THE MEANING OF THE TOBACCO VICTORY
THE MEANING OF THE TOBACCO VICTORY Republican senator John Ashcroft of Missouri remembers the momentum behind the tobacco bill last spring. Nearly everyone—that is, nearly everyone in Beltway...
...Wirthlin doesn’t give his respondents the option of answering “moderate...
...It’s time to prove him right...
...His approval rating fell from 71 percent in February, to 65 percent in late March, to 59 percent in the first week of June...
...And among likely voters, there’s now a 48-44 percent Republican advantage...
...We don’t give congressional Republicans (except Ashcroft and DeLay) much credit for acting as they did for the right reason...
...Senate passage, Ashcroft was told, was “inevitable...
...Now it’s down to 46-44 Democratic...
...But Republicans have a tough time understanding this...
...Take the latest national survey by the Pew Research Center, which is hardly a right-wing outfit...
...Later, and hesitantly, a smattering of Republicans took to the Senate floor to undercut the bill without opposing it outright...
...And of course there was a bonus from acting this way in the tobacco fight: Republicans blocked the most egregious piece of liberal legislation in years...
...They needn’t have worried...
...Rather, the lesson from snuffing out the tobacco bill is that when Republicans are bold, confrontational, and conservative, they strengthen themselves politically...
...We don’t think so...
...Since March, when Republicans began taking a more confrontational approach, both toward Clinton and on policy issues, two things have happened: Public approval of President Clinton has slipped, and support for congressional Republicans has grown...
...On taxes, House speaker Newt Gingrich has gone from initially agreeing with Clinton to use the budget surplus to bail out Social Security to advocating a $100 billion tax cut...
...That’s why Republicans usually do better when the choice presented to the voters is an ideological one, conservative versus liberal, rather than a merely partisan one, Republican versus Democrat...
...Take up partial- birth abortion and school choice...
...Finally last week, despite lingering fears that their action might backfire, most GOP senators joined to kill the bill...
...When Gary Bauer and others leaned on them to deal with religious persecution and other human-rights abuses in China, they responded...
...We’re not a majority party for nothing,” Ashcroft says...
...Republicans have done a lot more than merely oppose the tobacco bill...
...Polls bear out the rewards of GOP assertiveness...
...As they have for years, Americans say they are conservative...
...Eliminate the marriage penalty or pass an across-theboard reduction in individual tax rates...
...What they fail to understand is that America remains a deeply conservative country...
...Yet, alone among the 20 members of the Senate Commerce Committee, Ashcroft took a chance and voted against the bill, which was sponsored by GOP senator John McCain of Arizona, approved by Senate majority leader Trent Lott, and promoted by the Clinton White House...
...When the poll numbers on tobacco legislation tanked, they moved...
...Yet the backlash hasn’t come...
...For Republicans, the so-called generic number— Do you intend to vote for a Democrat or a Republican in this fall’s election?—has turned sharply in their direction...
...But however they got there, Republicans now find themselves in an enviable position...
...Republicans, beginning with Ashcroft and House whip Tom DeLay, have also attacked Clinton for stonewalling and lack of accountability in the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal...
...Rewrite the proposed patient’s bill of rights so it’s not a backdoor step toward national health care...
...Last week’s Wirthlin poll had it at 58-33, conservative over liberal...
...In March, Democrats led 52-40 percent...
...Consider the question pollster Richard Wirthlin has been asking for decades: In politics today, do you consider yourself to be a liberal or a conservative on most issues...
...It was largely the failure of their earlier strategy of cooperation—a failure manifested both in poor polls and grass-roots dissatisfaction— that prompted them to be more confrontational and conservative...
...This is why his greatest achievements are conservative ones: a balanced budget, welfare reform, perhaps partial privatization of Social Security next year...
...No backlash— indeed, Democratic senators are scrambling to show they’re for cutting taxes, too...
...This was said to be a certain loser for Republicans, who’d been seen as viciously partisan in piling on a popular president...
...Party identification, on the other hand, is about evenly split...
...Clinton at times understands it well...
...When James Dobson of Focus on the Family marched on Washington and demanded attention to social issues, they began taking up the agenda of social conservatives...
...True, the press reaction to the defeat of the McCain bill was that Republicans had put themselves in harm’s way for the congressional elections this November and might even lose control of the House...
...Clinton’s standing...
...And keep the tobacco bill from rising again...
...Clinton, for instance, was supposed to own the education issue...
...Now the president finds himself in the perilous position of vetoing the popular education IRAs fashioned by GOP senator Paul Coverdell...
...In other words, Republicans benefit when they act exactly the way the media, liberals, and the Washington establishment say they shouldn’t...
...So the agenda for the rest of 1998 is clear: Confront Clinton and the Democrats, push conservative issues, and don’t be timid...
...Nearly everyone—that is, nearly everyone in Beltway political and media circles— insisted there was a “tidal wave” of popular support for the measure, so much that “it could not be restrained...
...They know, or at least should know, what works politically...
...The sad truth is that many Republicans are scared of being conservative...
...Instead, Republicans rejected his education program and passed their own, without prompting a political backlash...
...Return this year’s surplus to working Americans in tax cuts or personal-investment accounts...
...Confront the administration on its weak China policy and its insufficient defense spending...
Vol. 3 • June 1998 • No. 41
