One of the best articles I've read for some time. It basically details how Clinton used his corruption to undermine and defeat democracy at every turn in order to get and to keep power and how Bush can expand his natural majority by defeating that corruption:
The Coming Bush Dynasty
It will flourish if it knocks down key Clinton pillars.
by Grover G. Norquist
Eight years ago, I wrote an article entitled "The Coming Clinton Dynasty." It rebutted the hope that Bill Clinton would be another Jimmy Carter, destined to defeat in 1996 by Reagan II.
Sadly, I was correct. Carter believed that he and the Great Society liberals were the natural governing majority. Clinton knew his party represented a minority. Carter thought he could win a fair re-election. Clinton would ensure that the rules were changed to avoid defeat in 1996.
The secret of Clinton's success was not "triangulation" or "moderation," but a sustained effort to change the rules. In January 1993, he rescinded the Bush executive order enforcing the Supreme Court's Beck decision that prohibits unions from using coerced union dues for politics. The Supreme Court had ruled 7-2 in 1989 that much of the union money spent on politics is not legally raised. But Clinton refused to enforce the law of the land banning coerced union dues in politics. He might not have won in 1996 if he had followed the law.
Clinton then signed the "Motor Voter" law, requiring all states to liberalize their voter registration lists. Democrats voted down amendments that would have allowed states to purge from the rolls the names of those who had died or moved. Motor Voter facilitated voter fraud. If serious efforts by states to stem voter fraud had not been blocked, Woody Jenkins would today represent Louisiana in the Senate instead of Mary Landrieu. Without Motor Voter the 2000 election would not have been close.
During the Clinton-Gore years, federal funds flowed like wine to labor unions, environmental groups, and other liberal lobbying organizations. The trial lawyers were allowed to pillage the economy as Clinton vetoed all efforts at tort reform. Billions of federal contract dollars and billions in extracted tobacco funds went to those who kicked back tens of millions to Democratic candidates.
It was enough to give Clinton a second term. It was almost enough to steal the 2000 election.
President George W. Bush will benefit from a Republican majority in the House of Representatives that has now been elected four times and a Senate that is balanced 50-50 with Vice President Dick Cheney able to cast the deciding vote. The Democrats hope that an outraged base will sweep them back into control of the House and Senate in 2002 and restore the interrupted Clinton-Gore dynasty. But Bush now has the incentive to level the playing field by stripping the Democrats of their ill-gotten gains. To do that he'll have to shake the Democrats' five pillars.
The first is labor unions, which raise $8 billion a year from 16 million union members paying an average of $500 dues. The Supreme Court found that 80 percent of union dues were not allowable under Beck. When Bush re-establishes workers' rights through executive orders and appointments to the Labor Department and National Labor Relations Board, it will cost the labor bosses $400 for every worker who opts out. Thirty-six percent of union members voted for Bush. If only ten percent exercise their Beck rights and keep their $400, labor bosses will lose $640 million a year.
Under Clinton-Gore, the Labor Department became the property of the AFL-CIO. Each year, up to $3 billion in contracts goes to labor unions, often without bid. Since unions represent only 14 percent of American workers, an uncorrupted Labor Department would give unions at most 14 percent of such contracts. If the private sector paid for its own job training programs, taxpayers would keep the billions now sent to unions for recirculation in political kickbacks to Democrats. Even modest reform of the Labor Department's spending could cost the labor bosses $1 billion a year.
Under Clinton-Gore, tens of millions of dollars flowed to left-wing groups through HUD, HHS, and the Department of Education. These taxpayer-funded lobbies are the second pillar of the Democratic Party. Funding earmarked to promote hunting and outdoor sports has been redirected to animal rights groups. The National Council of Senior Citizens, which started life as Senior Citizens for Kennedy-Johnson, receives $70 million each year in federal funds and actively endorses liberal Democrats. After eight corrupt years, it's unlikely there is a single government agency whose budget has not been used to benefit the left. A competent OMB working with cabinet officers and committee staff can put a foot on this air hose.
Modest tort reform would deprive pillar number three -- greedy trial lawyers -- of billions from American consumers. In some states trial lawyers give more to Democrats than union leaders do. Candidate Bush was a consistent advocate of tort reform. But as payback to their trial lawyer backers Democrats will certainly filibuster most tort reform.
Big City political machines provide a fourth pillar. Clinton fought hard to insist that federal funds to "help the poor" flow first to mayors and Democrat precinct workers and only then to the needy. This is the left's version of "trickle-down economics." Whether for housing, education, vocational training, Medicaid or Medicare, vouchers are unpopular on the left because they cut out party middlemen. Bush and a Republican Congress need only insist that funds promised to the poor actually reach the poor to defund the Democrat machines that deliver the votes in Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and St. Louis.
