-
Dick Morris’ Bad Entitlements Advice
April 1, 2013 | 41 comments
-
Will Welker Walk?
March 11, 2013 | 273 comments
-
Not Yet Elite, But Pretty Neat
February 5, 2013 | 8 comments
-
The Harbaugh Bowl
January 22, 2013 | 33 comments
-
Tom Terrific
January 14, 2013 | 55 comments
Feature
That '90s Show
A Republican House bets this isn’t the Clinton years all over again.
Since the Republican victory in last year’s elections was frequently compared to 1994, it was not terribly surprising that many observers expected the next two years to be a repeat of 1995-96. The conventional wisdom held that the resurgent Republicans would overreach, allowing an unpopular Democratic president a new lease on life and an improbable second term. The new Republican-controlled House would reprise the role of Newt Gingrich’s revolutionaries, while Barack Obama replayed Bill Clinton.
Six months into this new era of divided government, a rerun of the Seinfeld decade remains a plausible scenario. Conservative commentator and Republican campaign veteran Jim Pinkerton has gone so far as to argue that the “Tea Party-ized House” will make such an inviting target that Obama will emulate not Clinton but Harry Truman, running entirely against a “Do Nothing” Congress in 2012. But it is important to note that there are key differences between the 1990s and now.
First, no current Republican leader has emerged as a PR villain of Gingrich-like proportions. Polls show House Speaker John Boehner is becoming better known and less popular, but not to the point where his photo in a campaign commercial is a silver bullet for Democratic candidates. He isn’t as given to bombastic pronouncements as Gingrich. Voters who pay only a modest amount of attention to politics are more likely to be familiar with his tears than his views or public remarks on controversial issues.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has penetrated the public consciousness even less than Boehner, causing Democrats to look around for other congressional Republicans to demonize. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota is one target for liberals eager to relive their two-minute hate against Sarah Palin, but she has yet to acquire Palin’s name identification. House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan has become another potential Gingrich figure, though his calm and cerebral manner might persuade Democrats to stick to demagoguery about his proposed spending cuts instead. No matter how it treats his 2012 budget proposal, Time will probably not run a holiday cover story comparing Ryan to the Grinch who stole Christmas.
While the Democrats’ retention of the Senate has frustrated many conservative ambitions, it has also complicated any media narrative about right-wing control of Washington. Where Clinton seemed besieged by Republicans on all sides of Capitol Hill, nothing can reach Obama’s desk without at least token bipartisan support. Tea Party senators like Rand Paul are as likely to be in opposition to legislation that emerges from the Senate as they are to be ramming conservative policy proposals down the president’s throat. In their imagined sequel to the 1996 election, Democrats may need Newt Gingrich to play himself by running for president.
BUT THERE ARE a lot of similarities between then and now as well, and these commonalities have guided the major players in the 2011-12 political drama. When they entered into their initial budget confrontation with Obama, it was clear that whatever the Tea Party activists may have wanted, the Republican leadership was determined to avoid a government shutdown. Despite major changes in the media over the past 16 years, such as the rise of conservative-leaning Fox News, GOP leaders seemed convinced that a shutdown would play as badly for Republicans this year as it did in 1995. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat opined that Boehner “made it abundantly clear — in word, deed, and especially body language — that he wanted the government shut down about as much as Indiana Jones wants to be locked in a room full of cobras.”
Meanwhile, President Obama has forced himself to copy Clinton’s triangulation strategy even though it manifestly runs counter to his ideological and temperamental inclinations. He signed a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts for upper-income earners, although he clearly wasn’t very happy about it. He reached a budget agreement with the House Republicans that cut at least some spending. (That time, Obama did pretend to be happy.) He fine-tuned his fiscal 2012 budget to appear more serious about deficit reduction in response to the Ryan plan. And Obama has quietly adopted most of George W. Bush’s national security policies, down to launching another preventive war against a Muslim country and enlisting General David Petraeus — the man who oversaw the surge in Iraq — to run the country’s intelligence apparatus.
Virtually all of these moves were bitterly unpopular with Obama’s liberal base, and the current president is much less comfortable distancing himself from progressives than was Clinton. Obama was nominated in large part as a reaction against the Clintons’ triangulating ways, a successful version of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign. But changing political circumstances have led the president to embrace the Clintons’ Democratic Leadership Council logic: he believes independents will reward at least the appearance of responsible behavior on fiscal policy and national defense while angry liberals will have nowhere else to go. Daily Kos visitors aren’t going to vote for Mitt Romney.
