THE BUSH CBACK-UP?
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
_9 l u.sh BY R. EIMMETT TYRRELL, JR. ..... 1 ~ IIANK.~; IN PART 11) TIlE I[TTHI;SIVE HEI'OKTA(;E of modern _9 mass media, thanks in part to America's preeminent role in world politics" the...
...The explanation for the conservative ascendancy is that our ideas have proved to be persuasive with growing numbers of Americans, and liberal ideas have declined into mere accumulating angers...
...That said, it remains the duty of conservatives to sound the alarm when a Reagan or a George W. Bush wanders...
...The President's gravest failing is that he has let spending grow...
...Finally, this President has demonstrated an understanding of the value of tax cuts equal to the Gipper's...
...In fact, few areas of Reagan's decision-making were exempt from our dyspepsia...
...If he can get through these mid-term elections with his congressional majorities intact, I would expect him to attempt to make his tax cuts permanent...
...According to Citizens Against Government Waste, 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 2006 R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR...
...parable to the new grand 10.8 ,0.4 strategy the Truman adminis...
...Almost all of these funds enable earmarks and nonentitlement spending...
...This year, the administration is seeking to impose $3.4 billion in new fees: doubling the security surcharge on airline tickets, charging oil and gas companies $4,000 to process drilling permits for federal lands, and fees for federal inspections of meat, poultry, and egg industries...
...The result...
...It has as much at stake as the President...
...And where Congress should be containing Bush administration exuberance on spending, it does nothing...
...He has cut taxes and encouraged growth...
...So too is the President's forthright opposition to abortion, cloning, and stem-cell research (though he has shown concern for the possibilities of science at least in stem-cell research...
...Ronald Reagan...
...columnist George Will was adamant...
...Milton Friedman argues that national elections are usually so close that the Republicans have to snag the support of the two or three percent of the electorate that is low-level Democratic by raising spending...
...There are complicated explanations for this...
...He has a wider range of pressures on him...
...Last August Congress passed the $286.4 billion Transportation Bill with more than 6,000 earmarked projects, ranging from money for a deer avoidance system in upstate New York to dust control programs for rural roads in Arkansas...
...But on the big issues-economic growth, national security, and judicial restraint--the old man was a conservative genius...
...ERHAPS, INSTEAD OF DWELLING o n a single, easy ~ target, it is time to redirect conservative fire away from the President and towards Capitol Hill...
...What is more, the Congress, inasmuch as it is a launching pad for future political leaders, is the future of the Republican Party (along with state government) and the steady drift of this Republican Congress away from conservative-style conviction politics is not reassuring...
...There are the _9 sen.~tional stories that every leader occasions-war, economic I setback, political upheavaland there are the sensational stories that only a leader beset by a mass mr could occasionthe president slept through a late-night aerial battle with Libyan jets, the president fell asleep during late-night phone sex with an intern, the vice president peppered a hunting companion with birdshot on a remote ranch and the White House did not report it promptly to'the networks...
...I heard it during the Nixon administration, of course: but I heard it also during the administration of the conservative president whom we now revere...
...Robert Novak...
...Remembering the Reagan administration's Laodicean defense of the Bork nomination, this President's effort to bring conservatives to the Court has probably been more resolute than the 40th president's...
...Stephen Moore, and Quin H illyer that President George W. Bush is adrift from his conservative b,-L~e...
...But that is a story unto itself...
...And as is clear from my refresher course in the Reagan administration, and from the critical pieces published in this issue about the Bush administration, conservatives are certainly doing their duty...
...As Peter Wallison made clear in our October issue, America has become a conservative country...
...Naturally when a conservative politician becomes president he is going to wander from his conservative base...
...The result...
...In 4.8 4.4 2002's NSS "preemption" was ~.64~ devised for dealing with terror 28~2 strikes against the United ~4 States and its vital interests...
...This horripilation took place toward the very end of the Reagan administration, and we might dismiss it with the thought that in modern times a presidency after a few years wears thin with elites...
...But there is another explanation...
...The Cato Institute reported late last year that during Bush's first term, the increase in federal discretionary spending-all non-entitlement programs--rose by 48.5 percent...
...appointments...
...Again, in the White House there is only one guy who has let us down...
...On Capitol Hill there are hundreds, and unlike the President they are not in their last terms...
...Perhaps it's time for us to chide the solons and the numas on the Hill for their ideological flaccidness...
...In this i,~ue of AmSpec we mayglean from A! Regnery's publisher's note and the pieces of William Rusher...
...In 1947 contain6.4 6o ment was devised for dealing 5.6 ,2 with Soviet Communism...
...This theme of conservative anxiety over the conservative president's actions continued...
...The Hill newspaper recently reported that companies and other special interests spent $1.I6 billion to lobby Congress and federal agencies in the first six months of 2005 alone, a dubious new record...
