Bush Aims To Forge A GOP Legacy

Washington Post ^ | 1/30/5 | Thomas B. Edsall and John F. Harris

[SmithL]

When President Bush stands before Congress on Wednesday night to deliver his State of the Union address, it is a safe bet that he will not announce that one of his goals is the long-term enfeeblement of the Democratic Party.

But a recurring theme of many items on Bush's second-term domestic agenda is that if enacted, they would weaken political and financial pillars that have propped up Democrats for years, political strategists from both parties say.

Legislation putting caps on civil damage awards, for instance, would choke income to trial lawyers, among the most generous contributors to the Democratic Party.

GOP strategists, likewise, hope that the proposed changes to Social Security can transform a program that has long been identified with the Democrats, creating a generation of new investors who see their interests allied with the Republicans.

Less visible policies also have sharp political overtones. The administration's transformation of civil service rules at federal agencies, for instance, would limit the power and membership of public employee unions -- an important Democratic financial artery.

If the Bush agenda is enacted, "there will be a continued growth in the percentage of Americans who consider themselves Republican, both in terms of self-identified party ID and in terms of their [economic] interests," said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and an operative who speaks regularly with White House senior adviser Karl Rove.

Many Democrats and independent analysts see a methodical strategy at work. They believe the White House has expressly tailored its domestic agenda to maximize hazards for Democrats and tilt the political playing field in the GOP's favor long after this president is out of the White House.

[F16Fighter]

Wow -- mind-boggling!

Your entire post is well worth mentioning AGAIN:

"Here is what Don Feder wrote back in 1992, "After winning as a conservative in 1988, Bush extended an olive branch to his enemies and his middle finger to his erstwhile allies. He signed the quota bill, and all the racial con men were for him this year, weren't they? He initialed the Clean Air Act, and all the environmental wackos were in his corner, weren't they? He signed the Hate Crimes Bill and invited homosexual activists to the White House for the signing, and that crowd clambered aboard his reelection bandwagon, didn't they?

And what did he do for his core constituency from 1988? For evangelicals, he appointed John Frohmayer head of the National Endowment for the Arts and stuck with him through Mapplethorpe and "Piss Christ." His first Supreme Court appointment voted to uphold Roe v. Wade and declare a graduation invocation a violation of the First Amendment.

For fiscal conservatives, he raised taxes, rolled over for congressional spending, re-regulated and gave us the greatest bureaucratic expansion of all time." Regarding conservative votes as an entitlement program got Bush Sr. defeated in 1992."

[Common Tator]

I fear that 2006 could be for the RATS what 94 was for the GOP...

I fear you don't even know what happened in 1994.

Back in the 1970's a man named Ray Bliss was made head of the RNC. He had had success in taking back Ohio from pretty solid Democratic control.

Bliss laid out a plan for taking control of the Federal congress in 1992. The goal was to recruit good candidates for low level political jobs .. such as county commissioner and city councils. By building a farm system the Republicans would be able to develop candidates to win the control of state legislatures and governorships.

If a majority state legislatures and Governorships were in the hands of Republicans, they could UN-gerrymander a majority of states.

For example Nixon, won the presidency in 1972 by the second biggest margin of the 20th century.. yet did not win the house. The house districts were gerrymandered to elect Democrats. Republicans might win big nationally but that would not elect them to the house.

Bliss predicted it would be 1992 before Republicans could hope to remove enough Democratic Gerrymandering to win the house. The Republicn goal was to make as many house districts Republican by 3 or 4 points and possible. They would accomplish that by grouping Democrats into a smaller number of districts that were 70 to 30 Democratic. That is Republicans were planning to gerrymander the house districts in their favor.

They got it done in the 1990 election and redistricting that followed. But the Perot situation kept them from winning the house until 1994.

The big contest was 2000. If the Democrats got control of enough state legislatures and governorships they could gerrymander the house districts so they could win the house in 2002. But that did not happen. In fact the redistricting in 2000 gave the Republicans even more safe seats.

So there is little chance of the Democrats taking the house in 2006.

That is a huge change from 1984 when Reagan won in a landslide yet the Democrats held the house.

It is next to impossible to do a scandal on a president as long as his party holds the house and senate. Had the Democrats had the house during the Clinton Administration there is zero way he could have been impeached.

The key to holding the House, Senate and Presidency is to run Republican candidates that reflect the political positions of a majority of the people who can vote to elect them.

When a party gets too liberal or conservative it loses elections and the nation moves in the direction of their opposition.

People who look at Bush and disagree with his positions are only telling themselves that their view is in the minority.

People on the right and left seem to never figure it out. Our elected officials in the USA are PUBLIC SERVANTS. They are not PUBLIC RULERS.

