A Talk with Steve Moore
"A Talk with Steve Moore" RINO Hunter The Club for Growth had a great election day. RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) watch out. "Do you want a Republican Congress, but don't want to give your contributions to Republicans...
...We've added a lot of moderates—people like Elizabeth Dole and Lamar Alexander...
...But we also need an immediate tax-cut stimulus plan, to guarantee that this economy doesn't slide back in the ditch of recession...
...Fundamentally I think Bush is a conservative, but I'm not convinced that a lot of his cabinet and a lot of his entourage are...
...The good news from this election is that both states delivered heavily for the GOP...
...Soros probably wouldn't even be able to tell you why what he did added value...
...They didn't run away from free trade—they ran on it...
...I'm very bearish on California—it's dominated politically by tax-eaters rather than taxpayers...
...But when the party nominates a stalwart free-market conservative and the party establishment isn't happy, apparently they'd rather see a liberal Democrat elected...
...That was amazing—in Massachusetts...
...we actually ended up reaching $8 million, split about half and half between direct candidate contributions and soft dollars for ads...
...Not only did we defeat what I call the "Warner Brothers," we also defeated the big developers and the chamber of commerce and the business-industry council—all these business groups that basically wanted NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 33 'The most selfish group in America today is senior citizens...
...You can't do that...
...That's important...
...There was a huge battle in northern Virginia over a proposed tax hike for mass transit and highway construction...
...We could never defeat John McCain in a general election, but we may be able to beat him in a primary...
...Things turned out rather differently...
...The investor class is the most important demo-graphic voting group there is...
...That's a shift—from the late '70s into the '90s, free-marketers used the ballot-initiative process to advance reforms like term limits, tax cuts, and expenditure limitations, things you could never get through the legislatures...
...John's win is one of the most important in the country—he was our top-priority candidate in the Senate...
...That was the one gray cloud in this election—we didn't defeat any incumbents...
...And there's no more blaming Clinton or Tom Daschle for economic problems, as much fun as that was...
...Exactly...
...Why does corporate America have no interest in a capital-gains cut...
...It suggests that Republicans can win Hispanic votes, if they don't present themselves as the anti-immigrant party, as the part of `We-Don't-Want-Any-More-of-You-Here.' Some of our restrictionist friends at National Review say that immigration is political suicide for the Republicans, but they may have been telling the wrong story...
...The Democratic governor, Mark Warner, and Republicans like Sen...
...Or who vote for Republican pork instead of Democratic pork...
...Were corporate scandals a major voter issue...
...Then he can come back in 2005 with an enormous political mandate to actually fix these two gigantic millstones that are hung around the economy's neck...
...Now the left has caught on that they can get through some of their populist initiatives—taxing cigarettes, corporate spending limits, things like that...
...A month before the election, I was saying that our goal was to reach $6 million this year...
...The first two years have not been very encouraging...
...A lot of the best candidates we've discovered scouring the country tend to be people who will limit their own terms...
...I don't know...
...And by the way, a lot of these people have never even run for office before...
...McCain is off the charts with independent voters—85 percent approval...
...A lot of Republicans have been celebrating this—they're saying that it gives us more of the middle to move into, to solidify this Republican majority...
...They didn't run away from expanded tax cuts—they ran on them...
...These are the richest people in the country in terms of the age group, and if you wanted to, you could spend the whole GDP giving them free drugs...
...You'll have Democrats registering Republican...
...How can some-one who made a billion dollars under capitalism not understand how the free-market system really fundamentally works...
...Making last year's cut permanent will once and for all put a stake through the heart of the death tax...
...NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 35...
...Does Bush move to the right now because he has the voter mandate that he didn't have before...
...If George W. Bush wants to be an FDR or Reagan-type of president, he needs to devote the next two years to building broad-based support for social security private accounts and for fundamental tax reform...
...They back that up with political artillery—targeted issue advertising...
...Number one would be a capital-gains cut, to try to re-energize the economy...
