[A-List] US state: ruling class split

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

The Republicans lose their principles
By Edward Crane
Financial Times: October 1 2002

As it heads into November's mid-term congressional elections with its
domestic agenda in shambles, the Republican party's hopes of maintaining
control of the House of Representatives and regaining a majority in the
Senate appear to hinge on public support for President George W. Bush's
conduct of the war against terrorism.

With control of both houses of Congress up for grabs, Democrats are
frustrated that they cannot bring domestic issues - from which
Republicans wish to duck and hide - to the fore when all the news is
about possible war with Iraq or the next capture of a high- ranking
al-Qaeda functionary.

The curious aspect of this dynamic is that, by all logic, the Grand Old
Party should have the initiative on domestic policy. On issues ranging
from school choice to Social Security privatisation, polls show
Americans strongly supporting what have traditionally been Republican
perspectives. Even basic questions on the size of government show a
majority of Americans would rather have fewer government services and
lower taxes than the opposite. So why is the public perception that the
GOP's approach to domestic issues is unclear and unprincipled?

The GOP resurgence, which began with tax revolts in the late 1970s and
was further fuelled by President Ronald Reagan's principled call for
less government in the 1980s, was built on a foundation of new ideas.
Social scientist Charles Murray's book Losing Ground shook the welfare
establishment to its roots by demonstrating the social pathologies of
dependency. Supply-side economists laid out empirical evidence that cuts
in the marginal rate of taxation clearly spurred economic growth.

All of this laid the basis for strong political support for a smaller
government agenda. But when the Republicans took control of the House
and Senate in 1994, Newt Gingrich, the party's strategist and tactician,
was outmanoeuvred on policy issues by President Bill Clinton. The GOP
zeroed in on scandal rather than ideas and the energy that left the
"revolution" was palpable. The poor showing by the Republicans in the
congressional elections of 1996 was followed by the debacle of the
presidential nomination of Senator Bob Dole, whose farewell speech on
the Senate floor consisted of little more than a litany of big
government programmes he had supported over the years.

Steve Forbes, a sincere but ineffective candidate, tried to redirect
Republicans back to being a party of ideas in the 2000 primaries. But
the GOP establishment was behind George W. Bush, who campaigned on an
apologetic theme of "compassionate conservatism". That turned out to
have little in common with the party of Mr Reagan. Mr Bush campaigned
for the greatest federal role in education that any president,
Republican or Democrat, had in US history. Never mind that just 20 years
before, Mr Reagan had won a landslide victory on a platform that called
for the abolition of the Department of Education.

More was to come. Mr Bush pushed for a "faith-based initiative" that
would involve the federal government in funding private, religious
charities. This represented a major new federal involvement in civil
society, while undermining the constitutional separation of church and
state and ignoring the inevitable undue government control of previously
successful charities. Lacking limited government principles, the Bush
administration responded to the closeness of the 2000 presidential
election by providing the steel-producing states of West Virginia, Ohio
and Pennsylvania with 30 per cent tariffs on imported steel. Mr Bush had
asked Americans to vote for him in part because he said he was a free
trader opposed to protectionism.

The recently passed Republican sponsored farm bill provides a cool
$170bn in corporate welfare to agribusiness to shore up support from
Midwest farm states. This, after the much ballyhooed GOP "Freedom to
Farm" bill of 1996 that was going to phase out such subsidies by 2003.
So it goes on. Republican National Committee fundraising letters now
speak of the need to "reform the way government is run", as if that
means anything. The ideas of reducing government and freeing Americans
from the intrusions of government are no longer part of the agenda.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this is the issue of Social
Security reform. One of the few initiatives that Mr Bush has put forward
that would reduce the government's domestic role is the idea of allowing
at least partial privatisation of Social Security. A Zogby International
poll conducted this summer shows that, despite corporate malfeasance and
declining stock prices, 68 per cent of Americans favour some form of
Social Security privatisation. Yet the Republicans in Congress, their
incumbency protected by campaign finance restrictions and
computer-designed district borders, are loath to consider anything that
might prove controversial. A typical Republican stance is the statement
of John Swallow, the GOP candidate in the second congressional district
in Utah, who has said: "Democrats across the nation are touting that
Republicans want to 'privatise' Social Security. Nothing could be
further from the truth."

The truth is, Republicans do not want to do much of anything, other than
retain political power. That separates them from Democrats who do, in
fact, have an agenda they want to pursue - one that would have the
tendrils of government reaching into every corner of civil society.
Until the GOP rediscovers its principles - and the fact that most
Americans share them - its prospects for the mid-term elections depend
almost entirely on international affairs.

 The writer is founder and president of the Cato Institute