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Demopublicans vs. Republicrats
(
Gary Benoit
,
The New American
, November 13, 2006.)
Despite the notion that an ideological chasm separates the national Republican and Democratic parties, the record shows that there is little difference between the two.
When pundits and politicians give us their expert opinion about the battle between Republicans and Democrats in the November 7 congressional elections, they generally describe the opposing forces as occupying opposite sides of a giant political divide. The Republicans, they say, occupy the conservative high ground — or low ground, depending on the perspective of the commentator — while the Democrats occupy the liberal low ground — or high ground. Of course, since the mainstream media are liberal, the Democrats are usually portrayed as occupying the higher ground.
The Republican Party has been associated with conservatism and the Democratic Party with liberalism since at least the days of FDR. Over the years, the institutional power exercised by these major political titans has ebbed and flowed. During the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, the Democrats controlled not only the White House but both houses of Congress. At other times the government was divided, with neither party controlling all three bodies. But in recent years, the Republicans have controlled all three.
Until now. As we write, about two weeks before the elections, public opinion surveys indicate that the American people have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the Republicans — so much so that the Republicans could lose their majority control of the House and perhaps even the Senate.
The discontent with Republicans has been fueled by the growing unpopularity of the Iraq War and by the association of Republicans with President Bush, whose public approval ratings have been plummeting. The disclosure of Congressman Mark Foley’s sexually explicit instant messages to underage male congressional pages has also harmed Republicans’ election prospects. All of these factors have combined to create a perfect storm for beleaguered Republicans.
Discontent with the war has become so severe that even some Republican congressmen have tempered their support for President Bush. “GOP’s Solidarity on War Is Cracking,” proclaimed a
Los Angeles
Times
headline on October 20. The
Times
article noted that “on the campaign trail, ‘stay the course’ is a nonstarter, even among Bush’s staunchest allies,” and that “GOP candidates are breaking with the White House over how long troops should remain in Iraq.” Many voters are angry, and their mindset is to vote the bums out of office. “People are not voting for the Democrats on this issue,” Pew Research Center director Andy Kohut said. “They’re voting
against
the Republicans.”
This issue of The New American will be mailed to subscribers just one week before the elections, so when you read these words you may know if the gathering storm clouds threatening Republicans will sweep enough of them out of office to put Democrats in charge of the House for the first time since the “Republican Revolution” of 1994. The Senate too may fall to the Democrats, though that’s less likely. It is the prospect of a new “Democratic Revolution” that has caused pundits and politicians alike to assign great weight to this year’s congressional elections. After all, they say, a “Democratic Revolution” would radically alter Congress.
Or would it? Despite the often-repeated notion that a huge ideological chasm separates the Republican and Democratic parties, the record shows that there is little difference in substance between the two. Consequently, there is little reason to expect that a “Democratic Revolution” would lead to a radical ideological shift. This would be true even if a Democrat-controlled Congress were not to operate in a divided government, which obviously it would since George W. Bush would still be president.
The Record in Brief
Even Americans who are not immersed in politics generally understand that conservatism is the philosophy of limited government and low taxes, while liberalism is the philosophy of a larger, more activist government. Bush revisited these contrasting philosophies when he observed at an October 19 campaign stop in Pennsylvania: “Republicans have a clear philosophy: We believe that the people who know best how to spend your money are the people that earn that money, and that is you. The Democrats believe that they can spend your money better than you can.” Rhetoric aside, the Republicans have proven themselves to be very capable of spending other people’s money, which is not to say they should have spent the money in the first place or that they spent it well.
If the Republican-controlled Congress were truly pursuing a policy of fiscal conservatism, it should have at least slowed down the increase in federal spending compared to the increase in spending during the Clinton era, if not cut spending in the absolute sense. Instead, federal spending has actually increased at a faster rate with George W. Bush in the White House than it did when Bill Clinton was president.
The federal government spent $1.409
trillion
in 1993,* the year liberal Democrat Bill Clinton became president. Over the next eight years, federal spending grew at an annualized rate of 3.6 percent, reaching $1.863 trillion in 2001, the year George W. Bush became president. For the fiscal year ending last September 30 (fiscal year 2006), the federal government spent $2.654 trillion, for an annualized growth rate of 7.3 percent with George W. Bush in the White House.