...I've made the case that investors are more terrified of the actions of Congress than they are of the corporate crooks...
...Twelve or fourteen points...
...Several years ago, you wrote the piece for us titled "Is the Northeast Necessary...
...And they didn't do that by running away from social security privatization—they ran on it...
...Tom Davis all supported it...
...Could you actually knock him off...
...Founded in 1999, the Washington-based Club—its membership recently topped 8,000—is a political action committee focused on the supply-side's core agenda: cutting taxes to spur economic growth...
...sh is a conservative, but I m not nced that very many of his cabinet are.' Where does Florida fit...
...But the Republican caucus in the Senate remains dominated by liberals, and I think you're going to see a widening schism—the intramural fights within the Republican party may become even more pronounced...
...we had a movement away from free trade...
...John is an unadulterated supply-sider...
...What are the tea leaves saying...
...Of course the left is trying to spin this as, `Well, Republicans won, but they ran away from social security reform and other conservative issues.' But look at the winners and losers—it doesn't hold up...
...One of the problems with this year's election generally was that the left used the initiative and referendum process much more ambitiously than our side did...
...SPECTATOR readers will remember Bob Novak's February 2001 cover story, "The Return of the Supply-Side Cavalry...
...California has turned to the loony left, and it's going to be difficult for the state to recover economically...
...I'm very much in favor of making the tax cut permanent, but you're right—it's not enough...
...Anyone in particular...
...The investor class—the 100-million people who are in the market because they want to make money—will be pacified when they start seeing robust returns again...
...Person-ally, I would rather see two competitive parties vying for the voters on behalf of economically sane ideas...
...I hope so...
...I've seen some preliminary data that suggests Republicans did fairly well with His-panics in November...
...The Corzines and the Rubins and the George Soroses of the world are aberrations...
...And number three would be a concerted effort to find cabinet agencies and government pro-grams that are unnecessary and that should be de-funded...
...If Republicans are going to give up New York and California from the start—which they'll virtu-ally have to do in future elections—they will have to have an equally tight grip in Florida and Texas...
...What I don't know is whether his instincts are really to move for-ward with the conservative agenda or try to move to the fifty-yard line...
...The new campaign finance law went into effect the day after the election—what's going to be the impact on groups like the Club for Growth...
...John McCain—look out...
...Sherwood] Sherry Boehlert in New York...
...We've had a huge expansion of government...
...It's a big tent when they nominate liberals and we all have to rally around them...
...One of the biggest myths in politics today is this idea that grandparents care about their grandkids...
...We led the fight against it, and it was a big victory for the anti-tax movement...
...It's really distressing to listen to the nutty anti-capitalist ideas that people like George Soros put out...
...And meanwhile there are a lot of liberal Bushies around who are making it the party of Bush and not the party of Reagan...
...Do you want a Republican Congress, but don't want to give your contributions to Republicans who vote like Democrats...
...This election in Florida was a return to normalcy...
...That's bad news for liberal RINOs—see "RINO Watch" at www.clubforgrowth.org...
...But the next big task is to defeat some incumbent Republicans...
...If the Democrats stay on this left-wing course, they're doomed as a party—they'll never be able to capture any of what they call "fly over" states that are now more solidly Republican than they were even in the Reagan years...
...Are they a real political force...
...It's an overreaction by Congress—both parties—that has created a very bearish environment in Washington...
...I've always believed that the Republican Party should not be the party of big business—we're the party of the young gazelle companies that are going to make our economy so much more competitive...
...They have no grass roots—just a handful of anti-development rich people who already have their mansions and want to keep every-one else out...
...There are thousands of use-less federal programs, but in the first two years of the Bush administration, the White House hasn't talked about terminating even one...
...And by the way, if I may gloat a little bit...
...Any payroll tax cut would be smart, but I would do it in a supply-side way: cut the rate by one percentage point, on both the employer and the employee...
