Politics: No Stopping Them
Norquist, Grover G.
POLITICS by Grover G. Norquist No Stopping Them T he establishment says term limits are dead. It said so in 1991, too, after opponents (led by then—House Speaker Tom Foley) defeated a term-limits...
...This is precisely what the term-limits movement envisaged: increasing the number of competitive congressional races by reducing the advantages of incumbency...
...Those reluctant to pledge would face no negative language, though in due course they'd probably face primary challenges from newcomers eager to sign the term-limits pledge...
...On his return, Gingrich's call for an end to estate and capital-gains taxes—a position he and Trent Lott reiterated on tax day—re-established his leadership on a basic GOP tenet Few in Washington fully appreciated the import of Gingrich's move...
...When freshman senators Tim Johnson of South Dakota and Bob Torricelli of New Jersey recently broke a campaign promise and voted against the balanced-budget amendment, they were probably correct to assume voters won't remember the betrayal when re-election season rolls around...
...This year's winner was Phillips himself, the writer and commentator who has made a career of trashing conservatives while passing himself off as a staunch Republican...
...Such laws help keep politicians accountable to their constituents...
...A final lesson is that the media still has tremendous power to tempt conservatives into trashing other conservatives...
...Republicans didn't get their tax cut—and Clinton escaped blame for opposing it.44 The award will go to the conservative who most shamelessly attacks other conservatives...
...With so many items in the package, no headlines announced "Republicans Cut Taxes" or "Clinton Vetoes Tax Cut...
...60 June 1997 • The American Spectator He's Back Newt Gingrich's decision to pay his $300,000 "assessment" from personal funds by taking out a loan from Bob Dole capped a successful month on the comeback trail...
...In hindsight, the Dole loan was the only bulletproof response Newt could make to Democrats' demands for a pound of flesh...
...GOP freshmen demanded and won an eight-year limit on the Speaker...
...When Dick Armey said he didn't have the votes to kill the National Endowment for the Arts, the press portrayed Armey as opposing the NEA's abolition...
...Term limits dead...
...Informed-voter initiatives are now underway in California (target date for vote: June 1998), Nevada, Arizona, and South Dakota—where legislators quickly repealed the informed-voter law that had passed with 68 percent of the vote...
...It said so in 1991, too, after opponents (led by then—House Speaker Tom Foley) defeated a term-limits initiative in Washington state by arguing that, without the protections of congressional seniority, California would soon be stealing all of Washington's water...
...Last election day, nine states passed "informed voter" laws that require subsequent ballots to indicate whether an incumbent supported term limits (Arkansas, Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, and South Dakota...
...A second lesson is that the establishment press has become more devious in the way it attacks conservatives...
...In its first revolutionary act, the 1o4th Congress imposed a six-year limit on committee chairmen...
...Under the old order Roberts might well have been tempted to follow in his predecessors' footsteps and create a fiefdom that would have had him championing subsidies...
...In 1980 it assumed the public shared its worldview...
...But a conservative who attacks Gingrich will be invited on talk shows and cited by nearly every prominent liberal columnist...
...Consider: 64 percent of the congressmen from the above nine states voted for congressional term limits last February, as opposed to 17 percent from the remaining forty-one states...
...Trent Lott's initial comment that he didn't see how capital gains and the inheritance tax could both be abolished this year was turned into an internecine disagreement with Gingrich over goals rather than timing...
...Meanwhile, none of the dire predictions of term-limits opponents have materialized...
...Why is Bill Archer, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, in such a hurry to eliminate the income tax, repeal the Sixteenth Amendment, and institute a retail sales tax...
...The strongest response came from a Treasury undersecretary, who called critics of the estate tax "selfish" — and was quickly rebuffed by the president's own press secretary...
...When Reagan promised to cut taxes, reduce spending, and confront the Soviet Empire, the press assumed it would be harming him by reporting his views, confident that the public would reject any madman who advocated such policies...
...The state still has all its water...
...Recall the week of confusing and negative press Gingrich earned when he wondered out loud whether Republicans would be better off sending several budget packages to Clinton rather than including the tax cut in one veto-bait package...
