14 Tuesday Dec 1999
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Some Democrats are now talking about a Gore-Bradley ticket for November (and in that order, lest there be any doubt). To see why, all one need do is look at the other side. Compare the state of play between Gov. George Bush and his main challenger, Sen. John McCain, and that between Vice President Gore and his main challenger, Bill Bradley.
07 Tuesday Dec 1999
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
In the past 10 days, Al Gore’s presidential campaign has finally managed to get out of engine-revving neutral and into a forward gear. The surprising early display of vulnerability on the vice president’s part has given way to a new self-confidence. In policy terms, Mr. Gore has got himself back on the Third Way track.
30 Tuesday Nov 1999
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
For the first time, a poll shows John McCain ahead of George W. Bush in New Hampshire, a clear boost for the most serious challenger to the Texas governor for the GOP nomination. But it would be no less a mistake to overestimate its significance than to deny that it constitutes proof of the Arizona senator’s political viability.
23 Tuesday Nov 1999
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
The conservative case against the budget agreement reached by the White House and Congress goes like this: Because of political cowardice, congressional Republicans abandoned the budget caps they had sworn to uphold two years ago in the balanced budget deal they reached with the White House. Although they claim to have protected the Social Security Trust Fund, they have, in fact, dipped into the money. And at the end of the day, the Republican Congress gave President Clinton more money, even, than he had asked for in his budget submission in January 1999.
08 Monday Nov 1999
Posted in Weekly Standard
The budget battle of 1999, hard to believe but true, has featured GOP cunning.
View this article at The Weekly Standard
REPUBLICANS BOTH INSIDE and outside Congress have been pleasantly surprised by how well they are doing politically in this year’s budget fight with President Clinton. Ever since Clinton squashed the Republican Congress over the government shutdown in 1995-96, the autumnal rites of appropriation have been a time of dread for the GOP, an exercise in wondering who among them will be a human sacrifice come the next election as a result of drawing the wrath of the Democratic administration.
This time, simply put, they are not getting killed. In fact, thanks to their tireless reiteration of their unifying theme — namely, that they are going to protect every last dime of Social Security from marauding Democrats — and thanks to the money the GOP is spending on advertising in select congressional districts repeating the point, poll numbers show the Republican message taking hold. It looks like Republicans have at last found an incantation with the same black magic power as the Democrats’ “Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment.”
02 Tuesday Nov 1999
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Bill Clinton rightly gets credit for pioneering “New Democrat” governance and Third Way politics. He led the Democratic Party into new political territory, the land of balanced budgets and the end of the welfare entitlement, leaving behind party baggage of fiscal irresponsibility and an attachment to Great Society-style social programs. The question for Democrats is how permanent these changes in the party’s governing philosophy are.
26 Tuesday Oct 1999
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Campaign-finance reform died as expected in the Senate, but the issue will soon be back, propelled by two things: the progress proponents made on the issue this year and some very interesting figures on fund-raising that point to the missing link in the debate so far.
19 Tuesday Oct 1999
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War has been characterized by substantial bipartisan agreement on the basics overlaid with sharp partisan quarreling at the margins. The fate of the test ban treaty defeated in the Senate last week is illuminating not because it is typical of partisan foreign policy tangles in recent years but because it is highly unusual. It brought into sharp relief a major area on which fundamental differences between the parties remain.
12 Tuesday Oct 1999
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
The substance of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, now enmeshed in controversy over ratification by the U.S. Senate, is something over which reasonable people differ. On one side, the treaty may, at the margins, create a regime that deters nations from acquiring a nuclear capability – though clearly, the treaty will do nothing to stop the nuclear ambitions of a North Korea or Iraq, to pick two international menaces, nor would it likely have done anything to check the determination of India and then Pakistan to get the bomb. Russian and Chinese nuclear programs likewise seem to be proceeding apace.
07 Thursday Oct 1999
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Twice in two weeks, George W. Bush has rapped the knuckles of the Republican congressional party. The first was a smack at a proposal to revise the Earned Income Tax Credit, spreading out the annual payment lower income workers now receive at tax time over 12 months instead. The Capitol Hill GOP proposed the change as a way to help meet budget targets this year. Mr. Bush denounced it as an effort “to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.” It’s dead.
Tod Lindberg 