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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (17418)	11/23/2003 12:36:39 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793717

Why the Democrats Are All Boxed In By JOE KLEIN - TIME We have reached a moment of transcendent weirdness in American politics and perhaps a defining moment in the 2004 presidential campaign. In Washington last week, Newt Gingrich and the aarp—who battled each other over old-age entitlement spending in the 1990s—joined the White House in support of a new $400 billion Medicare prescription-drug benefit. Odder still, the Wall Street Journal's ultraconservative editorial page opposed the bill, as did ultraliberal House leader Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy and most of the Democrats running for President. This, after a decade of Democrats pleading for just such a benefit and lambasting Republicans for blocking it. This, in the same week that Tom Daschle and George Bush joined forces to support the fetid enormity of a $31 billion energy bill, which was quickly dubbed the Hooters and Polluters Bill, since it funded, among many other things, construction of an energy-efficient Hooters restaurant in Shreveport, La. This, in the same week that Massachusetts moved toward legalization of gay marriage. Confused? Overwhelmed? Appalled? Yes, yes and yes. This was an awful week for the Democrats, who are likely to lose— politically—on all fronts. And it was a shameful week—substantively—for the Bush Administration. The political equation is obvious. The President will be able to say the Democrats opposed prescription drugs for the elderly whether the Medicare bill passes or not (just as he campaigned in 2002 saying the Democrats blocked Homeland Security because they wanted labor-protection provisions in the bill). The same is true, to a lesser extent, of the energy bill, which Senators of both parties managed to stop, perhaps temporarily, last Friday. The President can still say, "We proposed energy 'reform'; the Dems opposed." Not many Americans will scour the fine print. As for gay marriage, my guess is that Bush will remain above the fray. The issue is too raw—and his Vice President has taken the same position as most Democrats have. But Bush will benefit nonetheless from the anguish and agitation on the religious right, which will use the ruling to invigorate turnout among Christian conservatives. The week's events illuminate a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans on domestic policy. The Democrats are boxed into complicated and unpopular positions because they tend to stand on principle—although the principles involved are often antiquated, peripheral and, arguably, foolish. The Republicans, by contrast, have abandoned traditional conservativism to gain political advantage (with the elderly, for instance) or to pay off their stable of corporate-welfare recipients. The Medicare bill contains large gifts to pharmaceutical manufacturers; the energy bill is a $23.5 billion bequest to traditional-energy producers, with additional billions worth of free-range pork tossed in. "This is classic machine politics, the sort of thing we used to do," said a prominent Democrat. Hence the Wall Street Journal's opposition to both bills. After all, Bush is running such huge deficits that they might imperil the prospect of endless tax cuts—and even "increase pressure to raise taxes to pay for" these new programs, the editors noted. The Democrats' opposition to the Medicare bill was both tortured and intemperate. Some of the gripes are legitimate—the proposed drug benefit is complicated and in many cases insufficient. But Ted Kennedy voted for that benefit last summer. The sticking points now involve matters of Democratic Party theology, and they require a brief explanation. Medicare currently is a fee-for-service program, which means it works the way old-fashioned medicine did—essentially, you get whatever services you request. This is fabulously expensive and bound to grow more so as the baby boomers retire. Most Republicans and many moderate Democrats want to restrain costs by moving toward a system of managed care—which is what most nonelderly Americans now receive through hmos and preferred- physician networks. The Medicare bill contains a six-city test of managed care, which would begin in 2010. This tiny experiment is what sent the Democrats up a wall. "We're not going to let seniors be herded into hmos," Dick Gephardt harrumphed. Their alternative? Well, they don't have one. "Medicare should be left alone," said Howard Dean, who used to be more creative—and honest—about such things. The vehemence of the Democratic assault was astonishing. The aarp, formerly a linchpin of the liberal coalition, was trashed by various liberals as a den of insurance-peddling moneygrubbers. House Democrats told me that minority leader Pelosi was twisting arms with unprecedented avidity—anyone who voted in favor was "no longer a Democrat," and plum committee assignments would go only to loyalists. I suspect this reflects desperation as much as principle. The Bush Administration is outsmarting the Democrats at every turn. The economy seems to be recovering. If Iraq is stabilized—a huge if—what will the Democrats run on? Their intellectual cupboard is bare, and the election may be slipping time.com

To: DMaA who wrote (17418)	11/23/2003 12:56:10 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793717

