Politics / Pretty Vacant
Norquist, Grover G.
Pretty Vacant by Grover G. Norquist T he Democratic Party's response to the Contract With America, the 1994 Republican sweep, and the ascension of Newt Gingrich to the Speaker's chair in the House...
...That has now dipped to 52 percent, which the White House will trumpet as a positive number...
...services budget...
...A thought balloon over the fireman's head read, "Damn right-wing radio...
...And Gingrich has assured House members that the House will not allow the Oklahoma City bombing to change the schedule of its hearings on abuses by both the ATF and the Justice Department...
...Democrats maintained that the proposal was less than what it would have been under the autopilot spending of the current Grover G. Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...But, when asked to define compassion, the voters said that it meant being willing to raise taxes on working men and women and give the money to those who won't work...
...By attacking talk radio, Clinton unwisely failed to learn from the old political adage of a different medium: "Don't pick fights with people who buy ink by the barrel...
...T he de-funding charges spooked some Republicans into a discussion about losing the PR battle, but the legislation ended up passing, and Republican congressmen learned an important lesson when they returned home for recess: despite the best efforts of the establishment media, the voters actually knew that school lunch spending was being increased...
...Yet the Democratic fixation with Gingrich will continue until they come up with a political agenda and some new ideas...
...Arlen Specter (R-Penn...
...They knew the real numbers...
...But the 41 percent who disapprove of him is the real news...
...Here, for example, is Helen Straka of the Education Department, defending her agency's $14 billion budget in USA Today: "By having a Department of Education you're saying the kids are number one, and there's someone in Washington who's their friend, who's pulling for them...
...Republicans rejected the argument that a federal program is the only way to express concern for children...
...The tactic of attacking Gingrich on personal grounds had occurred to House Speaker Jim Wright in 1989—at a time when Democrats enjoyed not only a congressional majority but also a near-monopoly on the ear of the establishment press...
...Republicans proposed to increase the funding for school lunch by 4.5 percent every year for five years—a $1 billion increase in spending, more than even President Clinton had proposed in his own budget...
...But he couldn't resist the cheap shot forever, and soon he and his White House staff were blaming talk-show hosts, and conservatives in general, for the bombing...
...In the wake of the bombing, some Republicans feared that the old charges thrown against Barry Goldwater after Kennedy's assassination in November 1963—that conservatives had created a "climate of hate" that led to the shooting—would be repeated...
...A nd then came the Oklahoma City bombing, which gave the Democrats one last chance to revive the charges of political extremism that worked so well in 1963 and 1964...
...By sending their most capable activists—Barney Frank, David Bonior, Pat Schroeder—into battle against Gingrich, the Democrats squandered their ability to counterattack on policy matters...
...They hadn't been fooled," Royce said...
...During the Reagan years, those abuses declined, but they rose again under Bush, and continue to increase under Clinton...
...Sending such a program to the states, they argued contrary to the facts, was the moral equivalent of abolition...
...Pretty Vacant by Grover G. Norquist T he Democratic Party's response to the Contract With America, the 1994 Republican sweep, and the ascension of Newt Gingrich to the Speaker's chair in the House highlights the fact that the party has no vision or plan for the next decade of governance—or even the next year of politics...
...This wider availability of information has helped immeasurably in countering Democratic appeals to "compassion" among voters...
...Democratic rhetoric that Republicans are "mean-spirited" is the flip side of the Democrats' belief that their willingness to spend other people's money is a sign of compassion...
...The NRA claims that the ATF too often attacks Americans in the course of illegal weapons searches conducted without warrants—or with warrants issued on the basis of highly questionable evidence...
...For two days following the bombing, Bill Clinton was appropriately presidential, expressing compassion for the victims of the tragedy and concern about the destruction of general trust in society...
...As Wall Street Journal editorial writer John Fund has pointed out, that fixation is costing them dearly...
...But the "new media" are proving effective in bringing the facts home to voters—just one way in which Limbaugh, Michael Reagan, C-Span, and others are increasing the truth content of American journalism daily...
...You have to wonder what the Democrats might have been accomplishing," Fund writes, "if they hadn't frittered away their time, energy and hopes on sidelining Gingrich...
...It is reported that 160 people canceled their subscriptions to the News Tribune for publishing that cartoon...
...But with the exceptions of Bush and Hatch, the talk-radio smears did notscare Republicans into retreat...
...His The American Spectator July 1995 57 advisers, who pointed to the 1964 success in labeling Goldwater an extremist, still haven't quite managed to understand the importance of the new media...
...Fields pointed out that he and his fellow firemen are great fans of Rush Limbaugh...
...Republicans are thus already refuting Democrats' criticisms of GOP budget cuts by pointing out that Democratic allies inthe establishment press can't be trusted to tell the truth...
...Clinton even ignored helpful promptings from the mainstream press that he could turn the catastrophe to his political advantage...
...If Gingrich could be derailed by personal attacks, he would have been derailed back then...
...After the 1984 elections, campaign focus groups verified that Americans indeed believed the Democrats were "more compassionate" than Republicans...
...Bush resigned his life membership in the National Rifle Association, saying he was offended by NRA criticism of agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF...
...points out that the school lunch episode "inoculated" Republicans against future charges of budget-slashing, when the GOP was actually slowing the growth of spending...
...The ploy didn't work, and it's hard to see how it could have...
...By turning the tragedy into a political opportunity, Clinton threw away all the credit he received from the nation for his initial appearance of being presidential...
...Not even the discovery that Lee Harvey Oswald was a Communist supporter of Fidel Castro stopped the left from repeating this claim, which was made again in Oliver Stone's 1991 movie, JFK...
...Critics point out that in the late 1970s, reflecting the gun-control position of then-President Carter, the ATF was very abusive...
...Now Sen...
...Hatch has refused to criticize Clinton's decision to promote Larry Potts, the FBI agent who supervised both fiascos and was severely reprimanded for them...
...Following Oklahoma City, his approval ratings jumped to an all-time high of 60 percent...
...Joe Barton (R-Tex...
...They knew specifics...
...On May 1, 1994, the Tacoma News Tribune in Washington ran a cartoon which showed the photo of Oklahoma City fireman Chris Fields cradling an injured and bloody child...
...This distinction—between outright spending cuts and less rapid increases—has been murky in the press for years...
...It was a Democrat—Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell of Michigan—who referred to the ATF as a "jack-booted group of fascists who are perhaps as large a danger to American society as I could pick today...
...The Democrats clearly hoped that vilifying Gingrich might scare freshmen Republicans away from their new leadership...
...Clinton really blew it when he went from national mourner about Oklahoma City to national crybaby about talk radio," concludes Republican pollster Kellyanne Fitzpatrick...
...I t is perhaps unsurprising that one of the few Republicans to worry about the smear was George Bush, who came into political life in the 1960s and throughout his presidency was never able to overcome his fear of what the mainstream media were saying and writing about him...
...was surprised to see how well-informed voters were in his town meetings...
...Many Democrats referred to the agency as "fascist...
...The liberal establishment's exploitation of Oklahoma City continues to backfire...
...This was most evident in the recent squabble over the school lunch program...
...has called for Senate hearings over Hatch's objections...
...Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) says he wants to delay hearings on the government's attacks on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, as well as the Idaho ambush in which Randy Weaver's 14-yearold son and wife were shot and killed by ATF agents...
...Ed Royce (R-Calif...
...After it appeared, Seattle talk-show host John Carlson spoke with fireman Fields, who expressed his contempt for attempts to blame talk radio for the bombing...
Vol. 28 • July 1995 • No. 7
