-Caveat Lector- >From IntellectualCapital.CoM http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue192/item3199.asp The Right Bush by Ed Kilgore Thursday, April 01, 1999 Comments: 227 posts A former vice president of the United States. A conservative U.S. senator who is a war hero and a media darling. A 1996 candidate with big sacks of cash and a message slavishly devoted to every pet cause of economic and social conservatives. Another 1996 candidate who has spent more than four years virtually living in Iowa and New Hampshire. Still another 1996 candidate with universal name ID and a devoted national following of angry right-wing populists. A Christian right leader with a gold-plated mailing list of true believers. A genial young House leader who can credibly claim to have balanced the federal budget. A former Cabinet member with a famous name who could close or even reverse the dreaded "gender gap." It's all about George By any measure, this is a Republican field of presidential candidates that is broad if not terribly deep. But at present, they are all chopped liver. Does George W. have what it takes? The prohibitive front-runner for 2000 is a candidate who is just beginning his second term as governor of a state where governors wield little real power. His main first-term initiative -- a tax-reform scheme -- went down in flames. He is not identified with advocacy of any particular issue or cause, and can boast no unique accomplishments. (In a puff piece selling him to conservatives, Robert Novak, the dean of right-wing columnists, called him a "blank page when it comes to foreign and much of national policy."). Even his most avid promoters do not claim that he is a brilliant or especially charismatic man. Until election night in 1994, when his brother, Jeb, lost while he won, George W. Bush was reportedly the second choice for the dynastic succession in his own family. Yet hordes of GOP congressmen have begged him to run. Most of his Republican gubernatorial colleagues have signed on. British Tory leader William Hague has made a pilgrimage to Austin to discuss how conservatives can respond to the "Third Way" politics of Bill Clinton's New Democrats and Tony Blair's New Labor. The Washington "pundits' primary" of infallible insiders is all but over, with the focus shifting to a Bush-Gore general election. Most remarkably, key opinion-leaders for the dominant conservative wing of the GOP -- famously suspicious of the policy views of Republican politicians, especially those named Bush -- are all but fawning over the ideologically anodyne governor. The conventional gospel Some examples of their self-seduction: Novak, keeper of the flickering flame of the supply-side wing of the conservative movement, startled many readers with a Feb. 22, 1999 piece flacking Bush's candidacy and vouching for the governor's right-wing credentials. In an interesting act of imputed parricide, Novak stressed that Bush's policy advisers were not Bushies, but Reaganites. Dealing with a particular fear of conservatives, Novak let it be known that Bush The Younger had hung out a "not wanted" sign for former Office of Management and Budget Director Richard Darman, blamed for convincing President Bush to violate his "read my lips" pledge on taxes. He concluded that George W.'s "brain trust" suggested "his administration would be to the right not only of his father's, but of Reagan's." In the March 22, 1999, issue of The Weekly Standard, Executive Editor Fred Barnes penned a cover article ("The Gospel According To George W. Bush") that goes to inordinate lengths in reassuring Christian conservatives that the Texas governor is one of them. Barnes dwells lovingly on Bush's fairly recent "spiritual awakening." He documents through the testimony of friends that it was a genuine turning point in Bush's life, but is careful to avoid any suggestion of the showy emotionalism that discomfits more secular-minded conservatives. The article also addresses in great detail the possible Achilles Heel of the Bush candidacy: rumors about his pre-spiritual-awakening personal behavior. According to Barnes, there is nothing lurking in the gubernatorial closet other than some frat-boy hi-jinks at Yale and a now-abandoned habit of taking a second highball before dinner. In a rare pronouncement on policy, Bush recently let it be known that he no longer favored aggressive action (e.g., a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution, or overt attacks on Roe v. Wade) to outlaw most abortions, preferring incremental initiatives such as bans on "partial-birth" abortions and a long-range effort to change public opinion. The Human Life Amendment has been advocated in the last five Republican platforms, and Bob Dole got himself into a world of trouble with conservatives in 1996 for suggesting the party was out of touch with public opinion on abortion. You might expect howls of outrage from a similar, and perhaps even more provocative, statement on abortion by