Posted on 11/04/2004 5:39:01 AM PST by OESY
...Mr. Bush... has called... for personal retirement accounts in Social Security. His opponent John Kerry, the darling of the self-regarding intelligentsia, called for the brain-dead policy of no change in a Social Security regime that any sensible person understands is in the long run unsustainable. Mr. Bush wants something better. Mr. Bush has also called for an expansion of market-based health-care reforms like health savings accounts. And he has called, in exceedingly vague terms, for broad-based tax reforms, freeing up savings from taxes to encourage investment and wealth accumulation.
...Mr. Bush... has risked giving his policy proposals too little political oomph to get them passed through Congress. Risk-averse House Republicans would rather avoid Social Security changes and... Medicare bill that included a modest health-savings-account provision.
Let us hope that Mr. Bush and his chief political strategist Karl Rove have as shrewd a strategy, and as steely tactics, as they employed in winning this election against the opposition of the media elite -- and, incidentally, of John Kerry and the Democrats. They will need the help of Bill Thomas, whose committee has jurisdiction over these issues, and who bids fair in his last two years as Ways and Means Chairman to play as crucial a role as Vermont Sen. Justin Morrill, another obscure legislator from a back corner of America, did on the land grant college law that bears his name and the homestead act. Re-elected presidents have their largest supply of political capital in the year or two after their re-elections. George W. Bush needs to use his political capital skillfully and shrewdly, and with the same coolness of purpose, that he employed in his campaign, if he is to reshape America in the spirit of his times as Lincoln and Roosevelt did in theirs.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Very good Mr. Barone. (I'm a big fan, BTW. Barone shows us what history majors are supposed to do!)
This is a golden opportunity for Republicans. Bush is not going to be your average Lame Duck President. He is leaving politics in 4 years thus, he has NO political agenda to fear. Hopefully, at the end of his presidency, he can increase our numbers in both the Senate and Congress.
I am really excited. And don't even get me started on the Supreme Court!
Its the 3rd term the Gipper never got.
1) Get rid of Arlen Spector in the Judicial commitee.
2) Change cloture rules in Senate and wipe out RAT fillibustering.
3) Install conservative judges.
4) Install conservative judges.
5) Install conservative judges.
6) Install conservative judges.
7) Install conservative judges.
8) Install conservative judges.
9) Install conservative judges.
10) Repeat steps 3-9 as needed.
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