TIME does a "puff piece" on Frist. Sunday, Nov. 23, 2003 Bush's Cool Operator Bill Frist is the President's crafty Senate warrior with much on the line. Can the G.O.P leader deliver? By DOUGLAS WALLER AND MATTHEW COOPER Senate majority leader Bill Frist likes to tell a story from his days as a pioneering heart surgeon back in Tennessee. A lot of times, Frist recalls, you'd have a critical patient lying there waiting for a new heart, and you'd want to cut, but you couldn't start unless you knew that the replacement heart would make it to the operating room. You didn't want a mistake like opening up the transplant cooler and seeing it filled with Coca-Cola. "A lot can happen at the end," Frist says with a laugh. A politician, like a surgeon, is tested on deadline, when all the preparation and the pressures come together to be manipulated into success by a cool professional. Frist, the politician, will look back on this time as the moment when his operating skills either saved or failed him. At stake are nothing less than the most sweeping energy bill in 11 years and the biggest overhaul of Medicare since the health program for the nation's seniors was enacted in 1965. When he succeeded Trent Lott as Republican leader in the Senate in December, Frist seemed the ideal replacement. Jetting to Africa often to perform surgeries, he was a contrast to Lott, whose racially insensitive remarks drove him from the leadership. With his Princeton-Harvard pedigree, youthful looks and daily running schedule, he was a perfect fit for the hyperathletic President, who portrays himself as a compassionate conservative. But in the 11 months since he took over from Lott, Frist has confounded critics and admirers alike—proving himself both more nimble and less adroit than many expected. Despite his discipline—he sleeps only four hours a night—critics accuse him of making amateurish mistakes in managing the Senate calendar. And despite his gentle bedside manner, he is a ruthless, crafty warrior for George W. Bush, not afraid of doing what it takes to outmaneuver the Democrats. Medicare could turn out to be his—and the President's—grand domestic prize going into the election. The proposal before Congress would reform the program in myriad ways, most notably by giving seniors their first prescription-drug benefit. Democrats, who also know that a Bush victory on prescription drugs would be politically devastating, are scrambling to stop the $400 billion measure. More important, Democrats oppose the bill's embrace of private-style health care, its failure to rein in pharmaceutical companies and its generous subsidies for hmos. The House narrowly passed the controversial measure early Saturday morning, 220-215, but only after the vote was held open for nearly three hours so both Republican leaders on the floor and Bush on the phone could browbeat G.O.P conservatives, angry that the bill didn't contain enough market reforms, into switching their votes. If Democrats, for their part, seem apoplectic over Medicare, it's also because the Republicans have stolen the issue from them. And Frist, as much as any other Republican, is the one who helped take it away. He kept top Democrats like minority leader Tom Daschle from the conference that wrote the bill, not an unheard-of maneuver against a Senator of lesser rank but a brassy one to be pulling on the chamber's top Democrat. Instead Frist handpicked the Democratic Senators he would negotiate with: Louisiana's John Breaux, who worked with him on a Medicare-reform panel and who shares his views; and Montana's Max Baucus, who was just as eager to cut a deal. Shut out of the room, a hapless Daschle tried to play an outside game—rallying seniors against the measure. But Frist outfoxed him. He began huddling privately with top aarp officials last December and held some 15 meetings with them over the next 11 months. Frist was dogged, tracking down aarp executive William Novelli at home or on the road to trade ideas by cell phone on reforming Medicare. "I don't think they were used to that," Frist told Time, noting that Republicans had traditionally seen the group as being too close to Democrats. "But I made it clear I needed them." It worked. aarp—which boasts 35 million members—threw its weight behind the G.O.P overhaul. At the same time that Frist has been poaching in Democratic territory, he has been careful to protect his flank with the G.O.P's hard-liners, who were worried at the outset that he was a closet moderate. Late last spring conservative and evangelical groups bluntly warned Frist that their activists would sit out next year's elections if they didn't see him cracking down on Democratic filibusters of conservative judges. "He got the message," says Free Congress Foundation chairman Paul Weyrich. Earlier this month Frist staged a 39-hour talkathon on the Senate floor to harangue the Democrats on the judges they blocked. The gabfest infuriated Daschle, who claimed Frist double-crossed him. Daschle had agreed to Frist's request to keep the Senate working through Veterans Day so it would have more time to clear its usual backlog. Only later did he learn that Frist also planned to use the week's extra time for a Republican telethon to promote conservative justices. Daschle dismissed it as a "colossal waste of time"—the judges remained blocked—and Democratic whip Harry Reid accused Frist of "amateur leadership." Many Republican Senators privately admitted that "it was a mindless walk into a cul-de-sac," as one put it, "designed to appeal to the 20% of our base that listens to Rush Limbaugh every day." Still, Frist had done what he set out to do: appease the restless troops on the right. Frist, who was Bush's favorite candidate to replace Lott, has made rookie mistakes in his first year as majority leader. That may not be too surprising for a man who ascended to the post after being in the Senate for only eight years, having spent his career as a surgeon and then earning millions of dollars from HCA Inc., a hospital chain his father and brother founded. Last April Frist publicly agreed to a tax-cut package that was $200 billion less than what House Republican leaders wanted. House Speaker Dennis Hastert was furious, and Frist spent weeks healing the rift. Republican Senators trying to push the initial energy bill through the Senate last June publicly griped that they couldn't build momentum behind the measure because Frist kept pulling it from the floor to deal with other legislation. Even Senators who are part of Frist's leadership team were irked earlier this month when he slipped up and allowed the $87 billion spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan to pass without a roll-call vote. It let off the hook Democrats who didn't want to be seen as voting against the troops. At the same time, Frist's hardball tactics—shutting out Democratic lawmakers, springing important bills just before arraignment and counting on exhausted opponents to give up—may come back to haunt him. For one thing, cooperation from angry Democrats may be even harder to secure now on complex measures like the $31 billion energy bill, which was snarled in the Senate last week because of disputes over ethanol subsidies and liability protection for makers of gasoline additives. "The environment in the Senate is as poisonous as I've ever seen," says a worried Republican Senator. But farther down Pennsylvania Avenue, at the White House, the President sees Fristy—his nickname for the doctor—as not just an ally in the Senate but also a key player in his 2004 campaign. "It's a lot easier running for re-election after having passed a major Medicare reform," a presidential adviser says. The President, who never warmed to the independent-minded Lott, began his alliance with Frist during the 2000 campaign, when Bush tapped him to be a liaison to the Senate. Since then, Frist has cultivated the President too and hunted with Dick Cheney and top adviser Karl Rove. "He wants the President to like him," says a White House insider. "You can tell." For his part, Frist says, "my leadership style is pretty simple: define a mission, be able to write it on a single card in a single sentence." The kindly exterior has always masked his aggressive nature. Heart-transplant surgeons are like that. "They are people who are disciplined, are focused, are no-nonsense," Frist says. "The timid people in medicine don't go into the field of cutting hearts out and putting them in." Tom Daschle would surely agree. time.com