the front-runner for 2000. Yet no less an authority than Pat Robertson immediately came to Bush's defense. Just as tellingly, the official organ of the conservative movement, National Review, published an editorial criticizing Bush not for infidelity to the Cause, but for a tactical mistake that his GOP rivals might exploit. Talk about praising with faint damn! It's the polls, stupid! This conservative protectiveness toward Bush is all the more remarkable if you recall the almost unanimous post-election "spin" of the right after last November's debacle: Republicans lost because they were not conveying a sufficiently clear and consistent conservative message. That analysis would hardly suggest going with the squishy Bush message of "compassionate conservatism." Indeed, if clarity and consistency are the key, conservatives should be gravitating to the candidacy of Steve Forbes, who conveys the right's full message with the trance-like passivity of a New Age channeler. In fact, it appears the reason for the Bush boom on the right has little to do with his record or his character: It's the polls, stupid! The residual effect of the right's failed impeachment effort has been to scare the bejeezus out of them. This is not so much because Clinton continues to hold office, but because public support for his policies is as high today as it was when Monica Lewinsky's vacuous smile first graced the nation's airwaves. This simple fact called into question the most deeply held political premises of the conservative movement, especially their contemptuous view that the New Democrat movement Clinton led was a Potemkin Village of marketing slogans that would collapse at the first real adverse pressure. Clinton's 1996 re-election could arguably be dismissed due to Bob Dole's barely breathing campaign or shady Democratic cash. But the stubborn support for Clinton's policies through a solid year of calamitous publicity and conservative moral thunder had to make conservatives wonder if the same public might elect Al Gore in 2000. And so, the early polls showing George W. leading Eagle Scout Al by double digits -- and even beating him among Hispanics! -- have seemed an answer to a prayer. Like many liberal Democrats in 1992 whose lust for office convinced them to go along with Clinton's candidacy even though they disliked much of what he said, today's conservatives appear ready to suppress their doubts and even ignore adverse evidence to go along with a possible winner. Ah, but what about Dan and Steve and the two Johns and Liddy and Pat and Gary and Lamar (!)? Each of them knows that the only route to success is to smoke out Bush on every controversial issue and challenge his fragile claim on movement conservative loyalty. Each of them also knows that forcing George W. to take firm positions will either undermine his conservative support, or dissipate the non-threatening, centrist image that sustains his showing in general-election polls, which in turn is the source of his conservative support. Before it is all over, Governor Bush will either earn his reputation as a political savior, or the right will come to regret its early adoption of his candidacy. Ed Kilgore is the policy director of the Democratic Leadership Council. He is also a contributing editor of IntellectualCapital.com. BushWatch is here: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3750/bush.htm Jeb Bush: Republicrat in Training? by Tim Nickens Thursday, February 11, 1999 Comments: 63 posts They are bound by political party yet separated by so much distance and style it seems impossible they are related. In this grim winter of impeachment, Republicans in Congress are adrift. They have no charismatic leader and no agenda to sell to voters. Their poll numbers are plummeting as they seek a way out of the Senate trial of a Democratic president whose approval ratings have never been higher. In the Sunshine State, the outlook could not be brighter for another Republican, Gov. Jeb Bush. During his first month in office, he has charted a path that could serve as a national road map for the GOP to rebound before the 2000 election. The environmental governor The new Florida governor, who is adored by conservatives, has reassured moderates and even won support from some Democrats by borrowing a few pages from President Clinton's playbook. Like the Democrat in the White House, the Republican in the governor's mansion has embraced some of his political opponents' most appealing positions and reshaped them into his own initiatives. Gov. Jeb Bush: Learning from past mistakes Exhibit A: the environment, an area Bush ignored in his unsuccessful campaign for governor in 1994. Democrats often accuse Republicans of being more interested in building shopping centers than in preserving endangered lands. But Bush, a former real-estate developer, has appointed men with solid environmental credentials to run the state's regulatory agency and to oversee the Everglades restoration. The governor