Yet Clinton-era triangulation never made partisan attacks on Republicans less potent. In fact, because he was ceding substantive policy ground to the GOP on issues ranging from welfare reform to the capital gains tax, Clinton needed to sharpen the rhetorical distinctions between the parties, not dull them. So even as he ended up working with Republicans to balance the budget, he also promised to protect the country from their cuts — real and imagined — to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment. He challenged the Republicans to be fiscally responsible, and then punished them for it at the polls when they complied.
That’s exactly what the Democrats hope to repeat this time around. House Republicans dodged a government shutdown by agreeing to a continuing resolution that to some extent fudged its $38.5 billion in spending reductions, but they have passed a budget that is breathtakingly honest about the scope of entitlement cuts that will be necessary to keep the federal tax burden from soaring past its postwar average of 18 to 20 percent of GDP. Where the Gingrich Republicans promised to grow Medicare more slowly, the Ryan Republicans want to partially privatize Medicare. While the Gingrich Republicans favored a smaller increase in Medicare recipients’ benefits, the Ryan Republicans are actually cutting benefits (albeit on the theory that they can also cut costs).
WHAT HASN’T CHANGED at all is the standard Democratic talking point. In 1995, Republicans estimated that their Medicare reforms would save $270 billion while most estimates pegged their proposed tax cut at $245 billion. Naturally, Democrats argued that these figures proved Republicans were cutting Medicare benefits-even abolishing Medicare-in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich. “Finally we learn the truth about how the Republicans want to eliminate Medicare,” warned one 1996 Clinton campaign ad. Dozens of other Democratic commercials in down-ballot races used similar scare tactics.
Ever strong believers in recycling, Democrats have dusted off their 1990s rhetoric and reused it in attacks on the Ryan plan. “Newt Gingrich has said Medicare should wither on the vine,” intoned Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) “Well, this Republican budget would chop it down.” Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) also took aim at Ryan’s proposed block granting of Medicaid: “They use Medicaid as a piggy bank in order to avoid asking the people at the very top of our economic ladder, the very richest in our society, the highest income earners of millions of dollars or more, to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.”
Higher-brow liberals have chimed in with similar talking points. Jonathan Chait writes in the New Republic that Ryan has consciously decided to “cut Medicare in order to cut taxes for the rich.” Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times, agrees “a large part of the supposed savings from spending cuts would go, not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for tax cuts.” John Cassidy blogged for the New Yorker that the Republican budget “featured slashing reductions in domestic spending, more big tax cuts for the rich, and the conversion of Medicare to a voucher program.” Cassidy concluded, “By spelling out what the Republicans would do to Medicare and Medicaid, [Ryan] may well have deprived his party of the White House for the foreseeable future.”
That’s exactly what the Democrats are betting. Concerns Republicans would cut Medicare certainly helped deprive them of the White House in 1996. Bob Dole ineffectually decried the Democrats’ “Mediscare” tactics, but the then 73-year-old lost the 65 and over vote by 50 percent to 43 percent. Dole also failed to carry senior-heavy Florida, which had been the second-largest remaining weapon in the GOP’s electoral vote arsenal just four years before.
Then as now, Republicans argued that they were not just cutting Medicare but “saving” the program by preventing its insolvency. And they had some advantages in the '90s that don’t obtain now. The baby boomers were then in their peak earning years, not entering retirement. The economy was on the cusp of a high-tech boom, not coming off the Great Recession. The GOP’s $500 per child tax credit was harder to characterize as a tax cut for the wealthy than lowering the top marginal tax rate to 25 percent.
About the Author
W. James Antle, III, author of the new book Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?, is editor of the Daily Caller News Foundation and a senior editor of The American Spectator. You can follow him on Twitter @jimantle.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (23) | Leave a comment
More Articles by W. James Antle, III
More Articles From Feature
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/06/29/that-90s-show
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
Alan Brooks| 6.29.11 @ 8:40AM
TRANSLATION:
After the dust settles next year you will elect a POTUS:
a) good enough to do Viagra commercials.
b) good enough to be tortured at the Hanoi Hilton.
You are by far your own worst enemies.
Alan Brooks| 6.29.11 @ 9:20AM
"Bob Dole ineffectually..."
oh no kidding?
you don't say
you don't say
you don't say.
'who is it, dear?'
He don't say.
lydia | 6.30.11 @ 1:50PM
I am a 28 years old doctor, mature and beautiful.and now I am seeking a good man who can give me real love , so i got a username Andromeda2002 on--s'e'ek'c'ou'ga'r.c óm--.it is the first and best club for y'ounger women and old'er men, or older women and y'ounger men,to int'eract with each other. Maybe you wanna ch'eck 'it out or tell your friends!
because of changed demographics, the eventual outcome will be another Bush. You are all merely going through the motions.
hardcard| 6.29.11 @ 9:31AM
The 90's ??? Please read "Reckless Endangerment" by Morgenson and Rosner.
