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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (166253)	7/31/2001 12:56:58 AM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 769670

The New Obstructionists _____What's Your Opinion?_____ By E. J. Dionne Jr. Tuesday, July 31, 2001; Page A23 A big underground debate is going on in Republican ranks over how to survive the 2002 election. On the one side are Republicans who think the key is in mobilizing the party's conservative base. On the other are party strategists who see a move to the center as essential to holding or winning back moderate voters. The fact this debate is happening is the clearest sign that Republicans know they have lost the initiative in national politics. It's not what they expected. When the Democrats took over the Senate in May, courtesy of Jim Jeffords's defection from the Republican Party, President Bush's aides and congressional allies went on the attack against what they thought was the real threat: Democratic obstruction of the Bush program. "Now the Senate Democrats have to work with a bipartisan coalition to get things done and lead," Ari Fleischer, Bush's top spokesman, declared at the time. "They can't just obstruct. And that will be the real test for the incoming Democrat leadership." "We'll see," House Republican Whip Tom DeLay said of Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle back then, "if he can get results, not just throw up roadblocks." In just two months, we've learned the Republicans were worried about the wrong problem. The Democrats have acted exactly as Fleischer said they should -- they've created bipartisan coalitions to get things done -- only not in support of the program Fleischer's boss wanted. As a result, throwing up roadblocks has become a central part of DeLay's job. With Democrats pushing bills the president doesn't want on his desk, the Republican-led House threatens to become a legislative graveyard. In just a few weeks, the new Republican strategy -- let's call it principled obstructionism -- kicked in on both campaign finance reform and the patients' bill of rights. On the campaign bill, which passed the Senate before Jeffords switched, House Republican leaders promised a vote and then constructed a bizarre set of rules designed to lay mines (and, yes, throw roadblocks) in the path of House reformers. The bill has been stopped for now, but at the cost of mobilizing substantial resentment against the House leadership, especially among reform-minded Republicans. On the patients' bill of rights, Daschle took the offensive and sent a strong bill to the House. The president doesn't like the bill's provisions making it easy for consumers to sue their HMOs. He threatened a veto that he doesn't want to use, precisely because he doesn't want to look obstructionist on a popular cause. But when House Republicans came up with an alternative Bush supported, they couldn't find the votes for it and so last week postponed action. Now Democrats are reading from the script prepared by Fleischer and DeLay. "It's wrong to delay any longer," Sen. Jean Carnahan, a Missouri Democrat, said the other day of the patients' bill of rights. The Republicans are having this trouble because they won the election of 2000 but lost many of the debates over issues. To survive, one Republican candidate after another embraced Democratic-sounding ideas -- especially on patients' rights and a prescription drug benefit for the elderly. Bush himself fudged his positions on both, knowing the Democrats held the popular ground. On his signature issue, a big tax cut, Bush made sure it didn't hurt him in the campaign, but he failed to rally strong public support. His victory on the tax cuts has thus done him little good outside Republican ranks. All this makes the internal Republican argument over whether to appeal to "the base" or to "moderates" problematic. Tactically, a case can be made that if turnout in 2002 is low, the election could become a "battle of the bases," a fight over which party turns out more of its loyal supporters. But many of the strongest Republican partisans live in districts that Democrats won't even try to win. In many closely fought districts, moderate voters decide the outcome. That's why so many moderate Republicans have been defecting on so many issues. And, of course, appeals to your own base can backfire, raising issues and arousing passions that turn out the other side. The real problem with the internal Republican debate is that the "center" is not a real place. Its definition constantly changes, depending on what issues are dominant. If they use their power in the Senate effectively, Democrats could keep defining what issues are important and, therefore, where the center lies. Republicans would then face a constant choice between capitulation or obstruction -- exactly the options they once hoped Democrats would confront. © 2001 The Washington Post Company