BULLISH ON 2008
Norquist, Grover G.
1 8 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 HERE ARE FOUR REASONS for Republicans to approach November 2008 with optimism. First, much of the case for continued Democrat...
...Nixon wanted to leave...
...Social conservatives watched as Clinton experimented with gays in the military and moves towards women in combat...
...In 2007, appropriations Chairman Obey was caught with38,000secretearmarks.PelosiandReidstripped all earmark reform out of their "ethics" legislation...
...From planet Earth it is not easy to see what makes her "moderate...
...Sarkozy simply pointed out without rancor or nastiness that he was not his predecessor but running as the candidate for change...
...Clinton ran promising to reduce taxes on working Americans and provide health care to those without...
...In 2008 we will be "leaving" Iraq...
...He drew down the number of troops from 500,000 to below 100,000 by November 1972...
...AndwhataboutIraq,thebleedingelephantinthe room in 2006...
...Like the children's book character Amelia Bedelia,Republicanslearnedin1984thatalltheyhad to do was get the Republican nomination and they were likely to win in 1986, a year the GOP lost five House seats and eight Senate seats...
...There is not a part of the Reagan coalition, the center-right coalition, that has not been explicitly threatened on its vote-moving issue by the Democrats in 2007...
...And for those businesses already unionized the Democrats invented what tort reform expert Victor Schwartz has named "trial lawyer earmarks"--small tweakshiddeninappropriationsbillsthatwouldstrip businesses of any real defense against various tort lawyer predations...
...B U L L I S H O N 2 0 0 8 2 0 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 Thereisadaggerdrawnandpointedat allbusinessmenandwomen,taxpayers, gunowners,socialconservatives,and thoseconcernedwithrunaway governmentspending...
...Leaving trumps surrendering...
...Republicans BY GROVER G. NORQUIST TThere are reasons to be optimistic...
...Only secondtier Democrats even filed for the nomination in 1992 and one of them--a certain Bill Clinton--won the nomination and downed the giant...
...Their budgetpromisedtoendtheBushtaxcuts--a$2.2trilliontaxhikebeginningin2011...
...Andinthespringof2007theFoxandtheCathad againconvincedPinocchiotothreatenallgunowners with the repeal of the Tiahrt Amendment that stoppedthefederalgovernmentfrommaking lists of all gun owners--lists that gun control groupsboastedwouldonedaybeusedtoconfiscate all American rifles and pistols...
...In2006BushadvocatednochangeinIraq.Allthe Democratshadtodowasstandtothesideandsuggest"thisdoesnotseemtobeworkingaswellasonemight like...
...Kissing babies...
...Small ball...
...She was voting for the defense bill...
...Nixon after all had won in 1968 with a "secret plan...
...AndtheSouthernpopulistEdwards alsocontestedfortheliberallabel...
...And after a few months of bludgeoning Obama senseless she will turn to the cameras, blood spattered, and standing stage left and wonder why she is seen as mean-spirited and left-wing...
...BULLISH ON 2008 learned from 1986's losses and the crash of 1987 that 1988wouldbeaDemocratyearandBushwaselected with GOP gains in the House and Senate...
...Ambitious Repub-licans everywhere decided that they should catch this waveandtheyfiledtorunforofficein1982.Goodsolid candidates ran into a lousy political year driven by Democrat redistricting and a recession...
...Legislation was proposed that might have put homeschoolers under federal regulatory control...
...America thought he was going to change Washington...
...She would have her picture taken with the troops, the police, and firemen...
...Then we all knew that the Republicansweredestinedtogovernindefinitelyand anyone we ran for president would beat the discredited Clinton...
...And on November 8, 1994, they remembered to show up and vote...
...ClintonandtheDemocratsraisedtaxesin1993and discussed other possible tax hikes in the future...
...Bush who threw Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait...
...Not gone...
...Along came Barack Obama and he ascended liberal hill while Hillary dallied over in right-wingville...
