Politics: Something Old and New
Norquist, Grover G.
by Grover G. Norquist Something Old and New Two hot issues that unite the right and divide the left. T wo issues—one old, one new—are changing the face of American politics. The first has been in...
...Supporting Wolf-Specter will soften the religious right's image, as its members are seen coming down on the side of victims— a moral high ground understood even by ABC...
...This year school choice has won victories in Arizona and Minnesota, with passage of various tuition tax credits and educational deductions...
...Clinton and Gore are now strong-arming congressional Democrats to use "killer amendments" to stop Wolf-Specter...
...sumers: reducing foreign aid...
...For one thing, like school choice Wolf-Specter unites conservatives...
...Clintonistas love foreign aid, want no constraints in dealing with foreign nations, and are offended at the idea of having to respond to the concerns of evangelical Christians...
...Clinton will veto the bill at his own political peril...
...As one key congressional Republican Some even predicted a grassroots rebel- said about "those self-appointed conservlion if MFN passed...
...It divides Democratic special interests: teachers' unions oppose any effort to curtail their monopoly, while inner-city black and Hispanic parents are the nation's strongest supporters of school choice...
...Democratic Rep...
...The American Spectator • November 1997 63...
...Frank Wolf and Sen...
...Arlen Specter introduced the Freedom From Religious Persecution Act...
...But the Wolf-Specter bill is set to punish foreign states that mistreat religious believers—not by raising tariffs on American consumers, but by cutting off aid and loans to the offending government...
...cut off all non-humanitarian foreign aid to offending governments...
...But on election day only about 5 percent of Americans give gun control top priority (and they hate it...
...A conference sponsored answered the question, "Should govern-by the conservative Jewish group Toward ment restrict imports of goods from other Tradition met in Washington on Septem- countries that are priced lower than Amerber 21-23...
...Republican con- trade, their only real effect "was to raise gressmen reported little mail or phone millions of dollars for Democratic con-traffic opposing MFN...
...As they should know from gun control politics, there is a great deal of difference between preference and intensity...
...It would create a new White House position to monitor religious persecution...
...require this office to issue annual reports on worldwide conditions...
...When President Clinton forced the Coverdell bill from the budget package, Republicans vowed to send up what is now the Coverdell-Gingrich Education Savings Accounts legislation as a stand-alone bill...
...Floyd Flake with a petition from 2,000 Washington families requesting passage of the bill...
...by tion brought activists from thirty states to two-to-one margins for protectionism...
...Because school choice has given Republicans a direct link to minorities — a late August Gallup/USA Today poll found 72 percent black support for school choice— education is no longer a Democratic preserve...
...The debate is bringing to light that these groups are leftist first and Christian or pro-human rights a very distant second...
...On any given day 70 percent of Americans will tell a pollster they support some sort of gun control...
...Strong opposition to Wolf-Specter also comes from such groups as the National Council of Churches and Human Rights Watch...
...It unites social and economic conservatives, both of whom want parents to choose their children's schools...
...school system, i5o District parents and students presented Speaker Gingrich and GROVER G. NORQUIST is president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...monopolistic self-interest...
...Just as some black leaders are losing their moral authority because they must stand with their paymasters in the teachers' unions and against black parents, so will this debate expose the real political agenda of hundreds of Washington bureaucrat-activists whose salaries are paid by the modest contributions of believers in middle America...
...While the Heritage Founda- a positive impact," 29 percent "more negtion, Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound alive," 32 percent said it had not had much Economy, and all taxpayer and business of an impact, and 15 percent were unsure...
...The money would accumulate tax free to cover education costs at public, private, or religious schools...
...But no such ground- ative leaders" who cried wolf over free swell materialized...
...Georgia Sen...
...This issue alone should propel 62 November 19 9 7 • The American Spectator the Coalition from its peak of 1.9 million members to its new goal of 4 million...
...It won't help Clinton that Democratic opposition to school choice isn't what it used to be...
...Instead of fighting over what if any prayer to allow in public schools, evangelicals, Catholics, and Jews remain allies in the fight for parental rights...
...After Dick Armey called for 2,000 scholarships of $3,200 each to be made available to students from the failed D.C...
...Not only has Rep...
...More compelling than liberal sob stories of old, refugees from China and the Sudan will prove powerful advocates before editorial boards or in front of television-filled congressional hearing rooms...
...A further advantage is that school choice sidesteps the divisiveness of school prayer...
...More than loo,000 churches have already agreed to celebrate November 16 as a day of prayer for persecuted Christians...
...As Kevin Phillips pointed out in 1985, polling data from 1973 to 1984 being filled by Jewish neo-conservatives showed consistently that Americans and evangelicals...
...Founded in 1993, Toward Tradi- ican-made goods of the same kind...
...No one has ever who stood with the unions in opposing lost an election based on his vote for MFN merely gave political cover to labor's NAFTA or MFN...