Elected officials have to understand that they can't afford to think like a ruler. They have to think like a servant. That is any elected official who does not do what a majority of the voters want done, will soon be an ex elected official.

If you don't like what the politicians are doing, get the American people to support what you want done. Only then will the politicians do what you want done.

[stylin19a]

actually, with the scavengers, we hardly need bulk pick-up( couches, appliances etc....) day (it costs extra cost).
smaller furniture\appliances are what they get.
I tossed an older epson printer\bathroom vanity\mirrored closet doors...scavengers took it all.

[RS]

"And I said it was a good thing, but it could have been much better."

So far, I have not heard you say anything good that came out of it. It appears that the best thing to have come out of it is that it happened... the Dems did NOT keep control of Congress.

In the same vein, I tend to believe that had Bush Sr. beaten the Clintons, it would have been a MUCH better thing for the country AND the Conservatives.

[RS]

"By the time we get to the next elections, the MSM will have been completely marginalized."

... and it will be replaced by Blogs ?


I'm still waiting for the paperless office and my flying car they promised me :-)

[F16Fighter]

I assume Rush held fire until the election was over before stating the obvious.

Your point is well taken, though.

The only thing can save the "legacy" of President W. Bush is by his appointments of genuine conservative judges to the Supreme Court -- UNLIKE his NWO-advocate father, who purposely and willfully struck a blow at his own constituency by infecting us with the selection of liberal Davis Souter.

[RFT1]

G H.W Bush was/is nothing more than a WASPy East Coast Republican that controlled the party up till the 60s/70s. Eisenhower was basically their puppet, who appointed not only Earl Warren, but far worse, Bennan, to the supreme court.

[F16Fighter]

I concur.

[LowCountryJoe]

You've proved my point, turd!

[ninenot]

You have a problem with the Sensenbrenner bill?

You like calling people racist?

You have the problems, my man.

[Once-Ler]

Do you recall when the moderator in the last debate mentioned that he received far more letters from Americans on illegal immigration than any other subject?

That only suggests that the fringe right is more vocal and shrill on this issue. It does not reflect popular opinion.

[fallujah-nuker]

Two good things, welfare reform and balanced budget, neither would have happened with the Democrats in control of the house. I doubt that the GOP would have taken the house if Bush Sr. had been reelected. In my own state of Washington the congressional district boundaries did not change between in 1992 and 1994, in those 2 elections the 1992 results were 8D/1R, 1994 results were 6R/3D.

[Southack]

"I fear that 2006 could be for the RATS what 94 was for the GOP..."

That's an absurd fear.

In 1994, Republicans put forth their Contract With America pledge of solid government reform ideas. Compared to the nationalize-healthcare nonsense that Democrats were pushing, the choice in that year for the American public was obvious.

By 2000, Republicans had reversed the state by state Democratic congressional gerrymandering, too. By 2004, Republicans held a considerable voter registration advantage in 255 congressional districts.

Already in 2005, Republicans have gained more registered voters than the Democratic Party...reversing the national status quo that's been around since 1930.

Besides controlling most state governorships, most state legislatures, the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, Republicans *also* control all of the new political ideas.

Democrats have none. Democrats have no new ideas.

Social Security privatization *will* happen. Tort reform will happen. Large scale tax reform will continue to happen. School choice vouchers will happen.

Furthermore, Democrats stand to lose another 3 to 4 Senate seats (mostly in Red states) to Democrats...they may even lose 5 Senate seats in 2006...ending their ability to filibuster.

Without 41 Democratic Party Senators actively caucusing with each other, no filibuster is likely. ...And eventually, all 30+ Red States will have 60+ Republican Senators.

Nor will successful elections in Iraq slow such Republican progress.

Nor will the deployment of our national missile defense system. Nor will our tax cuts. Nor will our bans on various forms of abortion.

What are the Democrats going to do differently? Tell us that they can do all of the above better?!

They had their chance. They did not lead. We have have. We will.

[fallujah-nuker]

" That only suggests that the fringe right is more vocal and shrill on this issue. It does not reflect popular opinion."

That must be why why Proposition 200 was voted down in Arizona by such a huge margin last year. Perhaps you may want to move to the 5th congressional district of your state so may vote against representative Jim Sensenbrenner who holds the fringe right view of enforcement of immigration laws that you find so offensive. Someone whose views are more in line with yours, Ted Kennedy would be the ideal candidate but I doubt he would be willing to leave his Senate seat in Massachusetts for a House seat in Wisconsin.

[Once-Ler]

Someone whose views are more in line with yours, Ted Kennedy would be the ideal candidate but I doubt he would be willing to leave his Senate seat in Massachusetts for a House seat in Wisconsin.

