Politics /Headed for a Big Fall
Norquist, Grover G.
POLITICS Headed for a Big Fall by Grover G. Norquist For the first time since 1956, the Republicans this fall will make a serious bid for control of both houses of Congress. Holding 178 seats in...
...Term Limits, fresh from victories in fifteen states, is asking all candidates to pledge to vote for limits of six years on House members and twelve on senators...
...Even if Clinton tries to turn things around with some bold speech or new proposal, it will fall on deaf ears, for he no longer enjoys a reserve of voter goodwill...
...Republicans in Oklahoma and Kentucky ran against the Clinton plan and government-run health care generally...
...Meanwhile, the Democrats now have to face the Grover G. Norquist is the president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...In 1988, sixty-one Democrats (and only ten Republicans) ran unopposed...
...One of the retirees, Georgia Rep...
...An average performance alone would boost Republican strength in the House to 192 seats—a high-water mark last achieved in the 1980 Reagan landslide...
...Republican worry-warts point to the "rally round the flag" effect war with North Korea or a Haiti invasion might have...
...The fairer reapportionment that was in place in 1992 was undercut by George Bush's weakness in California, Oregon, and Washington, but seats in these states will be prime targets in 1994...
...Haley Barbour, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, believes this year's bumper crop of candidates is an outgrowth of electoral victories in 1993...
...gleefully points out, Republicans running for the House this year outnumber Democrats 534-485...
...Indeed, Republicans decided to enter the Kentucky special election—in a district they'd been shut out of for 129 years—when polls showed only 30 percent would re-elect Clinton...
...The party The American Spectator August 1994 61 gave the maximum $70,000 to each candidate, drawing on state, RNC, congressional, and senatorial committee resources...
...By contrast, Senators Don Nickles of Oklahoma and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky each provided campaign cash to the race in his state...
...Our best recruiters were Richard Riordan, Kay Bailey Hutchison, George Allen, Christine Todd Whitman, and Rudy Giuliani...
...Even a grand success like the Persian Gulf War showed that presidential popularity can be fleeting...
...The promise that "welfare reform" would reinvigorate Clinton's "New Democrat" image fizzled when his plan was released on June 14...
...n the Senate, there are twenty-three Democratic and only twelve Republican seats up for election...
...As of June, moreover, Republicans running for re-election unopposed outnumbered Democrats 33-12...
...consequences of the Voting Rights Act: set-aside minority districts wind up diluting Democratic strength in other districts...
...It's just as likely that Americans would view such actions as products of Clinton's weakness and his trashing of the military...
...Democrats have already lost two open House seats this year in Oklahoma and Kentucky—in races that taught the GOP a handful of encouraging lessons: (1) Party unity and cooperation pay dividends...
...both Democrats refused...
...It promises to increase spending by $9 billion—not exactly the tough "two years and out" promised in the 1993 State of the Union...
...Roy Rowland, has long told Republicans he would most likely be the last Democrat to hold his seat...
...Third, thanks largely to Bill Clinton, the GOP has had a great recruiting season...
...2) Term limits, tax reduction, and family values continue to score big...
...A devastating television ad, sure to be copied in November, showed the Democrat's face "morphing" through computer imagery into Clinton's and then back while the voice-over listed the similarities of the two men...
...Second, the latest congressional redistricting will finally bear fruit this year...
...It could happen...
...Clinton has lost voter trust not because of a single betrayal, but because of an endless string of falsehoods, fabrications, fibs, and outright lies...
...any bold stroke to invigorate his left–leaning base would antagonize the larger electorate...
...His health care plan is backfiring...
...In the Senate, the forty-four sitting Republicans are seven shy of a majority (or six, if, as expected, Alabama Democrat Richard Shelby switches parties or at the very least votes to organize with the Republicans in the event of significant GOP gains...
...Democrats hoping that a growing economy will save them must come to grips with the history of 1966—a year with stronger economic growth than 1994—when Democrats lost forty-seven House seats...
...The Christian Coalition printed 90,000 voter guides on each candidate that reflected the breadth of its political interests...
...For instance, they're losing a great many House members to retirement...
...4) There are no safe Democrat seats...
...In an unprecedented move, sixty-four different House members contributed $51,389 to Oklahoman Frank Lucas, and fifty-three members donated $57,142 to Ron Lewis in Kentucky...
...This year, unlike 1982, when a strong field of GOP congressional candidates was done in by recession and gerrymandering, political tides are working against the Democrats...