...This particular news :,'tory is, for wimtever reason, a hardy perennial during conservative presidencies...
...In 1981 it conditioned America for a span of economic growth unsurpassed in world history...
...The president did surround himself with malay unreliable aides...
...Yet the surprising thing about the dissatisfaction that we conservatives voiced during the Reagan administration is that it began within months of his inauguration...
...Moreover it is shortsighted to focus our dissatisfaction on the President...
...The Gipper's conservative critics can take solace that theywere never so far offthe mark as the critics up there in the Kultursmog...
...has plotted "federal nondefense, non interest spending as a percentage of GDP" since early 1952...
...Bill Buckley admonished his old 12 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 2006 friend for abandoning Western Europe to the Red Army...
...They are kindred spirits with the K Street lobbyists...
...If there is a conservative failing, it is our noble, but long-term strategic failure to seed our federal bureaucracy with talent...
...Angelo Codevilla...
...Quarterly Data 3/31/1952 9130/2005 Federal Nondefense, Noninterest Spending as a % of GDP 14.0 13.6 13.2 12.8 12.4 120 11.6 I 1.2 10.8 10.4 I0.0 9.6 9.2 8.8 8.4 8.0 7,6 7,2 6.8 6,4 6.0 5.6 5.2 4.8 4.4 4.0 3.6 3,2 2.8 2.4 2.0 1.6 Federal Soendlne Ex-Defense & Interest = $1713.2 Bi8ion = 13 6% Nominal GDP = $12601.0 Billion had to develop homeland ,4.0 security, special military units '131~ to seek out the enemy before 128 the enemy attacks us at home, 12.4...
...HAVE NOT DISINTERRED THE CONSERVATIVES' criticisms ii!i of President Reagan to belittle them, but to give us !ii a sense of proportion...
...With few exceptions they have drifted from conservative principles...
...Replacing Clintonistas who in the hallways of Washington make it their mission to undercut the President's policies with conservatives should be a priority for this President during his last years in office...
...All of this brings me to the conclusion that though this conservative President has wandered from his base occasionally, it would be very foolish for his base to fall to turn out in this next election...
...He has a larger constituency, and the weight of leadership, particularly in a time when America's leadership is in demand and of necessity, creates imperatives and requirements that cannot be shirked...
...Pennsylvania's Senator Rick Santorum received a 70 rating out of a possible 100 in the National Journa/'s annual voting record survey, placing him closer to Arlen Specter than to Jeff Sessions...
...He has won victories with reform of bankruptcy laws, legislation limiting class action suits, and the Central American Free Trade Agreement...
...The facts of legislative sausage-making are clear: the vast majority of bills that become law do not originate in the White House but on the Hill...
...He has made two solid appointments to the Supreme Court and has a team in place to ensure more fine conservative judicial APRIL 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 13 A BUSH CRACK-UP...
...now rec~-g- l nized as the slayer of the Soviet beast, signed the INF treaty...
...2.0 16 As the memorandum reads, "We will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary to exercise our right of self-defense by (go3o61 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2001) 2005 _9 Copyright 2005 Ned Davis Remrch, I ~ . Further distnb~hon prohibffsd wC~ut prior pe~ission...
...Not that our criticism was unwarranted...
...HILE REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS have been conniving with the K Street lobbyists and spending apolaustically, Bush has taken the lead on a range of issues that make it clear he is as much a conservative as Reagan, albeit the issues of the present are different from those of the post-Jimmy Carter, late-Cold War period...
...After the president unveiled his economic plan to Congress on February 18, 1981, Human Events grumbled that "President Regan's economic package" was "less bold than many of his supporters would have wished...
...Reaganism,' it is becoming increasingly clear, was a one-year phenomenon...
...Congress approved all of those fees with little argument when presented in the administration's annual budget...
...IN PART 11) TIlE I[TTHI;SIVE HEI'OKTA(;E of modern _9 mass media, thanks in part to America's preeminent role in world politics" the chronicle of the American presidency from the Kennedy administration to the I I present is a concatenation of cliffhangers~ From the early 1960s the news from the White House has been news ofone horripilation after another...
...Ned Davis Research, Inc...
...In this President's market-based health-care reforms and Social Security reform we see modern-day conservatism at work...
...is the founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator...
...That is pretty conservative...
...According to the Washington Post, annual fees paid to registered Capitol Hill lobbyists rose from about $1.6 billion in 1999 to $2.1 billion in 2004...
...The song was pret- ml ty much the same as the complaints we hear today, even on the question of government growth...
...APRIL 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 15 d E m Cr .m__ > 63 Z ~6 g co E ~3 (1) c~ Z Q...
...The ratio declined under President Reagan...
...He did fail to cut government growth at a pace that satisfied his most ardent supporters...