It must be kept in mind, of course, that spending would have increased faster than it actually did during the Clinton years if Clinton could have gotten the Congress to support all of the spending he wanted, such as his “Hillarycare” socialized-medicine proposal. But it must also be kept in mind that George W. Bush has also called for spending increases, and those increases have not been limited to the Iraq War. Moreover, with a Republican president advocating big-government programs in everything but name, many Republican congressmen have supported spending they traditionally would have opposed.
For example, President Bush successfully lobbied congressional Republicans to support a new federal entitlement program providing prescription drug coverage to Medicare recipients. When Congress passed the legislation in November 2003, the program was supposed to cost $400 billion over 10 years, an amount that seemed gargantuan to many Republicans. But with the Bush administration solidly behind it, many of those same Republicans voted for the new entitlement program, believing that the GOP-backed version of the legislation would be better than a Democratic alternative with an even heftier price tag. Now, however, the same program, which has turned out to be more expensive than expected, is projected to cost $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years.
President Bush has also pushed for, and gotten, large spending increases for other non-defense programs. For the Department of Education, for instance, a cabinet-level department that conservatives had once rightly opposed on the grounds that schools should be locally controlled, federal spending more than doubled in five years, rising from $35.7 billion in 2001 to an estimated $84.0 billion in 2006. For international assistance programs — a.k.a. foreign aid, another program conservatives have traditionally opposed — spending climbed from $11.8 billion to an estimated $16.3 billion during the same time period.
It is true that this year’s deficit turned out to be much less than the administration originally forecast last February — $248 billion as opposed to a projected $423 billion — and President Bush was quick to tout that progress. In his October 11 speech about the economy and the budget, Bush boasted that “the difference is because we have a growing economy, and the difference is because we’ve been wise about spending your money.”
The fact that a reputedly conservative president can point to a $248 billion shortfall as good news is a powerful indicator of just how out of control U.S. fiscal policy has become.
Dime’s Worth of Difference?
Back in 1968, George Wallace ran for president as a third-party candidate claiming there was not a dime’s worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. If the difference then amounted to less than a dime, the difference would probably be comparable to a nickel or a penny today, since what differences have existed between the two parties have actually narrowed. Or, if a dime’s worth of difference still exists today, it is because in some areas the Democrats have actually displayed more conservatism than the Republicans, turning upside down what has historically been the case since the days of FDR.
Incredible? Not according to this magazine’s biannual Conservative Index, which rates every U.S. representative on the identical set of 10 key House votes, and every senator on the identical set of 10 key Senate votes, regardless of party affiliation. Though The New American has never tailored the Conservative Index to make one party look good and the other party look bad, the Republicans as a whole have always scored higher than the Democrats — until now.
In the latest Conservative Index in our October 30 issue, the Democrats in the House came out on top with an average score of 55 percent versus the Republicans’ average score of 42 percent. On the other hand, in the Senate the Republicans still maintained the role of the more conservative of the two parties, with an average score of 65 percent versus 38 percent for the Democrats.
If the Conservative Index rated congressmen based on “neo-conservatism” as opposed to traditional conservatism, most Republicans would have earned high scores. Neo-conservatism, the “conservatism” of the Bush administration, is, like liberalism, a philosophy of big government and foreign intervention. But the Conservative Index rates congressmen based on the traditional definition — “adherence to constitutional principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility, national sovereignty, and a traditional foreign policy of avoiding foreign entanglements.”
In the post-9/11 world, and with a neo-conservative in the White House, it is the Republicans and not the Democrats who have been more supportive of measures violating basic liberties for the stated purpose of combating terrorism. In the October 30 Conservative Index, for instance, most Republicans supported and most Democrats opposed the Military Commissions Act, which truncates the rights of defendants deemed “unlawful enemy combatants” (see House vote #39 and Senate vote #39 in that index). Also, most Republicans supported and most Democrats opposed the National Security Agency’s warrantless electronic surveillance program, which violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches (see House vote #40).† President Bush lobbied hard for both pieces of legislation. But not all Republicans went along. In fact, the only two congressmen who earned 100 percent in either the House or Senate in the latest index were both Republican: Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina.
Republicans have also been more supportive of the war in Iraq than Democrats, though both parties supported Bush’s decision to launch an offensive war against Iraq in the first place. The growing quagmire in Iraq has been blamed on Bush’s supposed go-it-alone foreign policy, despite the fact that the stated purpose of our intervention was to disarm Iraq of its reputed weapons of mass destruction pursuant to UN resolutions. The president also plunged the nation into the crucible of war without the constitutionally required declaration of war, and he has kept the troops there long after the alleged WMDs were not found, for the purpose of nation building.