...It's worth noting that former GOP conference head Jerry Lewis, moderate Nancy Johnson, and ranking Ways and Means member Bill Archer, each with party leadership ambitions, declined to contribute to either campaign...
...This not only allowed Democrats to focus their defensive efforts, but discouraged contributions to Republicans not "targeted...
...The departures of Senators DeConcini, Riegle, and Metzenbaum leave Arizona, Michigan, and Ohio distinct GOP possibilities...
...In the past, the national Republican Party would announce a "target list" of maybe twenty-five seats...
...As National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Bill Paxon (R-N.Y...
...Thirteen of these Republicans, moreover, are running for higher office, with most of the rest vacating safe seats...
...Democratic losses could skyrocket if serious hearings are held on Whitewater, or if the Dan Rostenkowski trial erupts, or if further details emerge on the abuse of presidential helicopters, or on Clinton's personal promiscuity, or on Hillary's personal investing...
...3) The depth of hostility to Clinton is creating what Washington calls "negative coattails...
...A dozen swords of Damocles dangle over the heads of Democrat candidates for the House and Senate...
...Any move to speak to the entire nation would further depress his base...
...Bush floundered in 1992 because he'd lied on taxes...
...only eight of the Democrats are running for high: er office and twenty are leaving behind Southern and marginal districts...
...Hard work and an anti-Washington, anti-tax, anti-Clinton message have now won in the most unlikely districts...
...1 62 The American Spectator August 1994...
...The groundwork was laid in 1990, when Republicans won key governorships in Illinois, Massachusetts, and California and increased their presence in state legislatures...
...In Oklahoma and Kentucky, both Republicans signed on...
...Just as the Republicans couldn't talk seriously about winning a majority in the House when they didn't contest 15percent of the seats, says Paxon, "the Democrats cannot seriously be preparing to maintain their majority status if they leave so many seats unchallenged...
...Only Clinton voters expressed a preference for bigger government, by 55 to 36 percent...
...This is a reversal of historic trends...
...On election day 1992, an exit poll found that Americans by a margin of 55 to 36 preferred smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes to larger, government with more services and higher taxes...
...Ron Lewis's television ads decried "socialist medicine...
...Republican leaders looking at Oklahoma and Kentucky won't make that mistake again...
...As in the House, Democratic retirements leave many seats vulnerable...
...In California, Michael Huffington's personal wealth and a competent campaign have brought him neck and neck with the formerly invincible Dianne Feinstein...
...Clinton's base, in other words, is a photographic negative of the country as a whole...
...It could be 1974 all over again—in reverse...
...The Democrats in the recent special elections weren't as liberal as the national standard, but when Kentucky's standard-bearer refused to sign a pledge opposing any health care plan that raised taxes, imposed mandates, or rationed care, he was linked inextricably to the Clinton plan...
...Dianne Feinstein formally renounced her co-sponsorship of the Clinton plan in June—right after Clinton spoke at a fundraiser on her behalf...
...James Carville, who was wrong about the power of the tax issue in New Jersey—where his candidate Jim Florio went down for imposing a record tax hike on the state—is also wrong about the supposed power of the health care issue...
...The harshest truth that Clinton and his party must face is that he is the heir to a worldview that simply no longer resonates with the American public...
...It also reported on where each candidate stood on gun control...
...Clinton's hopes for a turnaround are slim...
...In the words of one House member, "They hate Clinton for it...
...During the 1980s, by contrast, Democratic governors colluded with Democratic-controlled legislatures to gerrymander against the Republicans, who estimate they lost up to fifteen seats this way...
...Republicans deciding whether to run for office in 1994 were making that decision in the summer and fall of 1993," Barbour says...
...Holding 178 seats in the House, the GOP needs a net gain of forty seats to reach the 218 majority...
...Olympia Snowe...
...They dread opening the next morning's paper...
...In Florida alone, nine of thirteen House Republicans have no Democratic opponent...
...The first issues the guide raised were the candidates' positions on the Taxpayer Protection Pledge and on term limits...
...For one thing, as everyone knows, the party out of power fares better in mid–term elections...
...George Mitchell's inexplicable retirement turns his secure Maine seat into a probable pickup for Republican Rep...
...David Boren's move to the University of Oklahoma puts his Oklahoma seat in play...
...Term Limits sent 50,000 direct-mail pieces into Oklahoma identifying the position of each candidate on the issue...
...As of mid-June, fully thirty Democratic seats were open versus nineteen for Republicans...
Vol. 27 • August 1994 • No. 8