...If you look at a map of the congressional districts that went Republican and Democrat, you essentially have what you had after the 2000 presidential election: the Democratic party has become bicoastal with almost no appeal in Middle America, except some of the inner cities...
...In general-election races we often find ourselves stacked up against Hillary Clinton-type liberal feminists, and we won four out of five of those races...
...Nobody is asking: Who will pay...
...It's really that simple...
...Unless they are essentially convicted of a felony, you just can't get rid of these people...
...But this is a closed primary—you have to be a resident Republican voter in Arizona to vote...
...If Bush doesn't get on the dime and pursue a supply-side, pro-growth economic set of ideas, we could be very depressed two years from now...
...We can also still accept soft-dollar contributions, money for radio and TV ads, for turning out the vote, which is crucial to winning...
...Back to this year—how about John Sununu in New Hampshire...
...I don't mean those interchangeably, but the two most important components of the party are investors and conservatives...
...Karl is first and foremost a political operative—he 's mostly concerned about winning, which he should be...
...If we don't start getting tough on the budget, Republicans will be vulnerable to the charge that they presided over one of the biggest extensions of government in history...
...Well, not only did Garrett win on November 5, he 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002 The American Spectator Going into the November elections, defending the Republican majority in the House was sup-posed to be object one...
...To the contrary—and you can go back to Adam Smith, who warned about this—big business is in large part the adversary of a true capitalist system...
...If you look forward and ask, `What is the one thing that could really go catastrophically wrong for the GOP?' it would be a double-dip recession...
...The GOP leadership had wanted a "more moderate" candidate . , The Republican establishment did not lift a finger to help Bill Simon—so much for the "big tent" idea...
...I hope I'm wrong, but I fear conservatives are going to become very quickly disenchanted, even infuriated by the actions that we're likely to see from this group...
...Otherwise they're left with an ever-shrinking minority...
...Are we going to see more things like that...
...You can make an argument that the Democrats will have no choice but to start taking the idea of a broad-based investor class more seriously...
...We come into the new campaign finance reform world in as strong a shape as any candidate-financing organization in the country...
...We're seeing the same pathologies that destroyed the Northeast—an outward migration of talented people and investment and businesses...
...we've been losing manufacturing jobs...
...and what is the top priority of both the Republican and Democratic par-ties...
...I can say this because I'm not an elected official: the most selfish group in America today is senior citizens...
...Their message is: Give us more!' middle-income people to pay more taxes for their developments...
...The market isn't going to rebound until there is a pro-growth economic agenda in Washington...
...Moore This election really did exceed our wildest expectations...
...In Florida Jeb Bush got 80 percent of the Cuban vote, but even the non-Cuban Hispanics went with him—50 percent or even higher...
...The tax code is the big enchilada when it comes to fixing what's wrong in Washing-ton...
...If we can convince Jeff to run against McCain and I don't think I'm blowing smoke here—I can raise a million dollars for him...
...Can he have much impact as a freshman...
...The political pros who formulate the message of the party will say something like: `Here's what we're going to do for the blacks, for the Hispanics, for the Jews, for the women.' Well what are you going to do for the conservatives...
...Is there a lesson in that...
...Not California, though .. Gray Davis was the winner, and Californians were the losers—they're stuck with him for four more years...
...Club-backed candidates won eighteen out of twenty races...
...Garrett was one of the only bright spots in the entire state...
...We gave his opponent a few thousand bucks in the last primary, and Boehlert only won by something like fifteen hundred votes, even after out-spending his opponent by about eight to one...
...The environmental movement is a Potemkin village...
...In the races that the Club for Growth has been involved in, I would say half the time we're on the opposite side of the local chamber of commerce or the business and industry council...
...The White House hasn't helped much .. . The Bush administration and most of the people in Congress seem to think that if we just lock these people up and throw away the key, that somehow the market will come back...
...The Club is on a roll, deploying $8 million in this year's election cycle—more than triple its 2000 total...
...How much did Bush win by...
...I say "for better or for worse" because we don't really know what the core economic values of the Bush team are...
