Conservatives Grow Up
Norquist, Grover
Conservatives Grow Up Bush's tactics don't incite fears of betrayal BY GROVER NORQUIST For once, conservatives are not whining. They are not whining that Bush moved to the left. They are not...
...Grassroots activism fell off after the 1980,1984 and 1994 victories...
...But the lack of whining reflects more than the difference between Nixon, Ford, or even George Bush of Connecticut and George Bush of Texas...
...Reagan's win in 1980 and the Republican capture of the Congress in 1994 were steps forward...
...Abolishing the death tax won 80 percent of the vote on the South Dakota ballot last November...
...When Republicans didn't have the votes in the House or Senate to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts, some conservatives thought this meant that Gingrich was against us...
...And in a town where personnel is policy, in a blind taste test you couldn't tell which phone list belonged to the White House and which to the Heritage Foundation...
...School choice polls at more than 70 percent...
...The business lobby in 1981 that scurried to load the tax bill with special interest ornaments today support fast-tracking Bush's broad but simple tax measure, knowing that victory will bring more chances next year and beyond...
...overcome the Clinton veto...
...Once sure they would always be a minority, conservatives now have the confidence reserved for those who believe they are on the right side of history...
...Trust flows in both directions...
...Eberle says he has added 600,000 activists through e-mail since the November election...
...Virginia Republican Party committeeman Morton Blackwell reports that attendance is skyrocketing at local and state GOP events...
...No more do conservatives expect elected leaders to do all the heavy lifting...
...They are not whining, period...
...This is a first...
...There are several signs of maturity...
...The ACU formed Americans for the Bush Cabinet and 154 state and local groups joined through the Internet to generate 900,000 e-mail messages to the Senate...
...Far from assuming that Bush's White House was responsible for winning on Conservative activists who howled when Gingrich simply praised FDR in his maiden speech as Speaker were mature enough this time around to understand that George Bush was right to begin his administration smothering the Democrats with bear hugs while activists delivered body blows to vulnerable Democrat senators...
...Before Reagan even took office, leading conservatives complained that he had been coopted by the establishment...
...Reagan's victory in 1980 and Newt Gingrich's capture of Congress in 1994 were both followed by carping...
...Patience flows from having won four congressional majorities in a row...
...14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ¦ April 2001 Today both conservative activists and congressional Republicans grasp that one victory leads to another...
...introduced a capital gains tax cut and expanded Individual Retirement Accounts to add to Bush's tax cut, the White House assured Republican congressmen there was no objection to them co-sponsoring Toomey's legislation...
...It was conservative writer Stan Evans who formulated this Law of Politics: "Once one of our people gets in a position to help us, he ceases to be one of our people...
...When Reagan focused on tax cuts in 1981 some social conservatives charged that he was betraying the pro-life cause...
...Praising dead Democrats and hugging live ones is not treason when the goal is legislative victories...
...Conservatives now have the confidence reserved for those who believe they are on the side of history...
...The Capital Research Center, led by Terry Scanlon, documented that many of the liberal groups attacking Ashcroft had received federal funds during the Clinton years totaling hundreds of millions of dollars...
...Conservatives, and their movement, have grown up...
...After the 2000 election there was no such drop off in direct-mail fundraising or activism...
...The Family Research Council organized conservative women in a series of press conferences, demonstrations and Hill visits that out-hustled the feminists and won more press coverage than Ashcroft's opponents...
...That was true for too long...
...Half those attending were new to the conference...
...The Bush White House is working well with the conservative movement...
...Eisenhower and Nixon had campaigned to the right and governed in the middle of the liberal Washington establishment...
...But Reagan was limited in what he could accomplish with liberal control of the House of Representatives, and Gingrich could not the Ashcroft nomination, conservative groups organized to phone, fax and e-mail in his support...
...Bush's once radical goal of privatizing Social Security has 70 percent support in polls...
...Ford, a firebrand in Congress, became the champion of detente, the Equal Rights Amendment, and abortion...
...When Pat Toomey (R-Pa...
...The 2001 Conservative Political Affairs Conference, run by David Keene's American Conservative Union, was the largest in its history with more than 3,500 attendees in February, 1,000 more than last year...
...Bruce Eberle, the conservative direct-mail leader, says that traditionally Republican and conservative causes have suffered from a belief among donors that with the battle won they could retire and let Reagan or Gingrich solve the problems...
...First, conservatives understand that winning one battle is not winning the war...
...But Reagan's tax cut built his political capital, won a second and a "third" presidential term, and thus brought Scalia and Thomas to the Supreme Court...
...They are not whining that the cabinet is filled with Washington insiders and retreads...
...Back in 1995, many congressmen viewed Republican control of the House as a fleeting opportunity through which every conservative goal would have to be squeezed in two years, or four...
Vol. 34 • April 2001 • No. 3