Pete| 6.29.11 @ 10:21AM
I would harp on the wasted "stimulus" package over and over and over, detailing where these funds went and how little they produced in terms of results. Force Dumbo to insult everyone's intelligence by repeating his retarded defense - "It could have been so much worse." The ridicule he brings on himself by repeating something so demonstrably false will eventually cause him to fold up shop and take his ball home, crying racism all the way.
CalMark| 6.29.11 @ 11:37AM
Lots of tired conventional wisdom in this piece.
Mr. Antle, the GOP Congress did NOT overreach. They cravenly let themselves get demagogued into abandoning the ideas they were elected to implement.
They were energetically doing what they got elected to do, until they got blindsided on school lunches, causing them to lose their momentum and their way. After two decades of hindsight, it's obvious Newt Gingrich was a lousy leader without the focus, tactical smarts, or judgment to fight back and win.
Speaking of Newt. His demonization was the result of inept self-defense and inability to counter-attack, inept squandering of a political position that politicians dream about (leave it to the GOP), and stupid mismanagement of his caucus.
In short, the GOP Class of '94 were doing what they got elected to do. They failed from incompetence, timidity, and lack of leadership. It was not for being "out of touch." To say anything else is to enable Leftist spin to redefine history and demonize conservatism.
Alan Brooks| 6.29.11 @ 1:47PM
No Calmark,
Newt WAS out of touch. He tried to square a circle with his syncretization of futurism with conservatism.
Alan Brooks| 6.29.11 @ 1:49PM
...not he, but his beliefs, were all over the road.
Michael L. Hauschild| 6.29.11 @ 1:41PM
"They must lead the country away from decades of bipartisan mendacity....."
"They" will be gone.
Alan Brooks| 6.29.11 @ 1:51PM
But because of changed demographics, the eventual outcome will be another Bush. You are all merely going through the motions.
TheRightIsAnythingBut| 6.29.11 @ 2:00PM
From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
Madison - A GOP candidate from Green Bay running in a Senate recall race has been convicted of two misdemeanor counts, arrested on other occasions, and now faces another probe by the Oconto County Sheriff's Department.
The incidents involving David VanderLeest, which were raised by Democrats Wednesday, stem from domestic violence allegations. VanderLeest, 34, helped organize the recall against Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) and is the only Republican on the ballot challenging Hansen in the July 19 election.
"It's an open investigation at the current time. It has also been shared with our human services department," Clark Longsine, chief deputy at the Oconto County Sheriff's Department, said Wednesday of the latest investigation. Longsine said he couldn't provide more details.
VanderLeest, a Green Bay wind farm developer with a history of other legal troubles, pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor disorderly conduct charges in 2007 as part of a plea deal. Also Wednesday, Democrats pointed to at least two other dates in which VanderLeest was arrested for alleged domestic abuse involving his ex-wife in 2006 and 2009 but was not convicted.
His former wife also obtained restraining orders against him in 2005 and again in 2006.
Seems to me that Clinton isn't the only bad actor out there on the public stage.
C'mon - this is the best you got?
TrueBlue| 6.29.11 @ 2:39PM
At least GOP candidates manage to show shame and step out of the limelight when they get caught (though I'd much prefer they were actually honest, that'll never happen with a politician), unlike the Dems Clinton and Weiner, who proclaim innocence lying the whole way.
TheRightIsAnythingBut| 6.29.11 @ 5:10PM
Ya mean,Republicans like Newt Gingrich who admitted to affairs even as he was maneuvering Clinton toward impeachment? Or Republicans like Larry Craig who definitely did not go gently into that good night? Ya mean THOSE Republicans?
The issue is really not the bad behavior - the issue is that Republicans so smugly assume the moral high ground when face it - it's all such a dirty business.
Anthony| 6.29.11 @ 3:32PM
What these feckless, weak, and timid Rs have learned since the '90s is the question of the ages.
Boehner, thus far, appears to have learned little from Newt. He is weak voiced and completely outmaneuvered by the Ds, who know the game of media spin.
He allowed Obozo to hide behind business as usual by participating in the golf round. Wow, what a horrible capitulation to the insiders game, as opposed to the recognition that the very existence of America is at stake.
Obozo today, revived the '90s with his disgusting false choice between corporate jet tax breaks and medical research.This is how low and reprehensible the Ds are, and how woefully unprepared the Rs are at countering this crap.
