut...
...It worked...
...If voters want their senators to help Clinton govern, they'll send Democratic senators...
...It's something conceptually he doesn't like...
...troops under foreign command...
...If Gingrich and other congressional Republicans back term limits, they do so only nominally...
...So Clinton, who talks interventionist but acts isolationist, gets off easy...
...I'd be thrilled to be able to work with Clinton on something that's real for this country...
...Foreign Policy Bob Dole is an effective spokesman for the Republican Party on foreign affairs...
...The biggest flaw in the Republican proposal is its lame attempt to curb illegitimate births...
...Worse for Republicans, Clinton outflanked them on putting cops on the street...
...But Webber waffled on the broader tax question before finally signing a pledge to vote against any new taxes...
...He won 54-45 percent in a district with 2-1 Democratic registration...
...There's "no debating the fact that more taxes mean less cash in the hands of middle-class families and less cash in the hands of the businesses that hire them," Barbour said...
...troops under U.N...
...But there's still time...
...The principles they adopt, presumably conservative ones, would steer them to a positive but decidedly non-Clinton alternative, he added...
...And, no, I haven't forgotten the North American Free Trade Agreement, though it was ratified largely by Republican votes because it was a Republican-negotiated pact in the first place...
...Coaxing small concessions out of Clinton in the name of governing won't help...
...So Armey turned to a flat tax of 19 percent...
...He's right...
...The key point is Clinton has given Republicans an opening," said Bell...
...Through leaks, Gergen turned Clinton's reference to "three strikes and you're out" in his State of the Union address last January into a media event...
...I think his analysis is essentially right...
...On taxes, both candidates promised to oppose any tax increase to pay for health care...
...Many Republicans privately believe a few insurance reforms and nothing more is needed...
...We kicked their butts," one of the operatives said...
...Here are some of them: Economic Growth The GOP star in the 1990s on spending and taxes is John Kasich of Ohio, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee...
...About what's going on," Lake answered...
...Republicans are paralyzed on one of the most popular grassroots proposals of the century...
...Any questions...
...They can't stir a national dialogue or produce a national agenda...
...Congressional Republicans have a chance to do the same in 1996 with economic growth, term limits, a coherent foreign policy, and so on...
...I'm not knee-jerk anti-Clinton...
...The GOP tone was set by Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, who arrived midway through the rehearsal to advise her colleagues...
...The American Spectator July 1994 21 health care, Webber was critical of the Clinton plan, only not as strenuously as Lucas...
...Referendums calling for term limits for state and local offices pass overwhelmingly...
...They can win without help from Washington...
...The Republicans—Susan Molinari of New York, Clay Shaw of Florida, Garry Franks of Connecticut, and Tom DeLay of Texas—were outclassed...
...But Republicans don't understand why a Clinton heist would be so easy...
...At a town meeting last April in Charlotte, North Carolina, the president said: "I still believe there ought to be a family tax credit for middle-class America...
...After nearly a dozen years in Congress, he's also a creature of Washington...
...Kasich is indifferent to the issue of economic growth...
...It points up the problem that cripples congressional Republicans in challenging Clinton and undercuts both the Republican Party and the conservative movement...
...He favors term limits, only he doesn't...
...With that kind of attitude, it's no surprise Kasich hasn't charted a daring new course for the GOP...
...They stuck with it after 1978, when their modest pickup of eleven House seats prompted Democrats and the mainstream press to declare the tax issue dead...
...Orrin Hatch of Utah thwarted Clinton's plan to nominate Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, a result-oriented liberal, to the Supreme Court...
...The 1993 filibuster spearheaded by Senate Republican leader Bob Dole blocked Clinton's so-called economic stimulus package (it was mostly pork barrel...
...Same result...
...This won't be a problem in this fall's election...
...The Bennett-Kristol exchange was testy but revealing...
...Yes, the party has a remarkably innovative crew of governors...
...Grassroots Republicans can rely on issues Beltway Republicans downplay and also capitalize on Clinton's unpopularity in huge swatches of the country...
...Not true, Kristol shot back...
...But he doesn't have a united congressional party behind him...
...Scholarship, politics, and public opinion have suddenly converged around radical reform of the welfare system...
...The price for me-tooism is high...
...Bill Weld of Massachusetts has slashed government...
...The guys in Washington, once they get there, seldom push this...
...Now whether his prescription is right, I question...