To: DMaA who wrote (17418)	11/23/2003 3:24:55 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793717

Standard-bearer rallies conservatives By JULIA MALONE Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer RICK McKAY / Staff By the end of this year, tax activist Grover Norquist predicts, all except six states will have regular gatherings of what he calls the "Center-Right Coalition." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Washington --Grover Norquist has neither a public office nor a famous name. Yet few people in the nation's capital wield more influence in Republican circles. Every Wednesday morning, Norquist hosts a standing-room-only meeting of more than 120 top conservatives, business leaders and party activists to swap information and set strategy. Here they are served bagels and coffee and the inside skinny. They hear from White House staffers and senior aides from the House and Senate leadership, who come to seek support and sometimes hear dissent from a range of Republican views, even on issues such as abortion and budget deficits. Seated in the middle of it all is the bearded, bespectacled and sometimes bemused Norquist. He directs the crisp order of the rapid-fire discussion as speakers hold forth on issues such as President Bush's re-election poll numbers, the controversial CBS docudrama on President Ronald Reagan and the alleged "group sex" imagery in the Christmas catalog of teen clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch. The meetings, begun a decade ago to mobilize opponents of the Clinton administration's health care proposal, have landed the 46-year-old Norquist in a crucial role as unifier for the right. "If you were going to say who is the executive director of the conservative movement of America, I'd say it's Grover Norquist," said Charlie Cook, publisher of the Cook Political Report. "It's hard to say who would be a distant second." Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich came to the Wednesday meeting last week as a one-stop-shop to deliver the message that he's behind the new congressional Medicare legislation. In an interview, the Georgia Republican said of his long-time political soulmate, "Grover is, I think, the seminal figure in the conservative movement today." Even adversaries have grudgingly acknowledged Norquist's effectiveness. "He's playing a coordination role, getting [the various groups] all to sing from the same page in the hymnal," said Roger Hickey, an official with the liberal Campaign for America's Future. "It's impressive." Norquist, who says he wakes up each morning asking himself "What do we need to do today?" to further the conservative movement, is far from satisfied, however. Norquist founded Americans for Tax Reform, an activist group that lobbies for tax cuts. He says the nonprofit organization's $5 million annual budget is funded by 100,000 donors through direct mail and "gifts of about $10,000 a year" from about 50 companies. Norquist has begun passing out maps of the United States in which every state that has a version of his Wednesday meeting is colored red. The red states now number 37, including the District of Columbia. By the end of this year, Norquist predicts, all except six states will have regular gatherings of what he calls the "Center-Right Coalition." "It's not the cranky right. It's not flaky," he said. "It's not the crowd that says, 'I quote Leviticus, so you have to agree with me.' " Norquist says the participants are the "broad center right," who don't ask the government for anything except "to leave us alone," by not increasing taxes and by respecting private property rights, religious faith, gun rights and free choice in education. This month, Norquist flew to Atlanta for the first Georgia meeting. About 15 people attended, including officials from state government, Roman Catholic activist and businessman Mark Hanna III and Sandy Thomas, a former Libertarian Party candidate for the U.S. Senate. The idea is to meet once a month "to bounce around ideas and issues" and to find areas where people can help one another, said Sadie Fields, executive director of Georgia's Christian Coalition and moderator of the new group. Former Georgia Republican Party Chairman Ralph Reed, a longtime friend of Norquist, said he hopes the group will not only serve as a "font of ideas" but also would build a "grass-roots support network" for a conservative agenda of lower taxes and limited government, stronger families and safer neighborhoods in the state. Weekly meeting popular That is already happening elsewhere, say participants in other states. Lawyer Rick Watson co-moderates the weekly "Thursday Group" in downtown Tallahassee. Watson said the weekly meetings have helped Florida conservatives join forces to win tort