Politics: Mopping Up After McCain
Norquist, Grover G.
by Grover G. Norquist Mopping Up After McCain How conservatives and the GOP suppressed a mutiny. T he McCain mutiny failed. Why? And will this coup attempt create or highlight fissures in the...
...He won only nine percent in Iowa and one percent in New Hampshire, pulling out of the race four days after falling from a podium while flipping pancakes...
...Seventy-five percent of Buchanan's 1996 backers voted for a free-trade candidate this year...
...Hatch...
...If anything, the zooo campaign has shown the resilience of the Reagan coalition...
...Meanwhile, constant media harping on gun control is designed to cleave suburban from rural Republicans...
...M cCain thought his biography and voting record were enough for him to claim the mantle of Reagan Republican...
...This initiative would have rolled back 1978's Proposition 13 requirement that any effort to create public debt be approved by at least two-thirds of the popular vote...
...His main vulnerability was his recent support for the Democrats' version of campaign finance reform, which would muzzle independent groups like the National Right to Life Committee and my own Americans for Tax Reform that rely on advertising to get issues covered free of press distortion...
...McCain, on the other hand, was endorsed by only four of his Senate colleagues (Kyl, DeWine, Thompson, and Hagel) and by only three congressmen outside Arizona...
...McCain suggested the party drop the religious right...
...The entire breadth of the conservative movement worked to expose McCain's double track...
...Buchanan's real support had come from pro-lifers and those voting "Not Bush" in a99z and "Not Dole" in 1996...
...In fact, according to exit polls, campaign finance reform was mentioned as most important by only 9 percent of GOP primary voters in New Hampshire, 6 percent in South Garolina, 8 percent in Michigan, and an percent in Virginia...
...The American Spectator _9 May z o o o 71...
...The incessant focus on alleged GOP divisions over abortion is a favorite tactic...
...Not a single liberal columnist found this emphatic rejection of"reform" worthy of note...
...Not exactly the lesson the networks wanted you to take away from this election cycle...
...The American Conservative Union, Christian Coalition, National Right to Work Committee, Americans for Tax Reform, NRA, and National Right to Life Commit[ee held press conferences in New Hampshire and South Carolina to protest McCain's anti-First Amendment position on campaign finance reform...
...Like Buchanan he opposed free trade but went even further in attacking businessmen and corporations...
...Opposition to tax hikes trumped "the children" and "education...
...The California teachers unions and some dimwitted high-tech executives put up some $30 million in support of Prop...
...Unz's initiative, Proposition zz, lost 65-35...
...John Anderson, but couldn't sell this liberal to the Republican primary electorate...
...Reagan, inflation, expanded share ownership, and high taxes have melded the two "wings" of the conservative movement...
...First, protectionist Pat Buchanan tried to shatter and restructure it by throwing out businessmen and farmers, in favor of Teamsters and UAW shop stewards...
...Evidently Buchanan misjudged the votes he won in 1992 and a996 as an endorsement of his new vision...
...The major media amplified MeCain's message, muted Bush's, and found Republican quislings to quote against the conservative movement...
...Before New Hampshire, he was endorsed by 75 members of the 165-member Republican National Committee, 27 of 3 ~ Republican governors, x73 members of the House and 4 ~ senators...
...McCain ended the race having won only in New England, his home state, and Michigan, the last courtesy of the Democratic Party and labor union turnout...
...Gary Bauer took the next stab at remaking the Reagan coalition...
...So on Super Tuesday George Bush swept from California to New York...
...Will the McCain effort go down in history as insignificant as the John Anderson candidacy in a98o7 As damaging as Forbes's trashing of Dole in a996...
...The New York Times and the Washington Post actually wrote editorials insisting that McCain "was too" a conservative...
...After his defeat in South Carolina, McCain did a reverse on the Buchanan and Bauer strategy--he would excommunicate the "Religious Right...
...Bush had worked with every part of the Reagan coalition: social conservatives, the National Rifle Association, the National Right to Life Committee, property rights groups, taxpayer groups, and business groups...
...Their efforts were countered by an under-funded ($1...
...But as a Vietnam veteran, former POW, and Republican senator from Barry Goldwater's state with a voting record to match, McCain was an easier sell...
...Never mind, as the National Right to Life Committee discovered, that as many as 65 of 2n Democratic congressmen are pro-life, but only 33 of zzz House Republicans are prochoice...
...George W. Bush now runs as the candidate of a united Reagan Republican party who will win if he remembers that he and the Republican Congress need the energy, numbers, and enthusiasm of the entire party...
...So how could he win in New Hampshire and become for one month Bush's only serious challenger...
...He might have gotten away with it if not for the power and competence of the conservative media and grassroots...
...26, promising smaller class size and greater accountability...
