Politics: Happy Kempers
Norquist, Grover G .
"Politics: Happy Kempers" by Grover G. Norquist Happy Kempers By embracing Reaganism, Bob Dole gave himself a...
...It must be comforting to the Clinton White House to remember Nixon's'72 landslide, even if it came at the cost of continued Democratic dominance in Congress...
...Back then, union leaders focused labor's considerable resources on House and Senate races, abandoning George McGovern because of his foreign policy excesses and Senate votes for right-to-work legislation...
...Since the beginning of primary season, Dole had appeared to be following his mentor Richard Nixon's advice: run to the right to win the primaries, dash back to the center to win the general election...
...In the 198o's the perception of conflict came from a shared belief that the Democrats would always control Congress and that entitlement spending was fixed...
...Mass transit programs were cut by 43 percent, the Appalachian Regional Commission by What worked for Nixonin 1968 did not work forDole in 1996...
...By signing into law Republican welfare reform legislation-which ends welfare as an entitlement, the sort of setback from which liberal legislators may never recover- Clinton has abandoned any pretense of running with his congressional party...
...In 1968, the NRA was just a gun club...
...Total federal spending was reigned in by $12 billion in 1995 and $4o billion in 1996...
...GROVER G. NORQUIST is president o f Americans for Tax Reform...
...39 percent, and the Legal Services Corporation by 33 percent...
...Freedom to Farm is a death sentence for the Democratic Party in the farm belt...
...The demand, he announced, was "nonnegotiable...
...Yes, the Washington press hated the budget...
...Enrichment Corporation, the Naval Petroleum Reserve, and the Alaska Power Marketing Administration...
...A farmer receiving a government subsidy is part businessman and part welfare recipient...
...Today, even a leading moderate of the House Republican caucus like Jim Leach would not argue (as Nixon did) for wage and price controls, the creation of the Legal Services Corporation, or a national health care system...
...If spending was a given, then one could have tax cuts or a balanced budget...
...Proposition 13 and the national taxpayers' movement were a decade away...
...This is fine and good with the GOP, whose enemies have been slow to understand the changes the 1o4th Congress has made in the modem Republican Party-changes that set the stage for the Dole-Kemp ticket...
...Reviewing the Revolution: Conservative Successes in the io4th Congress, a new report from the Heritage Foundation, points out the following: The 1o4th Congress reduced discretionary spending for the first time since 1969...
...Just what will Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota have to say to a farmer who doesn't rely on farm programs...
...The hard work of moving a real budget through the House and Senate appropriations committees, past congressional leadership, through discussions with Republican governors and state legislators on issues such as welfare and Medicaid reform kept the Contract with America as the party's central vision...
...When Bob Dole released his economic plan on August 5 and chose Jack Kemp as his running mate five days later, he opted for Ronald Reagan over Richard Nixonand guaranteed that this presidential election will be about tax cuts, tax cuts, and tax cuts...
...Kemp and the economic plan changed the political climate, not only reviving Dole's chances, but strengthening the GOP's House and Senate candidates...
...The Republicans also crafted their budget cuts to lead to greater political victories in the future...
...In effect, he has revived 1972s "Re-elect the President" campaign, calling on voters to re-elect incumbents...
...It maintains present levels of legal immigration-despite the efforts of the Negative Population Growth lobby to cut off immigration altogether-and ends welfare and government benefits for illegal immigrants and for many legal immigrants who are not yet citizens...
...He is attracted to the Republican message of less government, but susceptible to Democratic promises of more subsidies...
...More than 270 programs, agencies, offices, and projects were eliminated...
...Yes, Clinton vetoed the Republican budget...
...Until Dole opted for tax cuts and Kemp, conservative groups were drifting toward the AFL-CIO's 1972 strategy...
...This includes the pure pork of highway demonstration projects costing $352 million a year and the first demise of a regulatory body, the Interstate Commerce Commission, on January i. And while Reagan cut the National Endowment for the Arts by 17 percent in his first budget, the 104th Congress cut the NEA by 38 percent...
...Like the press, the Clinton White House believes that the unity Republicans displayed in San Diego was temporary if not feigned...
...And HUD's budget fell io percent...
...Now each new citizen will be protected against the virus of welfare dependency that so often leads to voting Democratic...
...Conservative groups that had been marshaling resources to "hold the House" are now turning out votes for Bob Dole and his economic plan as well...
...Reagan nicked the National Endowment for the Humanities by 2o percent...
...It was this Congress's balanced-budget plan (which included the tax cuts promised in the Contract with America) that made possible the Kemp-Dole marriage-supply-side, pro-growth, and low tax policies on one hand, a commitment to balancing the budget on the other...