...O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 2 1 AlongcameBarackObamaandhe ascendedliberalhillwhileHillary dalliedoverinright-wingville...
...But not everyone was in on the joke...
...So ambitious youngRepublicansknewtostayofftheballotin1984,a year in which Reagan's landslide would have brought manystrongercandidatesacrossthefinishline...
...THE THIRD REASON for optimism is Hillary Clinton...
...something...
...Her Stalinist allies knew her heart...
...IN 2007 THE DEMOCRATS are reading off the same playbook evidently entitled, "Overreach: Or How toThreatentheOtherTeamatAllOpportunities...
...Suggesting abortionsaresometimesunpleasant.Drawingupshort ofgaymarriage.Shehadperhapsdefected...
...The Hyde Amendment was threatened...
...First, they believed their own advertising...
...Closets will be rattled and if there are skeletons let's see them now...
...Nine million more Republicans voted in 1994 than four years earlier in the 1990 offyear election...
...And the Southern populist Edwards also contested for the liberal label...
...True, she hopes to stay ten degrees to the right of Obama to seem "moderate," but as Obama runs leftward Hillary must go farther and farther to the left to catch up...
...Now Hillary has to spend the next six months walking back to the left, and because Edwards and Obama both have real fundraising capacity she will have to take out a baseball bat and drive them from the crest of liberal hill...
...Tax hikes in the energy bill...
...He and Hillaryhadgrand--andundisclosed--planstochange us: Our health care, our views on gays in the military, our place in the world, and our after-tax pay stubs...
...Baking cookies...
...And Schumer of New York reminded every pro-lifer and every Chamber of Commerce businessman that if you care about pro-life issues and/or tort reform, the Democrats promise to oppose judges who are not committedtoabortionondemandandeverydemand of the trial lawyers...
...We will be "winning" and "leaving...
...The MoveOn.org activists and bloggers wonderedwhathadhappenedtotheirtribuneofthemasses...
...True this would have been a nice strategyin2006oreven2004,butbetterlatethannever...
...The fellow who emerges from a Rudy, Romney, Thompson campaign will, by definition, be the one whomostcrediblyrepresentstheReaganRepublican Party and movement, and whose jaw is not glass and whose closet is not scary...
...Bush has promised a series of vetoes of all the Democratbillsthatexceedhisspendinglimitsandallthat raisetaxes.ThisfallwillseeseveralmonthsofDemocrats fighting to spend too much and Bush backed up by 149 RepublicansintheHousewhohavesignedalettercommittingthemtosupportallBushvetoesofoverspending...
...Fourteen days after they took office House Democratspassedtheirfirsttaxhikesince1993.Every "bluedog"or "moderate"votedforthetaxhike.Likea vampire released from a casket, a pederast freed from prison, they couldn't wait...
...One of the costs of Iraq in 2004 and 2006 was that it distracted the White House and the press and allies in talk radio from vote-winning issues and into defense of issues that did not move votes for centerright candidates...
...They couldn'thelpthemselves.Theypassedtaxhikesinthe agriculture bill...
...No self-control...
...Blendingin.ShehadthelongestleashinAmericanpolitics...
...O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 1 9 Spending jumped...
...Democrats won the House and Senate in 2006 and therefore they should also win in 2008...
...The Democrats passed the Brady Bill and the assaultweaponsban,creatingafive-daywaitingperiodtobuyagunandoutlawingrifleswithcoolstufflike bayonet lugs and banana clips...
...If Iraq is not center stage, all the traditional armaments of the GOP coalition come back into play: cutting taxes, fighting trial lawyers, unions, and gun control, defending traditional values...
...This will be her starting point in the campaign in spring2008.Exactlywhatshehadplannedtospenda year avoiding...
...But everyone knew it was just asleep...