This is the policy of liberalism or neo-conservatism. It is not the policy of traditional conservatism, which includes avoiding foreign quarrels, going to war only when necessary to defend America and her citizens, and even then obtaining a declaration of war from Congress. Though liberal Democrats have now become highly critical of the Iraq War, they do not support a noninterventionist foreign policy any more than the neo-conservatives do. Recall the Vietnam War during the Johnson presidency, and our interventions in the Balkans and Haiti under Bill Clinton.
Though President Bush has been able to persuade most Republicans to support his Iraq policy to date, that support is not as solid as it once was. Indeed, though the president has been very successful in getting Republicans to support his policies in general, he has not been successful in every instance. In December 2005, for example, most Republican representatives voted for immigration reform legislation that lacked the guest-worker/amnesty legislation that Bush and many Democrats strongly advocate. On the other hand, last spring Bush was able to convince enough Republican senators to come on-board to get a guest-worker/amnesty bill through the Senate.
President Bush was also able to twist enough Republican arms to get Congress to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), a NAFTA-type agreement for the United States and Central America that will entangle our country in another regional arrangement as part of a step-by-step process to submerge the United States in a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) modeled after the European Union. Another step in the process is the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) for North America, jointly announced by President Bush and his counterparts from Canada and Mexico at a March 2005 summit in Waco, Texas. The SPP “partnership” is being implemented step by step, without congressional approval, and if allowed to proceed unchecked its implementation will lead to opening our already porous U.S. border that the president gives lip service to securing.
Fortunately, many conservative Republicans have grown increasingly irate with the direction President Bush and the Republican leadership are taking their party. “Conservatives are as angry as I have seen them in my nearly five decades in politics,” Richard Viguerie, president of ConservativeHQ.com, wrote in the October
Washington Monthly.
“I would guess that 40 percent of conservatives are ambivalent about the November election or want the Republicans to lose.”
Viguerie explained: “The Big Government Republicans in Washington do not merit the support of conservatives. They have busted the federal budget for generations to come with the prescription-drug benefit and the creation and expansion of other programs.... They have expanded government regulation into every aspect of our lives and refused to deal seriously with mounting domestic problems such as illegal immigration.... And they have sunk us into the very sort of nation-building war that candidate George W. Bush promised to avoid.” Viguerie’s opinion piece for
Washington Monthly
was one of seven from “prominent conservatives” who, in the words of that publication, “dare[d] to speak the unspeakable: They hope the Republicans lose in 2006.”
Looking for Real Conservatives
The record speaks for itself: neither George W. Bush nor most congressional Republicans are genuinely conservative. But neither are liberal Democrats. Many American voters — both liberal and conservative — want the Republicans who have been in control out of office. But simply replacing neo-conservative Republicans with liberal Democrats will not clean up the mess in Washington since liberal Democrats are part of the problem. Admittedly, many congressional Democrats may
now
oppose some of Bush’s dangerous proposals for amassing presidential power, but how would these same congressmen vote if Hillary Clinton or another like-minded Democrat were to be elected president two years from now?
In the meantime, gridlock in a divided government could impede the accumulation of more power in the executive branch. But how much of that gridlock would be genuine — and how much would be political theater — when both major parties serve the same power elites? As Lou Dobbs explained in his CNN.com commentary posted on October 18: “I don’t know about you, but I can’t take seriously anyone who takes either the Republican Party or Democratic Party seriously — in part because neither party takes you and me seriously; in part because both are bought and paid for by corporate America and special interests.... Political, business and academic elites are waging an outright war on working men and women and their families, and there is no chance the American middle class will survive this assault if the dominant forces unleashed over the past five years continue unchecked.”
Dobbs added that “those elites treasure your silence, as it enables them to claim America’s future for their own.” But if the problem is bipartisan, who is there to vote for who has a realistic chance of winning, outside of a rare exception such as Ron Paul? The only way to solve that problem is to wake the town and tell the people and get them involved, election year and nonelection year alike. Once the political climate is changed, many Republicans and Democrats will adjust their rhetoric and actions in order to keep themselves electable, and if they don’t they will be replaced on election day by other candidates who do offer their fellow citizens a choice and who may or may not be Republicans or Democrats.
* Budget figures are in fiscal years.
† The Senate version of this legislation did not reach the Senate floor prior to the adjournment for the elections, but the issue may be taken up once again during the lame-duck session.