...A recent Wall Street Journal story on Maine, where the first class of term-limited pols has been succeeded by corn-petent legislators, had headlines that say it all: "An Infusion of Vitality...
...Now the press tries to discredit conservative pols on conservative grounds...
...But Gingrich has raised the stakes: He wants to abolish these taxes...
...Ronald Reagan never allowed himself to be drawn into public discussions of tactics or day-to-day compromises...
...Who will win next year...
...His chairmanship will expire in z000...
...The deal reduced liberals to attacking Dole's character...
...But when Republicans finally sent him a stand-alone welfare bill, he had no excuse for not signing the popular bill...
...Now that a federal court has declared California's limits unconstitutional (though they remain in force until an appeal is heard), the political class is feeling especially emboldened...
...Lobbyists Can't Find an Audience...
...such an effort failed again last February 12...
...1 It might well be sound strategy to send up two or three packages with tax cuts, Medicare reform, and other items "separated out" In the previous Congress, Clinton twice vetoed welfare reform as part of a larger package...
...These legislators are more likely than other challengers of congressional incumbents to have high name-ID and a proven ability to raise money and win votes...
...When Pat Roberts became chairman of the Agriculture Committee, he led the fight to phase out farm subsidies...
...Ai The American Spectator June 1997 61...
...For starters, Gingrich and Lott need to have the discipline to speak at the vision level, and leave discussion of tactics and vote-counts to aides...
...Legislators in twenty states—or nearly a -third of the nation's 7,345 state legislators—are already term-limited...
...The American Conservative Union this year gave out its first Kevin Phillips Award, to be given annually to the figure who most shamelessly uses his conservative perch to attack other conservatives and their ideas...
...It also took comfort when Congress failed to garner the 290 votes required to set a term-limits amendment in motion...
...The struggles of the past few months have taught the GOP some valuable lessons...
...Putting everything in one bill had failed in 1995...
...Those states comprise 184 conGROVER G. NORQUIST is president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...Term limits have also changed the behavior of Republican congressmen...
...Term Limits and its chairman, Howie Rich, have a new trick up their sleeves: to have candidates pledge they'll serve no more than three terms in the House, and to have this commitment printed on the ballot...
...What critics (and supporters) tend to overlook is what term limits have already accomplished...
...Meanwhile, term-limit initiatives will be on the ballot in November 1998 in Mississippi, Nebraska, and North Dakota...
...They're unstoppable...
...Thus it turned Gingrich's tactical discussion about when best to cut taxes into an abandonment of the tax issue...
...In the past, Republicans would call for cuts in capital gains or reducing the inheritance tax, afraid that anything stronger would leave them open to the charge of favoring the rich...
...A conservative columnist who calls for Bill Clinton's impeachment will never be quotedon the networks or in the New York Times...
...U.S...
...One reason Newt Gingrich committed to balancing the budget in seven years is that he knew that he'd be out as Speaker after eight...
...The establishment breathed a sigh of relief in 1995 when the Supreme Court declared that the initiatives in 23 states setting term limits for congressmen and senators were unconstitutional —forgetting that the court left in place term limits on state legislators...
...He quickly found his way back into their good graces by endorsing the chemical-weapons treaty...
...Term limits are alive and well--and so's Newt...
...gressional districts, which enjoy increased competition from term-limited state assemblymen and state senators with no place else to go...
...Had Gingrich borrowed the money from a bank—any bank—the media would have swarmed over its board of directors and pronounced some conflict of interest...
...Two years later Washington and thirteen other states passed term limits with an average popular vote of 66 percent In November 1994, Washington voters threw out Foley and four other Democrats with a combined forty-two years of seniority—largely over the issue of term limits...
...Gingrich began his comeback in China, where his strong support of human rights, defense of Taiwan, and travel to Hong Kong and Taiwan stood out next to Al Gore's weak-kneed performance...
...he knew he had a fixed amount of time to effect change...
...Informed" voters are more likely to expect accountability...
...That was Jim Baker's job, and conservatives directed their ire at Baker when tactical compromises were made...
Vol. 30 • June 1997 • No. 6