...And the Republican strategy was already designed and test-driven successfully in France when Nicolas Sarkozy ran to replace the unpopular and long-serving President Chirac...
...So after the Democrats won the House, Senate, andpresidencyin1992,everyoneknewwewereinfor a generation of Democrat government until the Republicans captured the House and Senate two years later in 1994...
...After losing in 1994 and 1996 and 2000, the Democrats swore they would never ever mess withgun control again...
...Anyone, evidently, but Dole...
...General Petraeus has already announcedthathefeelsthesurgeisworkingandwecan significantly reduce the number of Americans troops occupyingMesopotamiain2008.(Memotoarmchair military experts: There are 27.5 million Iraqis and 31.9 million Afghans...
...Tax and Spend Democrats fight prodigal Republican opponents of same...
...But politics does not quite operate like a sports team where last year's winning team is favored this year...
...No "date certain" that Bush has made clear he rejects...
...G R O V E R G . N O R Q U I S T R...
...Butin2008,ifweare"leaving,"theDemocratswill beforcedbytheiractiviststomovetodemandingimmediatewithdrawal.Thiswilllookalotlikesurrendering...
...BTU taxesonenergy.AValueAddedTaxonallconsumption...
...ON THE REPUBLICAN SIDE, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson will play rock 'em, sock 'em robots for the next six months...
...Midnight basketball was so 1990s...
...In 1992, Clinton ran promising "change...
...Hundreds of thousands of calls came into Congress and the legislation was allowed to die...
...First, much of the case for continued Democrat success is based on inertia...
...They trusted that this was all for show...
...Every part of the Ronald Reagan Republican Party,everymovingpartofthecenter-rightcoalition, felt threatened and under siege...
...Everyone knows that you don't beat an incumbent, and certainly not the George H.W...
...EASON FOUR FOR CHEERFULNESS is that the Republicanstrategyisalreadylaidout...
...Ifoneormorehasaglassjaw,wewillfindthisoutnow beforeitistoolate.NewRule:Macacamomentsmust come before the nomination...
...The United States has 12,000 troops in Afghanistan and 139,000 troops in Iraq...
...Grover G. Norquist is the president of Americans for Tax Reform and author of the forthcoming book, Leave Us Alone (HarperCollins...
...We woke up every morning waiting for another shoe to drop...
...The foregoing history is simply to remind ourselves that inertia is not the force in politics that it is in physics.THE SECOND REASON for Republican optimism is that the Democrats in 2007 and heading into 2008 are making all the same mistakes they made in 1993 and 1994...
...Her original game plan was to spend 2007 looking pleasant and moderate...
...And in a line the Republican nominee can plagiarize, he said, "And that lady over there is a socialist...
...Richard Nixon spent four years "leaving" Vietnam...
...We have seen this before...
...Businessmenwhomighthavethoughttheirinterests had been secured over 12 years of Republican Congressesanditwassafetovotebasedontheirwives' viewsonstem-cellresearchwatchedtheDemocratsin the House vote to allow unionization without secret ballots--the so-called card check legislation that threatenseverysmallbusinessinAmerica...
...Once elected he raised taxes on everyone who used gasoline in their cars and taxed Social Security benefits.ClintonandtheDemocratshikedtheAlternative MinimumTaxto28percent.Theythreatenedtotake away your health care and replace it with...
...Leaving crushed surrendering...
...This was before "earmarks" were famous, but we had "midnight basketball" and other handouts that offended taxpayers...
...McGovern wanted to surrender...
...Sound strategy can require fewer troops...
...There is a dagger drawn and pointed at all businessmen and women, taxpayers, gun owners, social conservatives, and those concerned with runaway government spending...
...Criticism--even without a better plan--defeated "no change...
...In 1980 Ronald Reagan won the presidency, sweeping 35 Republican congressmen and 12 Republican senators into office with him...
...They had, like Pinocchio, finally learned their lesson...
Vol. 40 • October 2007 • No. 8