...The major networks, Time and Newsweek, and the New York Times and Washington Post all showered McCain with positive coverage, which--if purchased as advertising-would have cost at least three times the $7 ~ million Bush raised from Republicans...
...Bauer endorsed the Democrats' approach to campaign finance reform and attacked Republican 70 May 2o o o _9 The American Spectator proposals to allow Americans to "privatize" Social Security by putting some or all of their FICA taxes into personal savings accounts...
...One is reminded of the old Bullwinkle cartoon: "Gee, didn't know my own strength...
...In maybe the most underreported story of the year, California voters actually did vote on campaign finance reform on March 7. California entrepreneur Ron Unz spent millions on a measure to restrict private contributions in favor of"public"read taxpayer -- funding of elections...
...And will this coup attempt create or highlight fissures in the Reagan coalition...
...He hoped to keep conservative support even though the media's support for him was premised on his commitment to campaign finance "reform" that would knee-cap conservatives while leaving unions and the press unrestrained...
...Note: The "dead" conservative movement proved more powerful than the entire establishment press...
...Buchanan and Bauer tried to talk the _9 Republican Party and conservative movement into dumping economic conservafives...
...They are, increasingly, well-educated, self-employed, property owners, overburdened taxpayers, and 4o1(k) owners...
...Bauer's call to raise taxes (tariffs) on American consumers to punish the Chinese dictatorship didn't strike "his" constituency as sensible...
...McCain had also supported a large tax hike on cigarette smokers that had failed to pass the Senate...
...McCain attacked Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell personally and went on to call them "forces of evil...
...Social conservatives are economic conservatives...
...The left-wing Nation praised Bauer's class-warfare rhetoric...
...In fact, exit polls in 199z found that only six percent of New Hampshire voters voted on trade and half of these opposed Buchanan...
...McCain's not so secret weapon was the uncritical and unflagging support of establishment media corporations...
...The establishment press claimed the MeCain phenomenon was driven by his support for campaign finance reform...
...Even with Democrats allowed to vote in each of these primaries, campaign finance reform was less important to voters than taxes (15 percent), world affairs (lO...
...Christian conservatives are not, as Michael Weiskopf once wrote on the front page of the Washington Post, "poor, uneducated and easy to command...
...By February, 7 ~ percent of Fortune 500 CEOs had endorsed Bush...
...The same faux conservative pundit who one week wrote that the conservative movement was "dead" complained bitterly at a National Press Club event the following week that the conservative media--Rush Limbaugh, The American Spectator, National Review, George Will, and others--had destroyed McCain...
...On paper he was weaker than Steve Forbes or Lamar Alexander and about even with Orrin GROVER G. NORQUIST is president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...Twenty years ago the same media crowd tried to help Illinois Rep...
...Damage the Republican Party...
...The same media that called McCain's win in New Hampshire a defeat for George W. Bush's tax cut also managed to avoid commenting on California voters' rejection of Proposition 26...
...Unfazed, McCain's handlers insisted that McGain would win all Republican voters who shared his stated hostility to social conservatives...
...7 percent), Social Security (14 percent), and moral values (31.5 percent...
...Both efforts failed...
...McCain lost among Republican voters but won heavily with Democrats and Independents...
...5 million) campaign led by Jon Goupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association...
...His campaign raised $7 ~ million from 17x,ooo donors...
...Bush then swept Virginia (53 percent), Washington state (58 percent), and North Dakota (76 percent...
...In the zooo cycle, Buchanan left the Republican Party after he won only seven percent in the Iowa straw poll, well before the Iowa caucus was even held...
...Not one GOP governor (including Arizona's Jane Hull) endorsed McCain and no non-Arizona member of the RNC backed him...
...McCain feared to appear in Iowa, with its well-organized Republican Party and conservative movement, and won in New Hampshire, where the Republican Party and conservative movement are weaker...
...Buchanan and Bauer seemed to forget that Americans who go to church and take their faith seriously also have jobs and homes, pay taxes, and understand the concept of compound interest...
...Or was the McCain candidacy the harbinger of a new and larger coalition--like Goldwater in a964 or Reagan in a976...
...Texas Governor George W. Bush began the campaign as the prohibitive favorite, enjoying unprecedented Republican and conservative backing...
...Like the establishment press, he now believed Republicans would do better without this "riffraff...
...The story of the 2ooo Republican primary was how the Republican Party and the conservative movement-- pronounced dead by some Vichy Republicans-unmasked the Trojan Horse McCain campaign and defeated the largest accumulation of corporate wealth amassed behind one candidate in American history...
...In failing, the McCain campaign exploded the myths that the Reagan coalition was both weak and unstable...
...The left has been insisting since 198o that Republicans cannot create a majority party that includes both social and economic conservatives-the religious right and businessmen...
Vol. 33 • May 2000 • No. 4