...A horripilation that in terms of seriousness ranks about midway between war and the vice president's hunting accident is the news report that the president has lost the support of his base...
...Compounding this failure, the administration enabled Congress's voluptuous spending, by failing to veto a single bill...
...Presidential policy requests are frequently ignored...
...That is more than twice as large as the increase in discretionary spending during Boy Clinton's entire two terms (21.6 percent), and a whisker more than President Lyndon Johnson's entire discretionary spending spree (48.3 percent...
...Perhaps most important, this is a President who restored a respect for public service that was badly stained (if that is the word) by the previous inhabitants of the White House...
...In the coming days, according to sources we speak to on Capitol Hill, both Health Saving Account and Personal Retirement Account programs may become a reality in congressional legislative negotiations, and, if Karl Rove is right, the prescription drug benefit will bring medical costs down by obviating more expensive surgeries and therapies...
...Conservatives must continue to demand more from our politicians but never to despair...
...and a new grand strategy com11.6...
...Writing a couple of days after he had listened to a Van Ciiburn recital and dined with the Gorbachevs and the Reagans, Will lamented: "December 8 will be remembered as the day the Cold War was lost...
...Earmark-fattened appropriations bills are not Bush's creation but the corpulent creations of Congress...
...We questioned his court appointments, his budgets, his cuts in government programs, his response to the Soviet attack on Korean Air Lines 007 (George Will: "The administration is pathetic...
...The President makes clear his conservative principles...
...The consequence of this diligence is not that conservatives have been losing ground, but that we have been gaining ground...
...He is but one politico, and we have hundreds of others on Capitol Hill who are equally worthy of our diatribes...
...In just the past few months, the junior senator from the Keystone State proposed raising the minimum wage, softened his position on the death penalty, saying it should be reserved for only the most dangerous of society's killers, and waffled on making the Bush tax cuts permanent...
...9.6 tration adopted in 1947 for the 9~ Cold War...
...The facts of legislative sausage-making are clear: the vast majority of bills that become law do not originate in the White House but on the Hill...
...It was not just Reagan's putative economic timidity that dissatisfied many of us in 1981...
...In December of 1987 after President Reagan...
...His pursuit of a more conservative judiciary has been steadfast...
...See NDR Dlsclai~r at www ndr corn/copyright html For dala vendor Oisclai~ refer Io wwwndr.com/vendotinfo/ requests for earmarks-almost all of them generated with the help of the K Street crowd-have grown from 1,300 in 1994 to more than 14,000 in 2005...
...For one, we are faced with a terrible war waged by brutes with modern means of destruction but no states for us to attack or treat diplomatically...
...He acx'used the president of being a party to America's "intellectual di.~arnmment...
...Conservatives are now the dominant force in all three branches of the government...
...Capitol Hill Republicans, both legislators and staffers, are not conviction pols...
...Unfortunately the ratio rose five times when Republican were in power (see chart on p. 15...
...Collaborating with Will was Howard Phillips...
...dl Rights R~ed...
...Consider the now famous transportation bill...
...As Grover Norquist is given to saying, "The Team" is winning on all fronts--or at least most fronts...
...In the war against terror Bush has acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country...
...Pronounced the Washington commentariat's most eminent sage, David Broder, at the outset of 1983: "What we are witnessing this January is not the midpoint in the Reagan presidency, but its phase-out...
...We are winning the war on terror and may be having a far more benign influence on the Middle East and Iraq than we now perceive...
...Many of his Republicans in Congress do not...
...The White House had a simple request of Congress-please keep the earmarks to a reasonable number...
...Reading through these manuscripts before forming my own opinion and interviewing other conservatives, l recalled that ! had heard this song before...
...The estimable Bill Rusher questioned the conservative bona tides of our leader's personnel appointments in an article headlined "Is Reagan Ignoring Activists...
...And when its members begin to grumble about how dreadful this Bush is, let them reflect on that other Clinton, waiting in the wings...
...Bush did it with his 8.8 84 National Security Strategy 8.0 ~6 (NSS) memorandum in Sep7.2 ~8 tember 2002...
...Have the President's conservative critics noticed the drift of some of their favorite senators as elections approach...
...For example, last year the administration imposed more than $185 billion in "fees" and "surcharges" on American businesses, the equivalent of about 8 percent of the government's $2.4 trillion budget...
...R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...Reagan had just laid out a tax-cutting strategy that would soon sweep the civilized world...
...who waq less gentlemanly, describing the Old Cowboy as "a useful idiot for Soviet propaganda...
...It declined under three Democrats, presumably when Republicans in Congress kept the heat on Harry Truman, John E Kennedy, and Bill Clinton, whose spending actually never slowed down until the Contract With America rowdies came to power...
...Even his health-care policies may be all right by conservative standards...
...Nonetheless, this administration and this President have accomplished great things...
Vol. 39 • April 2006 • No. 3