...Sure .. . The Club for Growth went head-to-head against ultra-liberal EMILY's List in five races this year...
...other times they don't...
...And a twenty-point victory, exceeding anybody's wildest expectations, is confirmation that conservative values can win, even in the liberal Northeast...
...McCain runs for re-election, we are going to try to recruit [Rep.] Jeff Flake to run against him in the primary...
...Another interesting one, just to throw out some red meat, is that if Mr...
...These politicians should serve three terms in the House and two terms in the Senate and then get on with their lives...
...In 2004 we've got to load up the ballots in referendum-and-initiative states with populist issues—abolishing state income taxes, term limits, spending limits...
...That is how despised John McCain has become among conservative Republican donors...
...Oftentimes their interests align...
...Most people on Wall Street are capitalists, and they support the policies we're trying to get enacted...
...Add a capital-gains tax cut and things will really start moving...
...Number two would be to get the ball moving on social security private accounts...
...The 2000 election was the first time a majority of voters were investors...
...Big business does a lot of strange things politically .. . If you look at where big business gives its money, if you look at the lobbying they do in Washington, big business is not an advocate of free markets and capitalism...
...You just can't write that volume of regulations in so short a time—we're going to be sorting out this mess for years...
...That's what McCain would try to do...
...Send them flowers...
...Maybe even Northeasterners are starting to lean in a free-market direction...
...Bill Simon didn't lose because he was a conservative, but because there were so many problems with his campaign...
...November's GOP blowout sent us back to Club co-founder and president Steve Moore for an update...
...We do not like the professional political class...
...T hat's the war cry of the Club for Growth—the tax-cutting, free-trading, social security-privatizing conscience of the Republican party...
...So to answer your question, we come out of this new campaign law smelling like a rose, even though John McCain keeps touting this as a way of putting groups like the Club for Growth out of business...
...You're a rabble-rouser...
...Moore and the Club's strategists direct members' contributions to the most free-market-oriented candidates in tight, but winnable races...
...That is excellent news...
...It's nuts...
...Even the White House is saying that jobs, health care, and corporate reform are at the top of the agenda—calling FDR...
...That's a really good question...
...Their demands on Washington are: `Give us more and more and more.' They have become the new welfare state, and given the size and political clout of this constituency, it's very dangerous...
...A lot of people are talking about this election as a watershed .. . For better or for worse, this is now George W. Bush's party...
...What would be numbers one, two, and three on your Christmas wish list...
...John Warner and Rep...
...That's fantasy...
...If you do that, you'll cut the tax penalty for businesses to hire new workers at the same time as you put more money into the hands of consumers and workers, so they can spend it...
...didates won eighteen out of twenty races...
...If we're losing 90 percent of the black vote, we have to pick up Latinos, and I think we may have found a formula to do so...
...The thing that scares me is I am afraid that he's the most conservative person in his administration...
...It would be the cherry on top of the sundae if we could defeat McCain...
...The White House is saying, 'We'll make the 2001 tax cut permanent'—is that really enough to turn the economy around...
...the stock market has been sliding...
...My rule has always been that when Republicans move to the middle, they lose...
...Sununu will not just vote right, he'll champion the right ideas...
...Put another way, three times as many people who went to the polls in November 2002 were investors than were union members...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR talked with Moore by telephone from the Club's K Street headquarters...
...It probably isn't too smart to give that away, but one of the guys who should certainly be on notice is [Rep...
...The counter-argument is that as 34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002 'Big business by and large is not an advocate of free markets and capitalism.' we grow the government, we make more and more people dependent on it, until we get a majority dependency class...
...If Bush is smart, he'll use this election to have the honeymoon he never had—he can push through a lot of historic legislation, very much the way Republicans did in 1995, when we passed the capital-gains cut, welfare reform, and an historic farm restructuring system...
...It beats gridlock . The Democrats have evidently made a decision to move to the left, endorsing people like Nancy Pelosi for minority leader...