...Second, Wolf-Specter is a wonderful way to organize and motivate conservative church-goers...
...It is hard to For all of Buchanan's or Ross Perot's overstate the damage done by those attacks on NAFTA, a recent poll showed 23 activists who hopped aboard the anti-MFN percent found that the treaty had "more of bandwagon...
...Flake, a member of the Black Caucus, made an unprecedented break to support a Republican-led education initiative, but Democratic Senators Joseph Lieberman and Mary Landrieu have warned their party against standing too long with the anti-choice status quo...
...The Christian Coalition's new leaders, Don Hodel and Randy Tate, have made Wolf-Specter their highest priority...
...The only con- gressmen and to allow former Democragressmen who switched from previous tic staffers who now work for Fortune 500 support for MFN to opposition—John firms to remind their CEO's: 'See, I told Kasich and Bill Paxon — did so months you that you can't trust conservatives to earlier in anticipation of such an oppose taxes and tariffs.'" It is hard to overstate the damage done by those who got on the anti-MFN bandwagon...
...Similar penalties are included in a companion bill that targets China specifically, Sen...
...Finally, Wolf-Specter has an added ben- Last year, Pat Buchanan abandoned efit of great relevance in current debates: the Reagan coalition in an effort to add it gives conservatives a way out of the dead- protectionist votes that never material-end politics of protectionism...
...The New Republic noticed last summer that "the refusal of the Clinton administration, the mainline churches and human rights organizations to recognize the sufferings of Christian believers in China and other countries has created a vacuum that is "avalanche...
...With blackparents and education activists now calling school choice the civil rights movement of the 1990's, Democrats are finding that this time around they're on the wrong side of history...
...didates in their respective parties...
...groups pointed out that tariffs are just People will curse foreign trade on talk another tax ultimately paid by American radio, but most won't carry that hostility consumers, not foreigners, conservatives into the polling booth...
...In South Carolina, the extension of China's MFN status...
...If the law were in place, the U.S...
...Another benefit of Wolf-Specter is a growing Jewish-evangelical coalition...
...The first has been in the works for some twenty years at the federal and state level: parental choice in education...
...Paul Coverdell has reintroduced his Education Savings or "A plus accounts" legislation that would allow families to deposit $2,000 a year into an IRA-style account...
...would be ready to react to Russia's new restrictions on religious freedom by cutting off foreign aid—precisely what Clinton isn't prepared to do...
...Michael dency in 1988, George Bush and Michael Horowitz is already a legend for his cham- Dukakis, were the two most free-trade canpioning of oppressed Christians...
...Chris Cox's China Sanctions and Human Rights Advancement Act) If it took nearly two decades for school choice to become a powerful Republican weapon, what explains the meteoric rise and appeal of Wolf-Specter...
...The American Education Reform Foundation is running pro-school choice ads featuring Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King, who says that school choice means "giving kids a chance...
...He hear Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Michael predicted protectionism's coming power...
...But equally important steps are being taken in Washington...
...The second, just being introduced in Washington, is as yet little known among the activists and politicians whose world it will change...
...Conservatives who mislead politicians into thinking they are about to feel conservative wrath risk turning their cause into a paper tiger...
...Only 5 percent of New Hampshire servatives, understandably angered by voters said international trade was their China's mistreatment of Christians, joined number one issue, and only half of these the AFL-CIO and Ralph Nader in opposing backed Buchanan...
...Spencer Abraham and Rep...
...Protectionism also polls well...
...Taxpayers, free-marketeers, and the religious right have no problem with cutoffs of foreign aid to offenders...
...School choice has always held great promise for Republicans...
...and require the U.S...
...Meanwhile, the Clinton administration will be forced to oppose Wolf-Specter...
...Now only 7 percent said international trade conservatives have a constructive alterna- was their key issue and again only half tive to higher tariffs on American con- voted for Buchanan...
...to oppose all multilateral development loans to offender nations...
...Passage of Wolf-Specter would repudiate five years of Clinton leadership that, in the words of the New Republic, "has shown a marked lack of concern over the persecution of Christians...
...0 n September 8, Rep...
...Assuming a 7.5 percent interest rate, $2,000 a year from birth would grow to $4,488 by first grade, $36,732 by junior high, $46,732 by high school, and $71,355 by college...
...Hodel, Tate, and leaders like Chuck Colson will enjoy a similar boost when seen defending Tibetan Buddhists...
...In Medved, Dennis Prager, Ralph Reed, Jack fact, the two men who ran for the presiKemp, and Father Robert Sirico...
...By contrast, the debate over Most Favored Nation extension to a human rights violator like China is more controversial because of the increased tariffs the policy ultimately imposes on American consumers...
...Some con- ized...
...Richard Gere, meet Ralph Reed...
Vol. 30 • November 1997 • No. 11
