CLASS WARFARE IN THE GOP
BROOKS, DAVID
CLASS WARFARE IN THE GOP by David Brooks Ames, Iowa There's a specter haunting the Republican party, the specter of class warfare. Besides its normal ideological divides, the GOP is now split...
...In years past, Republican voters haven't been too put off by big-spending campaigns...
...And there were hundreds of balloons that fell from the floor...
...Dole's is the most anodyne campaign in political history, having drawn her campaign theme—"I say what I mean and I mean what I say"—from Popeye...
...The Republican party of the 1990s has a deep vein of populism running through it...
...There was a VIP tent nearby, perhaps because the handsome, polished Bush supporters are the kind of people who enter every event through a VIP tent...
...Each of the campaigns at the Ames Straw Poll had a little hospitality area, and the atmosphere there said a lot about the campaign...
...And Forbes did suffer a form of divine retribution for his over-the-top production values...
...The media brigades enjoyed Forbes's comeuppance...
...the zillionaire Princeton grad spends much of his speech railing against the elites...
...There were blasting horns...
...There was the air conditioned tent with the French doors...
...The Have-Nots rail against the system that makes life so cushy for the sons of wealth and privilege...
...I can give you 91 positions I've taken," Bush declared in Iowa...
...One Army veteran pulled me aside at a rally and told me that he was a contrarian who was fed up with the whole GOP establishment...
...Hatch, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has been in the Senate since about the 19th century...
...Steve Forbes's anti-elitist rhetoric dries up when it comes to discussing how this campaign is being run...
...Lamar Alexander's felt like the spring picnic for a prospering midsize company...
...Some campaigns just had their supporters stand up and cheer...
...Already one sees the candidates falling into the rhetoric that the class war has assigned them...
...And Forbes plays along with that mindset...
...So the first half of his remarks were inaudible, and Forbes stood up there at the podium looking disconcerted...
...If support at the straw poll had been measured by the pound, Buchanan would have won...
...I could just imagine you media types sitting there with big smiles across your faces," one Forbes aide remarked after the balloon fiasco...
...It can get kind of absurd...
...There were loud indoor fireworks...
...Never again will we let big money or the Beltway elites tell us who we should nominate for president of the United States," Buchanan roared...
...The Gary Bauer area felt like a Christian rock concert, and Alan Keyes's tent was like a meeting of 12th century crusaders readying to go out and massacre some Saracens...
...When his hundreds of balloons hit the floor his supporters began stomping on them...
...the Moon bounce, hot air balloons, and climbing equipment for the kids...
...As the Iowa race proceeded, the underfunded candidates crusaded more vociferously against the way the campaign is run than against each other or the Democrats...
...Good guess...
...David Brooks is a senior editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...But Forbes's area stood out...
...It should be about raising values," Dan Quayle declared to the Ames crowd...
...While striding across the Iowa State Fairgrounds, I listened to Orrin Hatch deliver a long tirade against the establishment...
...This campaign should not be about raising money...
...Instead, it is Steve Forbes, whose campaign is spending money like a nouveau riche pool-installer on a Vegas spree...
...Lamar Alexander was practically apoplectic before his classy withdrawal...
...The Forbes supporters were each given a goody bag when they registered...
...There were FORBES CLAIMS TO BE AN ANTI-POLITICIAN, BUT THERE ISN'T A SINGLE TACKY POLITICAL CLICHE HIS CAMPAIGN HAS NOT ADOPTED...
...It was nice and genial, and kind of sedate...
...Forbes claims to be an anti-establishment candidate, but he's running like he's Microsoft...
...Forbes claims to be an anti-politician, but there isn't a single tacky political cliché that his campaign has not adopted...
...Pat Buchanan's felt like a truck stop...
...A reporter at NPR who makes $45,000 a year is member of the Washington elite, but a motel magnate worth $450 million is a member of an oppressed caste—forever hassled by bureaucrats and the IRS...
...Sensing this, the Bauer and Buchanan people started popping the balloons that had fallen at their feet...
...His Teamster supporters had parked their rigs all around, and there were more hefty tattooed men with biker beards than you see at the average Republican gathering...
...To register his protest he was going to vote for Elizabeth Dole...
...As Jacob Weisberg of Slate remarked, it looked like a birthday party Richie Rich would throw for himself...
...Besides its normal ideological divides, the GOP is now split between the Haves and the Have-Nots...
...And the glitzy spending continued inside the arena, where the speeches and voting took place...
...The Bush area was nice, but nothing fancy...
...But the Forbes campaign put on a light show that flashed the candidate's name around the hall...
...He's an establishment candidate running as an establishment candidate...
...After all, in the Republican mindset people with money are victims more than oppressors...
...But this year the gap between rich and poor candidates is so obvious one senses a growing resentment in GOP ranks against the Marie Antoinettes of the campaign trail...
...There's a natural impulse to buck whoever seems rich and settled...
...Somewhere it is written that a camel will sooner pass through the eye of a needle than a conspicuous consumer will enter the White House...
...There's probably room in this race for two more candidates: an establishment backup in case Bush falters and a Have-Not conservative who is anti-establishment through and through...
...The Bush campaign brought in some teenagers to rush toward the stage and issue peppy but polite cheers of encouragement...
...The Have-Nots arrive alone in a van, serving pretzels and popcorn at their sparsely attended dinnertime rallies...
...Bush's campaign is at least consistent...
...Nobody could hear the first part of his speech because of the popping balloons...
...The Haves arrive at an event in big caravans with massive batches of campaign paraphernalia...
...The Haves look upon the inequality as the benign arrangement set up by a benevolent God...
...The ultimate Have is not George W. Bush, the establishment scion...
...The graveyards of Iowa are filled with favorites," Alexander exclaimed incoherently...
...The Haves—George W. Bush and Steve Forbes—glide through the campaign season in Mercedes-like comfort, while the Have-Nots—nearly everybody else— bounce around in the equivalent of secondhand Ford Escorts...
...Each candidate was given three minutes for a floor demonstration...
...His campaign has plenty of dough but tends to spend it in a restrained manner, as befits someone with a long WASP lineage...
Vol. 4 • August 1999 • No. 47