...But the Club's real specialty is taking on incumbents, no...
...We actually cut the budget, for the first time since 1981...
...We're estimating that it could have been as high as two out of three voters this year...
...How about Hispanics—any light there for the GOP...
...A zero rate is ideal, but I'd take 10 percent...
...The cancer in our political system right now is not big money—it's that it is virtually impossible to defeat an incumbent...
...It was a big victory for Bush and the Republicans, but it was also a big victory for pro-growth causes...
...We're now nine-and-three lifetime against EMILY's List...
...Lord knows we need that—without Phil Gramm, Republicans in the Senate could just be lost in the wilderness...
...To give you one example, in Bergen County, New Jersey—a congressional district where the conventional wisdom for the last twenty years has been that you can't win there as a conservative—the party establishment just moaned when the Club for Growth helped Scott Garrett win the GOP primary...
...Because they understand that it's going to benefit the upstart company that will compete with them...
...Karl Rove...
...And he had an exceptional voting record in the House, where he was on the budget committee...
...He's got about 60 percent approval with Democrat voters and about 40 percent with Republicans...
...But the rules are fairly tight in Arizona, which works to our advantage...
...I'm generally in favor of anything that will make it easier to defeat incumbents...
...And it could really and truly bankrupt this country...
...Well, is California necessary now for the GOP...
...And meanwhile "moderate" Republican candidates in the district—people running for things like county supervisor—had a horrible night...
...He could be our priority IA in the 2004 primaries...
...Starting with people like Robert Rubin and Jon Corzine...
...Like Phil Gramm, he gets it...
...And Sen...
...It's almost as if he never met a government program he likes...
...What they really care about is that that social security check and those Medicare payments are made on a timely basis...
...Is the idea that those aren't "loser" issues getting through to the larger GOP...
...he can articulate the free-market message...
...The fact that Democrats have moved toward even more insane positions makes me worry that the Republicans will simply try to occupy the mushy middle...
...That's why I am such a huge fan of term limits...
...We can't have another two years of stampeding federal spending...
...Well, it's going to be paid for by their grandchildren...
...Democrats are talking about cutting payroll taxes on the first $15,000 or $20,000 of income...
...The New York Times recently quoted an unnamed White House official saying "it's going to take a long time to build political support for an overhaul of the tax code...
...That put the Club for Growth in bed with environmentalists .. . We actually reached out to the environmental groups, to try to have a left-right coalition, but there wasn't anything there...
...Did anyone notice the nearly 50 percent vote in Massachusetts for abolishing the state income tax...
...when Democrats run for the middle, they win...
...It's a little early to tell...
...We had great success in open seats, making sure we get the best person in, which is the other part of the Club's bread and butter...
...It got no press coverage...
...Bush has the opportunity to lead that way...
...They're not going to bat any-where near a thousand...
...The corporate financial responsibility act, the so-called Oxley-Sarbanes bill, included 2,500 new pages of SEC regulations, and it was written in two and a half weeks...
...Giving senior citizens free drug benefits...
...Club for Growth canwon by twenty points...
...Every major party including the Republicans opposed it...
...Trent Lott came out talking about the deficit...
...We have the ability to raise mil-lions of dollars for pro-growth candidates in direct campaign contributions...
...We thought the Democrats lost on November 5? One of the consequences of this election is that the Republican caucus in the House has become a lot more conservative and free-market oriented, thanks in part to the success of Club for Growth candidates...
...How would you translate that...
...Calling Karl Rove .. . One of the problems I've had with the Republican establishment is that they're much more interested in cultivating the Christian coalition or going after these small demographic groups...
...The first words out of House Meiority leader cony Dennis Hastert after the election were "health care...
...Consider senior citizens: here we are with an economy that's on the rocks...
...What are you going to do for the investors who are the heart and soul of your party...
...It wasn't just a good night for Republicans—it was a good night for conservative, free-market Reaganite Republicans...
Vol. 35 • November 2002 • No. 6