Voter fraud is the fifth pillar of the Democratic Party. The whole 36-day circus in Florida was designed to give the local politicians in Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties a chance to manufacture or find enough Gore votes, or lose or damage enough Bush votes, to overcome Bush's margin. Although the effort failed, it is estimated that 5,000 felons, mostly Democrats, voted illegally in Florida, and we may never know how many illegal aliens voted.
Democrats fought to keep overseas and military ballots, which trend Republican, from counting in Florida and other states. They also fought to keep dead, moved, and non-citizen names on the voting rolls. Felons who voted on November 7 committed another felony and violated their parole or probation terms; resident aliens or illegal aliens who were told to vote have committed a crime that could get them deported; students who voted at school and by absentee at their parents' address, like those in Wisconsin, should by rights go to prison rather than back to school next fall.
All these efforts must be defeated if Bush is to win in 2004. The focus on ballot integrity in Florida should remind Americans that while they must show a picture ID to cash a check or fly on an airline, most states impose no such obligation on voters.
Perhaps President Bush should announce a three-month amnesty for anyone who engaged in voter fraud. Violators streaming in for amnesty would generate three months of headlines, meaning the left could never again laugh about it or suggest it doesn't matter. Reform would then be unstoppable. Federal legislation could allow states to drop felons, dead people, and non-citizens from registration rolls.
After the amnesty period the law should be fully enforced. The federal computer file of all felons -- developed by liberals to enforce the Brady Bill prohibiting felons from buying firearms -- can be checked against the list of those who vote. No one need go to jail if he comes forward during the amnesty.
Even if voter fraud cannot be ended it can be contained. The advantage of the Electoral College is that the mayor of Chicago cannot invent three million additional votes and steal the national election. He can only steal the electoral votes of Illinois. But we can provide further protection. States can adopt the Nebraska/Maine rules that apportion electoral votes by congressional district. The candidate who wins the whole state gets two electoral votes plus one electoral vote for each congressional district he carries.
If the GOP-dominated state legislatures and GOP governors in New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania adopted Nebraska/Maine rules, it would prevent voter fraud in Newark, Detroit, and Philadelphia from overwhelming the rest of the state. With winner-take-all in New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania Gore won 50 electoral votes. But Bush won 25 congressional districts in these three states -- enough to have won the election without Florida.
New Jersey State Senator Joe Kyrillos, Jr. is already preparing such legislation. Bush would not have ignored New Jersey if he thought he could win seven or more congressional districts, and Republicans might not have lost a Senate seat to millionaire Jon Corzine.
Could Democrats use this model to hurt Republicans in other states? Democrats control the governorship and state legislature in five states carried by Bush in 2000: Georgia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi. If those states adopted the Nebraska/Maine law, Gore would have gained only 9 electoral votes.
Democrats hoping to gain House seats in 2002 -- they only need five more to take the House -- learned on election night they had lost the House for the next 12 years. Redistricting will take effect in time for the 2002 elections. Ten House seats will be lost by Connecticut (1), New York (2), Illinois (1), Mississippi (1), Wisconsin (1), Ohio (1), Oklahoma (1), and Pennsylvania (2). Ten will be gained by Texas (2), Nevada (1), Florida (1), Georgia (2), California (1), Colorado (1), and Arizona (2). Gore states lose six seats. Bush states gain eight.
Redistricting should cost the Democrats ten or more seats in 2002. In 2000 a number of Democrats delayed retirement plans at Dick Gephardt's request. There were nine Democrats and 24 Republican retirements in 2000. Despite new open-seat advantages and the power of the White House, Democrats gained only two additional House seats last fall. The prospect of another 12 years in the minority will increase Democratic retirements in 2002.
The Democrats' Senate hopes are tempered by the realization that in 2000 they were competing with Republican senators who won in the Gingrich landslide of 1994. In 2002, they are up against 20 Republican senators who won despite the Clinton tide of 1996.
Other trends bode well for Republicans. The number of Americans investing in the stock market will continue to grow. In July 2000 the House of Representatives voted 401 to 25 to expand the availability of 401(k)s and IRAs. Polls show that Americans of all ages, incomes, and races become more Republican and more conservative when they own stocks.
Americans who turned 21 during the Democratic years 1932-1952 are now 69 to 89 years old. They've kept their Democratic leanings, as voters over 70 went 51-43 for Gore over Bush. But each year, 2 million members of that age cohort die, resulting in a net annual loss of 160,000 Democratic voters. By 2004 that will mean 640,000 fewer Gore voters. Meanwhile, the INS will not spend the next four years pushing through the naturalization of immigrants with criminal records, as it did under Clinton-Gore.
Restoring simple honesty to government will break the five pillars of the Democratic Party. Without their artificial support, that party will shrink to its traditional voting strength - -i.e., under Humphrey (43 percent), McGovern (38 percent), Carter in 1980 (41 percent), Mondale (41 percent), and Clinton in 1992 (43 percent).
If the Bush team is as serious and unflinching over the next four years as it was in the battle for Florida, then we have seen the last close presidential election for a long time.
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Grover G. Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform.
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