Boehner should have held his own presser and exposed Obozo for the lying fraud that he is.
The problem is, business as usual will not work anymore. America is at its end if there is not a systemic change in how we think, act, and govern ourselves as Americans.
If the Rs don't have the guts to take a stand, it will all fall apart and America will devolve into chaos. The greatest nation on earth will have gone the way of Rome.
Frankly, I don't think the Rs have it in them to save America.
Purpleguy| 6.29.11 @ 5:19PM
"First, no current Republican leader has emerged as a PR villain of Gingrich-like proportions." - are you kidding? Paul Ryan and his "Kill Medicare" plan which doesn't even cut the deficit and balance a budget until 2080 is all over the place as Enemy #1. "Pretty Boy Floyd" is in for a rude awakening in his district in Wisconsin in 2012.
As for Boehner, who can be mad at a man who would cry if you yelled at the poor sap? He turns on the waterworks so fast, they should import him to Texas to help ease the drought!
alice moore| 6.29.11 @ 8:30PM
What the writer of this article ignores are the pocketbook issues. In 1996, the average American had a full fridge, an SUV in every garage, a secure job, and plenty of circuses. John Wayne Gacy could have won reelection.
Any GOP nominee in 2012 only has to say, "Are you better off..." you know the rest. Slam and Dunk.
BTW the GOP held on to the House and Senate in 1996. Bill Clinton didn't have very long coat tails.
carnot| 6.29.11 @ 8:50PM
good points.
you know....there was a snippet on Cavuto today in which an analyst noted big Wall Street financial houses are planning on, and have initiated, outsourcing overseas of well paying jobs due to impending, onerous Dodd-Frank regulations. There were yet other pieces on the recurring theme of Obamacare un-affordability. The signs are all there of an inexorable march to disaster. It doesn't matter how the Republicans play the game.....eventually the party in power will be caught in the whipsaw. The only issue is how far the suffering and decline must go before the tidal wave sweeps away the entrenched.
Johnny| 6.30.11 @ 7:14AM
If, per chance, the repubs. allow the dims to decide for them that Romney will be the nominee the end will be nigh. If we don't find the conservative voice that can re-install our values and morals into this government and country we will be done.The Bush era was just as bad as the Obama one with the exception of the pace at which the decline has been facilitated. Bush was, however, a decent person that could not fight the dims majority in congress and was somewhat misguided whereas Obama is out to purposefully change our way of life. Re-distribution of wealth, to him, I believe, is meant from the U.S. to the "less fortunate" countries of the world. Sorry if you deserving folks on the government dole here thought he meant to give it to you.
RCV| 6.30.11 @ 11:17AM
The consequences of not raising the debt ceiling and causing a default would be catastrophic and far reaching - sending interest rates soaring and killing even more jobs. The repercussions for Republicans would be to make the 1995 government shutdown fallout pale in comparison.
Eric Cantor knows this, and has craftily pulled out of the negoatiations at the last minute to leave John Boehner, whose job he wants, holding the bag. If Boehner compromises to avoid the looming catastrophe, he will be toast for tea party Republicans, and Cantor will likely move up to his job. If Boehner doesn't compromise and the catastrophe happens, he will get the blame for the electoral whiplash that will hit the GOP, and Cantor will get his job anyway.
We shall see.
alice moore| 6.30.11 @ 4:44PM
The Republicans held onto both the House and the Senate quite handily in 1996. They only lost an ephemeral PR battle for a few weeks.
We can't kick the can down the road to raise the debt ceiling.
RCV| 6.30.11 @ 7:29PM
We shall see.
POST American| 6.30.11 @ 11:43PM
---The RIIA/CFR Tavistock Institute engineered
and set up, Rockefeller-linked front man Bill Clinton?
Nostalgia for those days of full spectrum
RED China-Globalist sellout, and the first of the
false flag police state operations against
American citizens themselves(WACO).
Of course, along with BOTH Bushes and the
former Kissinger aide, son of CIA linked Ann
Dunham ----Barack Obama, he too is awaiting
RETRO-active impeachment and prison
for TREASON against the sovereignty and
people of this republic.
And this time ALLLLL the Hearst Corp. set-up Arminian heretics in the world (ie Billy Graham) ain't gonna' save his ass-------
NO KIDDING
weddingdress | 7.1.11 @ 12:36AM
The Republicans held onto both the House and the Senate quite handily in 1996. They only lost an ephemeral PR battle for a few weeks.
We can't kick the can down the road to raise the debt ceiling.