is determined to fulfill a campaign pledge to extend Preservation 2000, the nation's most aggressive effort to use public money to buy sensitive lands and protect them from development. Easing concerns about campaign contributions from oil companies, Bush also sent a letter to Commerce Secretary William Daley to reaffirm the state's opposition to offshore drilling. Similarly, Bush has pledged to dramatically increase spending on social services, whose staunchest advocates have been Democrats. His proposed state budget includes money to hire 300 additional child-protection workers, cover 95,000 more children with subsidized health insurance and eliminate the waiting list for community care programs for the elderly. Last month, Bush even made a dramatic personal appearance in a Fort Lauderdale courtroom, personally asking a state judge for six more months to repair a tattered foster-care system that he has pledged to repair. But Bush's most inspired plan calls for plowing $1.1 billion from Florida's $13 billion tobacco settlement into an endowment. He would name the endowment after Lawton Chiles, the late Democratic governor who died Dec. 12. Chiles was the driving force behind Florida's lawsuit against the tobacco industry, and interest from the endowment would be spent on programs for children and the elderly. "It's almost like there are some Republicrats," said state Senate Minority Leader Buddy Dyer, an Orlando Democrat. "It's a little difficult to tell the Republicans from the Democrats." Tax cuts and more education money The political climate Bush has created in Tallahassee is in stark contrast to the poisonous atmosphere in Washington, where the impeachment trial has hardened partisan lines. "I don't have any confidence in anything happening in Washington on major policy for the next several years," Bush said recently. While Bush and Republican congressional leaders are all calling for tax cuts, the prospects for a state tax cut in Florida are better than the outlook for sweeping federal tax cuts. In Washington, Clinton once again has backed Republicans into a corner by demanding that most of the budget surplus be used to help save Social Security. He did not mention tax cuts in his State of the Union address. The none-too-subtle message: The president wants to save the country's most popular entitlement program, while the Republicans want to give tax breaks to big business and their wealthy friends. In Florida, Bush has the luxury of a Republican-controlled Legislature and is trying a different approach. He wants to cut taxes by a record $1.2 billion and would reduce the school property tax rate, provide a one-time $50 credit on utility bills, eliminate the tax on accounts receivable, and lower taxes on business property and stocks and bonds. At the same time, the governor wants to raise education spending by nearly $650 million as part of an overhaul that includes assigning a letter grade to every school based on student performance. Bush is running into some turbulence. The head of the state's oldest teachers' union suggested that the governor has his numbers reversed and that $1.2 billion should go to schools, with the tax cut half that much. But the governor is unbowed. "There are not a whole lot of people out there saying we shouldn't cut taxes," he said. "We can fund the priorities of this state." With his specific plans for education and tax cuts, Bush is in a much better position than his fellow Republicans in Washington. His interest in education is genuine, so Democrats cannot accuse him of ignoring the state's top concern. The debate when the annual legislative session starts March 2 will not be whether education spending will rise and taxes will be cut but by how much. "They're going to be competing, no doubt about it," House Speaker John Thrasher said. Making a bipartisan impression Of course, Bush will face other challenges as he navigates through his first legislative session. Democrats will hammer at his proposal to offer limited vouchers for private tuition to the students of failing schools. Conservative Republicans will fight for legislation calling for school prayer and additional restrictions on abortion -- issues Bush tried hard to avoid during the campaign. But so far, Bush has impressed both Republicans and Democrats for a detailed agenda that appeals to moderates as well as conservatives -- a prescription that Republicans in Washington have been unable to write. "He obviously wants to make a good first impression," said Attorney General Bob Butterworth, a Democrat who said he has deciphered Bush's message. "We are not like the national party. We are not like Washington." Tim Nickens is the political editor of the St. Petersburg Times in Florida. He writes regularly on Florida politics for IntellectualCapital.com. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. -Thomas Huxley + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. 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