My views are easy to find. Just click on my name. I've been a regular poster for over 4 years. My views are pro life, pro gun, pro business, pro military, and pro GOP. In fact I'd say my views are in line with President Bush and my Republican Party.

Let's look at your comments since you joined under your new name, 4 months ago...

You very first comments on FR are praise for Pat Buchanan. post 107

a few posts later and 2 weeks before the election you condemn Bush for doing what all other President have done. post 15.

a few posts later and again 2 weeks before the election you condemn Bush this way..."If Bush had followed Buchanan's counsel he would coasting to a 40+ state, 400+ electoral vote, 60% of the vote landslide." and later in the same post you express your desire to kill Iraqis. post 8

I could stomach your posts until just after your immediate reaction to the Nov elections. There is no praise for anything Republicans have done or won...only complaints about how bad America has gotten. On Nov 7th you again condemn Dubya in post 88 He also would have gotten well over 60 million votes.

Just to remind you nuker Dubya got over 62 million votes. I don't need any futher evidence. You are the right fringe.

[Common Tator]

Too bad many GOP voters are on the verge of breaking away over the immigration and spending issues.

The people on the verge of breaking away over emigration and spending issues equal the number of voters who in 2000 voted for Buchanan and the Libertarian candidate. In other words they represent about 850 thousand voters. If they had all voted for Kerry in 2004 Bush would have won by 2.2 million votes and he would have carried Ohio by 80 thousand votes rather than 118 thousand. If Bush can make Republicans out of seven million voters who in the past mostly voted for Democrats at the cost of less than a million fringers, Republicans can win elections by a 55 to 45 margin rather than 51 to 49. He can build a Republican party that a Ross Perot or Teddy Roosevelt can not defeat.

You are judging support by the attention the anti- emigration and anti-deficit people get on FR and in some of the media. You count the support for your views that exist in the solid blue states. Those voters are not a factor in Republican politics. And in red states they are insignificant.

If you go back and read the FR threads from 2000 you will wonder why President Buchanan in 2000 didn't win more states than Reagan did in 1984.

FDR, Truman, LBJ, Jimmy Carter, Reagan spent a far greater percentage of our GNP using borrowed money and it cost them zero votes. And the last guy to think that emigration would defeat a Republican was William Jennings Bryan. He got defeated 3 times in a row.

Only Democrats and the far right gloom and doomers think they can defeat a Karl Rove backed candidate in an election.

There is a reason Democrats are unable to defeat the team of Bush and Rove. Rove and Bush always do what a majority of the voters want done. The one clear fact that has been true for 200 years is that candidates who propose to do what a majority of voters want done always get elected.

People on the far right and far left are always looking for powerful charismatic rulers to charm the voters and get in office so they can do "what is right.. not what the voters want". This is a nation that only elects public servants .. and never public rulers. That is why Alan Keyes type candidates never make it into the ballot box. In fact they are almost always counter productive to their cause. That is why Tancredo type caniddates never get to be more than small pimple on a major parties rump.

It has been over 200 years and the far right and far left have never figured it out.

Karl Rove and George Bush hope to move the government to where a majority of the voters now are. Democrats hope to keep the government where the voters used to be. The far right and far left hope to move the governments where the voters are not now, never have been, and are not likely to ever be.

The center represents about 20 million votes. Losing the 2 percent that makes up the fringe in order to gain 10 percent of voters in the center is the kind of trade that gives a political party decades long electoral domination.

The fringers always demand that major parties follow a prescription for massive defeat.. and they never, never, ever understand why the major parties refuse them.

[television is just wrong]

I agree with that. Iam determined that there be NO MORE AMNESTIES. there is no reason for giving these people blanket amnesties. Then giving them all the benes that go with it.

Mr. Bush END THE WELFARE STATE.

[ninenot]

BTW, the "overspending and border [flaccidity] remarks were made by Rush Limbaugh on his program Friday, according to the WSJ's Opinion Journal page.

You think Limbaugh's a racist, too?

[iconoclast]

Could W. be using our capacity to spend to defeat domestic liberalism? The 'Rats have been a cancer on this society for a century and a half. It's time to terminate them.

So we wind up with a huge federal government beyond the wildest dreams of Dems, but with plutocrat Republicans sitting on top of it?

Beautiful. Reminiscent of the old Viet Nam slogan ... we had to destroy the village in order to save it.

[iconoclast]

Regarding conservative votes as an entitlement program got Bush Sr. defeated in 1992.

History will view the Bushes as ending the Republicans as a conservative party (and God wiling, the unwitting midwives to the birthing of new, true conservative party)