...The second-guessers forget that the very act of crafting that doomed budget is what kept the party united and forged an agenda for the future...
...The immigration bill finalized by Republicans in the House and Senate is pro-immigration and anti-welfare...
...While Reagan could only privatize Conrail and the National Consumer Cooperative Bank in his eight full years, the lo4th Congress has passed legislation to privatize the U.S...
...The Contract, which had started off as a promise by the House Republicans alone to vote on ten key issues during the 1o4th Congress's first hundred days, was extended into a seven-year commitment to balance the budget while moving ahead with tax cuts -a process now endorsed by virtually the entire Republican Party...
...It must be less comforting to remember what a Congress of the opposite party can do with subpoena power-and to recall what a Democratic Congress did to Richard Nixon...
...It will cost the Democrats five or six Senate seats, and free the Republican Party from the hypocrisy of being the anti-government party while some of its coalition is on the dole...
...There was no pro-life movement...
...Reduced subsidies in return for less regulation-this is a model for such sectors as education and transportation, which are riddled with cross-subsidies and federal controls...
...Today's "right" is very different from the conservatives Nixon felt free to woo and then betray...
...Southern Baptists were Democrats...
...But what worked in 1968 for Richard Nixon did not work for Bob Dole in 1996...
...But if spending can be cut and entitlements ended, then one can cut taxes, restrain spending, and balance the budget all at once...
...What's more, according to this critique, the focus on a balanced budget itself forced Republican freshmen in vulnerable districts to cast hard votes to "cut" (i.e., reduce the rate of growth of) popular programs like Medicare...
...Nixon could move right to ward off the Reagan threat, and then move back to the center, because there were few institutions, newsletters, direct mail lists, and think tanks that could command reciprocal loyalty...
...Immigrants will now be encouraged to work and join American society, dashing Democratic hopes to create a generation of non-English speaking recruits for their welfare state...
...this Congress cut out 36 percent...
...After pro-life and prochoice activists had accepted a tolerance clause that would apply to the entire Republican platform, not just the abortion section, Dole said he wanted the tolerance language placed right before the paragraph on abortion...
...When the subsidies are phased out, the three million members of the American Farm Bureau will become heavily armed small businessmen with nothing in common with the Democratic Party or its candidates...
...But as Dole found out, the world has changed since 1968...
...Diego conceding that the House and Senate will likely remain Republican in November...
...Bob Dole's decision to run his 1996 campaign on the issue of balancing the budget with lower levels of taxes and spending is the natural outcome of the lo4th Congress, and sets the stage for a 105th that will be radical in scope, unifying the Republican Party, and spelling doom to the American left...
...The number of government workers at 129 of 139 major government offices was reduced between 1994 and 1996...
...Continuing on this path will save $40o billion over the next five years from Bill Clinton's original plans...
...His selection of Kemp instead of a personal friend from the Senate also made it clear that, unlike George Bush in 199x, Dole very much wants to be president...
...Added to this is the Republican focus on English as a national language, which is supported by Republicans in both houses and endorsed by the convention platform...
...Even the establishment press left San Now it's left to Bill Clinton to mimic Richard Nixon...
...The rightcan no longer be wooedand then betrayed...
...There was no Heritage Foundation, no Cato Institute...
...P O L I T I C S by Grover G. Norquist Happy Kempers By embracing Reaganism, Bob Dole gave himself a...
...Evidently, the Dole campaign believed that insulting the right was the tactical equivalent of moving to the center...
...When the Republicans actually put together a budget that cut taxes and reined in spending to balance the budget, they ended the conflict between supply-siders and deficit hawks...
...The conventional wisdom in Washington, which even some conservatives have bought into, is that it was a mistake for 56 October r 9 9 6 • The American Spectator Newt Gingrich to commit Republican prestige and resources to crafting a sevenyear balanced budget that included tax cuts certain to be vetoed by Bill Clinton...
...The electorate has also changed: more than half of those who voted for Nixon in 1968 are no longer alive...
...The property rights movement, now a thousand groups strong, was nonexistent Ralph Reed was six years old, and Newt Gingrich was campaigning for Nelson Rockefeller...
...The Freedom to Farm legislation, pushed by Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, phases out crop subsidies for the seven major crops over seven years in return for which farmers are given immediate freedom to farm what and where they wish...
...Republicans have also defused the dangerous issue of immigration that threatened to divide the party...
...boost-and a bigger one to the congressional GOP...
...57 The American Spectator . October r 9 9 6...
...After locking up the GOP nomination, Dole announced that repealing Bill Clinton's assault weapons ban -the National Rifle Association's chief concern-was not important...
...But in their unity Republicans won real budget restraint...
Vol. 29 • October 1996 • No. 10