...Once Webber won the Democratic nomination, Lucas mailed to voters a flashy brochure that said, "Not in World War II, not in Korea, not in the Persian Gulf, but now, in 1994, Dan Webber would put U.S...
...Their bill "would not fundamentally change the perverse incentive structure of the current welfare system that discourages marriage," complained Empower America...
...by Fred Barnes epublican Senator Robert Bennett of Utah didn't like what he heard...
...They never tout term limits...
...Health Care The Clinton health-care plan has collapsed in the face of public scorn, but don't thank Republicans...
...Nor can Republican presidential contenders accomplish that so far in advance of 1996...
...Seventy-five to eighty percent of the Republicans running [as challengers] are using term limits effectively as an issue...
...Dole himself is a bundle of contradictions...
...They tinker and temporize and stay divided...
...They're as divided on health care as Democrats...
...Republican Frank Lucas, a farmer and state legislator, pounced on the U.N...
...And it worked in Kentucky a few weeks later, when Republican Ron Lewis won a vacant Democratic seat...
...could use its veto in the Security Council to block any deployment of Americans it opposed...
...But it gets worse...
...Such plans don't exist...
...Even its author, Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma, lost interest...
...What Beltway Republicans lack, on health care and practically every other issue, is strategic leadership...
...That was a major issue for us," said Cole, since Webber opposed them...
...He's smart, conservative, media-wise...
...They're isolated...
...McCain hears more from Tony Lake, Clinton's national security adviser, than from Henry Kissinger & Co: Lake called one Sunday morning before McCain appeared on "Face the Nation...
...Rather than exploit Clinton's vulnerabilities, Republicans often accommodate them...
...When Republicans pretend to govern but really don't, the ideological rigor and political sting goes out of their opposition...
...Maybe, but the idea is to discern where the public will be a few years from now...
...He'd proposed 100,000 more cops, but it was only a talking point...
...Stephen Goldsmith of Indianapolis is a pioneer in privatization...
...Republicans did exactly that in the late 1970s when Jimmy Carter was president...
...Bill Paxon of New York, chairman of the GOP congressional campaign committee...
...Or the GOP strategy for generating long-term economic growth...
...Or the Republican prescription for de-nuclearizing North Korea...
...Rather than pursue a long-term strategy, Republicans insist on playing a short-term tactical game...
...The criticism was cogent, but congressional Republicans saw it as interference with their goal of a Rose Garden ceremony at which a part-Republican, partDemocratic welfare reform bill is signed by Clinton...
...Then they imposed conservative ideas—tax cuts, a defense buildup—on the 1980 debate...
...But they're afraid to say that for fear of being called uncaring...
...In 1993, though Clinton had jettisoned his middle-class tax cut, Republicans proposed no tax relief at all in their alternative budget...
...Even Clinton agrees...
...Clinton for starting the national discussion and putting health care on the agenda," Dole said...
...We did that...
...So did term limits...
...With significant Senate and House gains in this fall's midterm election, Republicans (joined by moderateto-conservative Democrats) may attain ideological control of Congress on many issues...
...Kassebaum proposed turning welfare over to the states "with complete power to reinvent the ways we deliver aid to the needy...
...He played up differences and forced a real debate...
...hat's amazing is W how oblivious Republicans in Congress are to public sentiment outside Washington...
...Aide Tony Blankley said Gingrich is "regretfully in favor" of term limits...
...Reagan was criticized, but he imposed the terms of the economic debate, tax cuts versus the status quo...
...Sad to say, Kassebaum and Bush haven't influenced GOP welfare reformers in Washington...
...troops from serving under foreign command in U.N...
...issue...
...But Republicans figured stagflation would take its toll...
...Clinton's Washington...
...Lucas seized it...
...On welfare reform, Sen...
...They rallied around a single economic message, the 30 percent Kemp-Roth tax reduction on individual income plus accelerated depreciation for business...
...The beneficiary of this is Clinton...
...It's hard to differentiate their plan, endorsed by more than 160 House Republicans, from Clinton's...
...But for many Republicans in Congress, anything is preferable to being accused of causing gridlock or labeled obstructionist...
...GOP mayors are in the forefront of reform, too...
...Yet Republicans backed off, after one losing vote in 1993., the Nickles Amendment, which would bar American troops from serving under United Nations command...
...And they sure did...
...Gingrich is torn...
...Their support scarcely rises to the level of lip service...
...No place...
...Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas and Jeb Bush, who's running for governor of Florida, are tougher...
...1980, acquiring a growth plan that marked a stark contrast to Carter's policies...
...The trouble with Republicans in Washington, by contrast, is that they blur differences and avoid a real debate...
...22 The American Spectator July 1994 Welfare Reform In prepping for their Oxford-style debate with Democrats over welfare reform last April, House Republicans brought in four consultants to play the Democrats...
...Growth is not where the public is now," Kasich said...
...There's no group of wise men to formulate foreign policy for Republicans," said McCain, who urged Dole to form one...
...Crime Clinton's theft of this issue from Republicans came at the instigation of adviser David Gergen, the one-time Republican White House aide...
...Each year there's a different challenge and the president sets the stage," Kasich said...
...I'm a congressman...
...Dole conducted retreats in Annapolis, Maryland, and Philadelphia, and still couldn't find a unified Republican position...
...Our country has health care problems but not a health care crisis," he said on January 25...
...I don't work for the Republican National Committee...
...Webber explained the U.S...
...That's what congressional Republicans did in the late 1970s...
...When Jack Kemp, William Bennett, and Vin Weber of Empower America zinged the GOP plan last April, congressional Republicans were miffed...
...Congressional Republicans already have enough critical mass to change the national political debate, to draw clear lines between themselves and Clinton...
...army...
...Now, congressional Republicans have the opportunity to do the same, and not just on the economy, but on health care, welfare reform, foreign policy, crime, and term limits...
...The first duty of the opposition is to oppose," Kristol asserted...
...There's one more thing...
...Worse, their ability to fashion and Fred Barnes is a senior editor of the New Republic...
...Fine, but John McCain of Arizona, a strong GOP voice on national security, balked...
...A week later he praised the folks who'd ballyhooed the crisis...
...R William Kristol, who runs the Project for the Republican Future, was talking about health care last March at a retreat in Philadelphia for GOP senators...
...He knows they are popular...
...This is not adult behavior...
...They had a well-publicized proposal, Kemp-Roth, in play when it did...
...Lucas, like Republicans in the late 1970s, tried to focus the political debate...
...In any event, they're peripheral to the Washington welfare debate and not angling to "govern" with Clinton...
...He urged the senators—about twenty-five Republicans attended—to stake out a principled opposition to President Clinton's health-care plan...
...At one point, he suggested a two-rate income tax, 10 percent and 25 percent, with the higher rate clicking in at the income level the Social Security payroll tax stops...
...Voters and Republicans outside Washington feel differently...
...We showed you could do this and still control spending and reduce deficits...
...Only congressional Republicans can...
...He and other senators were not sent to Washington to oppose Clinton...
...Maybe, but the idea is to discern where the public will be a few years from now...
...But Republicans figured stagflation would take its toll...
...It wasn't easy...
...True, they've occasionally influenced an administration policy or decision...
...Both would supposedly impose a two-year cutoff on welfare, but would remove few from the rolls anytime soon...
...Or the Republican prescription for de-nuclearizing North Korea...
...Though a minority in Congress (44 of 100 senators, 177 of 435 House members), Republicans are eager to be part of the governing class...
...Dick Armey of Texas, the third-ranking Republican in the House, has spent a year in search of a sweeping tax cut the GOP could identify with...
...It worked everywhere...
...Nor are Republicans united on North Korea, Haiti, Bosnia, Russia...
...Or the Republican scheme for limiting the terms of senators and House members...
...Growth is not where the public is now," Kasich said...
...Kasich was already on board...
...Dole homed in on the U.N...
...That's the problem...
...But T he simple fact, of course, is that Republicans can't govern in...
...24 The American Spectator July 1994...
...Zilch...
...Kasich explained: "The challenge was to show how to reduce the deficit to the same level as the president without raising taxes...
...A few lonely Republicans are plotting to seize the pro-growth agenda once more...
...It's news to them that Bush lost because he wasn't enough like Reagan...
...But the Republican presidential nominee in 1996 may need help of the sort congressional Republicans gave Reagan in 1980...
...I can't get everything done in one year...
...He simply endorsed a version of the Republican position: more death penalties, more prisons, more mandatory sentences...
...That's what congressional Republicans did in the late 1970s...
...You're always going to respond to the agenda that a president sets...
...Again, Clinton wasn't watching...
Vol. 27 • July 1994 • No. 7
