      |
|
|
 |
|
« Back to Is the G.O.P. on the Right Track? main page    Transcript for: Is the G.O.P. on the Right Track?Think Tank TRANSCRIPTS:Is the GOP on the Right Track? ANNOUNCER: 'Think Tank' has been made possible by Amgen, unlockingthe secrets of life through cellular and molecular biology. At Amgen,we produce medicines that improve people's lives today and bring hopefor tomorrow. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theWilliam H. Donner Foundation, the Randolph Foundation, and the JMFoundation. MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I¹m Ben Wattenberg. The Republicansare on the attack, slashing Congressional staff and committeesshaking up their own leadership and planning big changes in taxation,welfare and crime. Official Washington is flabbergasted. But can theypull it off? What does the future hold for the Republican Party? Joining us to sort through the conflict and the consensus are:Lynne Cheney, a former professor of English, former chairman of theNational Endowment for the Humanities in the Bush administration, andnow a distinguished fellow at the American Enterprise Institute;Kevin Phillips, author of 'The Emerging Republican Majority,' 'ThePace Setting: The Politics of Rich and Poor,' and more recently,'Arrogant Capital'; William Kristol, former professor of governmentat Harvard University, chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle,and now chairman of the Project for the Republican Future; andStephen Hess, senior fellow in government studies at the BrookingsInstitution and author of 'Live from Capitol Hill: Studies ofCongress and the Media.' The question before this house -- and that House: Is the GOP onthe right track? This week on 'Think Tank.' Republicans today are riding high. The electorate just handed themcontrol of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.The GOP seems to have made the 1994 election a referendum on A) BillClinton; and B) the Democratic Congress. Both lost big. The Republicans offered the voters a Contract with America, a setof sweeping reforms designed to radically reduce the size andinfluence of the federal government. In the first hundred days, theRepublicans promised to bring to the House floor the following: abalanced budget amendment, a line item veto, a stronger crime bill,tough welfare reform, stronger child support requirements, a$500-per-child tax credit, a boost in defense spending, a higherSocial Security earnings limit, a capital gains tax cut, curbs onlitigation, and congressional term limits. Will the Republicans unify to pass the contract? If they do, willthey stay unified or will they dissolve into contentious factions --for example, the religious right versus the pro-choicers,supply-siders versus deficit hawks, and isolationists versusinternationalists? Some worry that the Republicans have already swerved too far tothe right. Senator Alan Simpson, a conservative, lost the race forSenate Republican whip to an even more conservative candidate,Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi. Okay. You saw that massive list of legislation. Let's go aroundthe horn here once, starting with you, Kevin Phillips, and get abrief response to this question: What are the Republicans trying todo and what should they be trying to do? MR. PHILLIPS: Well, the Republicans scored what can be called amidterm landslide against an unpopular president and an unpopular setof programs. Usually it's a danger to over-interpret that. We've seenthese before. And what we have here, I think, is a potential massiveover-interpretation. You have an incoming House speaker who has a 2-to 1 negative jobapproval, even though most people don't know him yet. And you'retalking about a first hundred days. I think grandiosity has gottenout of the closet here, and I think Republicans should be a lot morecareful and cautious. MR. WATTENBERG: I like the word 'grandiosity.' Steve, go ahead. MR. HESS: I disagree with Kevin to the degree that I do think thatthe Republicans have been presented with a grand opportunity tobecome the majority party, a condition that could then last for adecade or even a generation. But the window of opportunity is narrow.To get there, they've got to deliver. This is a country that reallyisn't very interested in political parties and loves to split itsticket, and they've got to remember that they got there in largepart, I think, courtesy of William Jefferson Clinton, not necessarilytheir Contract with America. MR. WATTENBERG: Bill Kristol. MR. KRISTOL: Republicans should pass as much of the Contract withAmerica as we can, and we will pass quite a lot of the Contract withAmerica. A lot of the provisions in it will get a lot of Democraticvotes, and Bill Clinton will sign large chunks of it. MR. WATTENBERG: Lynne Cheney. MS. CHENEY: It's true that this election was in part a referendumon Bill Clinton. People do not like Bill Clinton. The electorateshowed that when they went into the voting booth. But it's what BillClinton represents that they were protesting, the idea thatgovernment is so big, the idea that government is beginning to takeso much control of our lives, telling us what we should teach ourchildren, telling us details of our lives that government has nobusiness being involved in. It's that aspect of Bill Clinton that was really given a large noin this last election. And insofar as the Republicans concentrate ontrying to change the direction that Bill Clinton was taking thegovernment in, they're going to be very successful. I do agree with Steve, the window is short, we need to move fast. MR. WATTENBERG: Let me ask this. Is there a possibility -- gettingsort of to Kevin's point; let me direct this to Bill Kristol -- ofoverstating and overplaying and perhaps over-trivializing what wassuggested in the contract? I read recently in 'The Wall StreetJournal,' Bill, that what you want to do is hold show trials and thenpublic executions of failed federal programs. And I guess your groupis having a kill party, to go around killing legislation. Is there apossibility that people are going to turn on poor little Bill Kristoland say, what is this Draconian fellow doing? MR. KRISTOL: To the contrary. I actually agree that we shouldn'tbe too grandiose, and that's why I've recommend to Republicans thatwe look for medium-sized and small federal agencies that clearly haveoutlived their use, that there is a consensus across the spectrumdon't need to exist anymore, and kill those. Bill Clinton proposed abunch of program terminations in his last budget that the DemocraticCongress wouldn't accept. The first thing the Republican Congressshould do is accept Bill Clinton's program terminations and terminatethose programs and agencies. I think we have a much broader, long-term agenda of re-limitinggovernment, but I agree with Steve. We have a chance to be themajority party for a generation or two. The key thing over the nexttwo years is to move in the right direction of re-limitinggovernment, but to do so gradually, bringing the American peoplealong with us and laying the groundwork for a bigger victory in '96so we can then move on to the broader agenda. MR. HESS: And with civility. I think that's terribly important. Ithink we also have a cutting edge that is starting to disturb me.When I read a piece about the people around Newt Gingrich the otherday and it turned out that his chief political strategist is knownfor the adage of 'Go negative early and often,' I started to get alittle jumpy, Bi Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc. ©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved. 
  Web development by Bean Creative. |