reform and a reduction in worker compensation costs for employers. In Texas, as many as 80 people crowd into an art gallery in Austin every other week for Krispy Kreme doughnuts and an open forum. The goal of the meetings, which have been going for two years, is to discuss state policies and help build coalitions, said Michael Quinn Sullivan, an official at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a research institute that favors limited government. Norquist's vision for advancing the conservative cause dates to his childhood, when he was already steeped in politics. "I was 14 years old and on the bus coming from school on Church Street where it hits Route 117" in his hometown of Weston, Mass., he recalled in an interview last week. That's when the idea hit him that the Republican Party "needed to have a recognizable brand" that could be as trustworthy as a trademarked product. He decided this "brand" should be a guarantee that Republicans won't raise taxes. After finishing two Harvard University degrees, a bachelor's in economics and a master's in business administration, Norquist moved to Washington, where tax reduction soon became the central theme in his chosen mission to shrink government. "I'm not in favor of abolishing the government," he insists. But he often repeats the line, "I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Promoting no-tax pledge With his fondness for gruesome images, Norquist also says the Republican Party must protect its no-tax-increase image with the same vigilance that, say, the Coca-Cola Co. uses in guarding the contents of its drinks. When Alabama's Republican Gov. Bob Riley championed a tax increase, Norquist said that was the equivalent of finding a rat's head in the soda bottle. Since 1986, Norquist set out to protect the party "brand" by enlisting Republican office holders to take a no-tax-increase pledge, which he launched with a signature from his political hero, Reagan. Today, more than half of the House members and 42 senators have signed the pledge. Among Republican lawmakers, "I can only think of one guy in the last six or eight years who's been elected who didn't take the pledge," Norquist said. He added that "since 1992, no Republican congressman or senator has voted to raise taxes." Now he is taking the pledge to the state level, where about 1,120 of the estimated 7,300 state legislators have signed since 1995. Norquist wants to sign up 90 percent of the Republicans, who hold just under half of the seats in the statehouses. He predicts that could take 10 years. But the time lag doesn't discourage the ever-optimistic Norquist, who enjoys planning for the long haul one step at a time. High on his "to-do" list is leading an effort to honor Reagan that includes urging every county in the country to name a building or a road for the former president, even as he lines up backing for replacing Alexander Hamilton's likeness with a picture of Reagan on the $10 bill. Norquist's other outline for the future, which he has carefully written down and even charted on a timeline, includes a plan to reduce the size of government by half in relation to the national economy in the next 25 years. His aim is to do that by cutting taxes, privatizing Social Security and other government pension programs, selling off public lands, privatizing the postal service and giving universal vouchers for schools. The goal is an anathema to his critics, who charge that he merely wants to put more power and money in the hands of the corporations. Norquist calls his vision "ambitious and reasonable," as he wrote in a column for the conservative Heritage Foundation in 2000. If the plan could be achieved, what does he propose? "I have a recommendation: to cut government in half again by 2050." Find this article at: ajc.com

To: DMaA who wrote (17418)	11/23/2003 3:52:49 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793717

Once the egg is fertilized, the decision to procreate has already been made. Somehow you have changed topics to abortion. If you want to talk about that, I guess we can, but the discussion was about population growth, or lack of same. There was a column posted that bemoaned the slow and negative growth of populations in Europe, a couple of posters chimed in about what a problem that was, and I challenged them to explain why it's a problem. There has been for some time now a trend toward smaller families and no families. It is a natural trend. No state compulsion involved. I questioned why that trend was a problem. First you responded about compulsion. Then you responded about abortion. Like I said, we can talk about either if you like, but that's not what the ongoing discussion was about. Do you know of some reason why slow or no population growth is inherently problematic?