DOVER, New Hampshire — I had only barely disembarked from the
golf cart ferrying me from a field-cum-parking lot to the Strafford
County Republican Picnic and Family Day when a woman in full Indian
garb approached with a tomahawk. Would I like to learn to throw
it?
“Do I need that kind of protection here?” I asked. The answer
was lost in the boom of the Revolutionary War militia re-enactors’
cannon, a cacophony that left my heart and stomach quarreling over
the space at the top of my throat. A couple colonialists in the
makeshift loyalist encampment mimed hand gestures suggesting next
time I should cover my ears.
At first blush, this hardly seems famously moderate New York
Governor George Pataki’s natural audience. In the tent housing the
raffle prizes there were more people fingering Christmas
decorations with a patriotic bent and Spychips: How Major
Corporations and the Government Plan to Track Your Every Move
than the lonely copy of Christie Todd Whitman’s It’s My Party,
Too. One man sashayed through the tent wearing a T-shirt that
read, “I’d Rather Hunt with Dick Cheney than Ride with Ted
Kennedy.”
The fish out of water scenario seemed to be confirmed as two
black SUVs pulled up and Pataki walked by into the farmhouse.
Strafford County GOP Chair Charlie Reynolds told the crowd, “There
goes the Governor. Don’t worry. He’ll be back.” No one seemed
particularly concerned. Shortly thereafter, Pataki followed an
uncharacteristically fiery speech by New Hampshire Congressman Jeb
Bradley with a lame call and response: “I have a simple question
for you: Do we have any Republicans here this afternoon?” A
smattering of polite applause. “No, wait, let me try this again. Do
we have any Republicans here this afternoon?” Anyone present who
wasn’t a Republican just gave $20 to the Strafford County GOP, but
there was louder applause anyway as the sunlight glinted off the
Strafford County Republicans Welcome George Pataki sign in the
background.
Ironically enough, it was two huge explosions of cannon fire
that saved the uber low-key Pataki.
“You know, just twenty miles away there all those thousands of
Democrats protesting President Bush” — the President last weekend
was at his parents’ place in Kennebunkport, Maine, where the AP and
Washington Post put the number of protesters at 700 or so — “but
we have the New Hampshire militia here to protect us here so we’re
safe,” Pataki said, eliciting hoots, hollers, and cheers from the
crowd. “Three or four members of a militia are enough to take care
of 20,000 of those Democratic protesters.”
Too bad the militia wasn’t in New Hampshire two weeks ago when
Pataki confused the Granite State with Vermont. Nevertheless,
once Pataki and the cannon crew had the crowd’s attention, things
went swimmingly. Much better, in fact than one might presume of a
moderate in a lion’s den of rock-ribbed conservatism.
IT’S REALLY NOT ALL THAT DIFFICULT to tell grassroots activists of
any stripe what they want to hear. They are, by nature, vocal about
their philosophies and goals. It’s wooing swing voters without
upsetting the grassroots that’s the real trick. (Although, after
six years of George W. Bush we can probably safely say it’s not all
that tricky.) Thus, Pataki sidestepped social issues where
his liberal stance might get him into trouble, steering instead
toward safer Republican environs by praising Abraham Lincoln, the
Founding Fathers and fiscal discipline while pooh-poohing activist
judges, illegal immigrants and MoveOn faux rebels. The
cherry on top was no shocker. “As he often did,” Pataki said,
“Ronald Reagan put it best when he said, ‘We are a people that has
a government and not the other way around.’”
Much like most governors seeking the presidency, the guts of
Pataki’s speech was a bad news/good news description of how despite
liberal obstinacy he transformed New York into a Free Market Garden
of Eden.
“If any of you doubt the consequences of not having Republicans
in power, all you have to do is visit New York State,” Pataki
intoned darkly. “We had a twenty-year unfettered experiment in
liberal Democratic Big Government. By any objective standard it was
a failure.”
According to Pataki, pre-Pataki New York had the highest tax
burden in America, was “dead last in jobs” as employers fled a
capital sucking vampire of a state with a $5 billion deficit, the
lowest credit rating in the nation (tied with Louisiana — go
Cajuns!) and one out of every eleven citizens on welfare. George
Pataki showed up with a huge pair of golden scissors and, inter
alia, cut income taxes, especially on low income workers, cut
welfare rolls by more than a million, cut state employment rolls by
25,000, cut taxes on beer…all of which turned deficit to surplus
and the worst credit rating to highest the state has had in 30
years.
There are, however, dissenters, if not on the substance of these
claims, then certainly with regard to consistency. Last year
National Review ran a story entitled “The GOP’s Pataki Problem,” wherein John J.
Miller opined Pataki’s “tenure as the Empire State’s chief
executive began with incredible promise — but its legacy almost
certainly will be one of squandered opportunity, shrunken ambition,
and conservative disappointment.” In a 2005 Cato Institute analysis
Stephen Moore and Stephen Slivinski wrote,
“After enacting substantial cuts in spending and taxes in his first
term, Pataki subsequently allowed New York’s budgets to grow too
rapidly, and he besmirched his tax cut record by proposing and
signing into law large tax increases.” More recently, the Manhattan
Institute’s E.J. McMahon noted, “the state funds spending hike (excluding
federal grants) for fiscal 2007 is the second largest Pataki has
proposed in his 12 years as governor.”
“You shouldn’t tell people, ‘Don’t worry, government will
provide,’” Pataki nonetheless told New Hampshire activists in his
best Father Republican voice. “You should tell people, ‘Get a job,
work, develop your skills, and you can be a part of the American
dream.’”
Can you tell he’s not running for Governor of New York
anymore?
UNSURPRISINGLY, PATAKI IS BULLISH on the War on Terror, Democrats’
“negativity” and crediting Republican support for the Patriot Act
and eavesdropping programs for creating a situation where “we have
never been attacked since Sept. 11, while the rest of the world
has.”
Without mentioning Rudy Giuliani, key points in Pataki’s speech
seem meant to steal the former New York City Mayor’s thunder.
(Social moderates do not want to split the primary vote.)
First, on the tough-on-crime front — “When I took office, we
started arresting the root causes of violent crime, convicting the
root causes of violent crime, and putting them behind bars for long
periods of time” — and then with a first person account of
shunning his security detail’s insistence that he leave Lower
Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001 for his Albany command center so he
could let people know “their government was functioning and was
going to protect them so they would not be afraid of what might
happen in the future.” Then came the requisite relaying of the
Larger Meaning of It All: “I went to lower Manhattan to reassure
the people,” Pataki said. “I came from lower Manhattan reassured
by the people.”
TOWARD THE END OF HIS SPEECH, Pataki has a decent laugh line laying
out “neutral, objective proof that our policies work for everyone.”
He imagines the thinking behind the decision of a “certain
prominent couple” to move to New York, rather than his home state
of Arkansas or her home state of Illinois, and concludes, “Bill and
Hillary Clinton voted with their feet for Republican policies.”
Well, let’s not go too crazy on the New
York-as-a-conservative-Mecca tip. In the middle of the bit,
however, another two ear shattering explosions came out of the
militia camp just as Pataki was noting how the former First Family
could have gone to Hollywood to be with Barbra Streisand and
pals.
“I mention Barbra Streisand and the cannon goes off,” Pataki
joked.
Now if the Governor could only create his own big bang, he’d
really be getting somewhere.
