Politics Blog

George Will has more on the tax cut sunsets:

The sunset provisions serve the transparent fiction that the new cuts will deprive the government of no more than $350 billion over 10 years, the number that several deficit-phobic Republican senators insisted on. But given the success of Republican rhetoric - a success deriving from the public’s common sense - in arguing that allowing a tax cut to lapse is equivalent to increasing taxes, the sun will set on few, if any, of these cuts.

So the 10-year cost to the government may exceed even the president’s original goal of $726 billion, which he supposedly “compromised” in half. Democrats, noting that Bush has achieved all this with almost no help from congressional Democrats and with little enthusiasm from the public, are probably muttering to themselves, as they have been muttering since election night 2000: It is a good thing George W. Bush is dumb as a stump or we’d really be in trouble.

Dick Morris makes the same points in his NY Post column today that he made on Hannity and Colmes last night.

I do have a word of caution, though. The only Democrat who will really count in 2004 is John Kerry, who, as I’ve been saying for several months, will likely be the Democratic presidential nominee. In his typical, mealy-mouthed, cowardly fashion, Kerry has criticized the tax cuts, but not said what he’d do instead. I suspect that, when pressed, he’ll duck the issue and say something vague along the lines of “We need to ‘invest’ in education and homeland security.”

Will such a tangibly cynical strategy work? Hey, Kerry’s been getting away with it all his life, starting with the Vietnam War, which he fought in and then protested. And never forget that Bill Clinton, that ultimate, cynical, mealy-mouthed, coward, won two terms as president.

As I predicted, Republicans plan to use the tax cut’s “sunset” provisions as a powerful political weapon in 2004:

Most House Republicans appear to believe an ongoing tax cut fight will be useful as the 2004 elections approach.

“We won the battle, but not the war,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). “Now, I have the unfinished business of saying: ‘We

Up & Coming magazine says that, contrary to conventional wisdom, John Edwards’ presidential bid could be helping his chances of re-election to the Senate in 2004:

But there is another side to the story. It is this: John Edwards’ best chance to retain his senate seat is by running for President. Why? Money and publicity - the two most important assets for a senate candidate these days, and the hardest to come by.

On the money side, even a senator as wealthy as John Edwards cannot afford to pay the enormous cost of a reelection campaign by himself. But fund-raising is a tough business. Most Democratic senate candidates can look for substantial help from a group of moderate and liberal political action committees (PACs). But not John Edwards. He has promised never to accept contributions from PACs.

Therefore, even if he secured generous financial support from individuals in North Carolina, it might not be enough to compete with a well-financed Republican candidate like Burr. To raise enough money for another senate campaign without PAC help, Edwards needed to follow the example of former Senator Jesse Helms by building a broad based group of national financial supporters.

With very impressive early fundraising success in his presidential campaign, Edwards is on his way to achieving this goal. Of course, not all of his presidential contributors will help again in a senate race. But many will, and some will help over and over again. In the meantime, their money is paying for an up-and-running Edwards organization that can be converted to the senate campaign when he gives the word.

Then, there is the publicity. An ordinary first-term senator has a hard time keeping his name before the public at home. Edwards’ presidential campaign, however, gets his name on the front page of every North Carolina newspaper almost every day, it seems. In a very short time he has built a bank of name recognition that every other politician would envy.

So, the next time you run into a loyal Democrat who insists that Edwards is “risking” a Senate seat by running for President, just remember these two words: money and publicity.

They are the most critical assets for a senate campaign, and Edwards is putting them in the bank every day.

I disagree, of course. Money and publicity are good tactical assets; but they only truly matter if you can hopelessly outspend your opponent. The polls show that Edwards is in trouble back home and it’s going to be very difficult to fix that with money and publicity. My full 2004 Senate analysis is here.

Pat Buchanan says that middle America is becoming radicalized against leftist elites:

There are other signs that America’s patiencewith what it sees as anti-Americanism, from Hollywood and the Big Media, is running out.

Legendary liberal talk-show host Phil Donahue was booed and hooted at the commencement at North Carolina State. The New York Times’ Chris Hedges was shouted down and had the microphone plug pulled on his antiwar tirade to the graduates and their families at the Rockford College commencement in Illinois.

Two decades ago, singer Anita Bryant lost her contract as the voice of Florida orange juice for leading an anti-gay rights campaign in Miami. Liberals said the former Miss Oklahoma had it coming. But now that actor Danny Glover has been cashiered as the public voice of MCI, after signing an ad supporting Fidel Castro, the Left is no longer laughing. It is wailing and whining about “a new McCarthyism.”

After Gen. Tommy Franks’ Centcom put out its deck of cards of Iraqi war criminals, Newsmax.com decided to created its own deck of cards: “The United Nations of Weasels.” Featured are Jacques Chirac as ace of spades, Martin Sheen as the ace of hearts, and Dan Rather, Barbra Streisand and Peter Arnett. The deck is one of the hottest sellers on the Internet.

There are other signs Americans are no longer willing to hide their loathing of the Left. That egg on the face of editor Howell Raines of the mighty New York Times, after having been bamboozled and snookered by affirmative action poster boy Jayson Blair, has most of America laughing.

When feminist Martha Burk declared she would break the all-male tradition at Augusta National Golf Club by leading a boycott of sponsors of the Master’s tournament, and The New York Times took it up as the civil rights cause du jour, Middle America rallied behind Augusta president “Hootie” Johnson. Hootie dissed Martha, ignored her boycott and protests, and carried off the Masters in style.

When a Republican governor took down the Confederate battle flag from South Carolina’s state capitol and a Democratic governor cut a midnight deal to strip a replica of the battle flag from the Georgia state flag, both pols saw their careers terminated by voters. Children in the South now defy school edicts that forbid them from carrying or wearing replicas of the battle flag. In Pennsylvania, a schoolteacher has risked dismissal rather than take off the Christian cross she was wearing.

In Montgomery, Ala., a 5,600-pound granite stone, with the Ten Commandments chiseled on it, sits still in the rotunda of the state judicial building in defiance of court orders. The chief judge of the Alabama Supreme Court, who put it there, refuses to remove it.

There is a spirit of rebellion in Middle America, sustained by voices on talk radio, talk TV and the Internet, where the cultural hegemony of the American elite simply does not extend.

In the ’60s, student radicals, citing Marcuse’s dictum that the Right has no rights, shouted down conservatives. Now that these former students occupy the seats of cultural power in America, they seem not to like the new rebellion. What goes around comes around.

The president signed a bill today to provide $15 Billion for AIDS treatment and prevention in Africa.This money will provide treatment to 2 millions AIDS sufferers and potentially prevent another 7 million cases.

Are “AIDS activists” grateful for this money, which amounts to $50 from every man, woman and child in the US? Of course not!

“Everyone needs to watch the president and make sure that he gets that funding to implement this bill, or else it’s a lot of empty rhetoric,” said Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance.

There’s a lesson here that the president is already well aware of: Leftists, especially African-American leftists, are not going to give this president credit, no matter how much of their agenda he implements. Ditto the Euro-Socialists and other America-haters who try to tie the US down with their Lilliputian ropes. The president should ignore their bleating and simply do what he thinks is right.

Texas’ Democratic state legislators may have temporarily preserved their state’s gerrymandered congressional districts by fleeing town; but David Guenthner says it’s a temporary victory:

Longer-term, though, the walkout could work to the Republicans’ advantage. The state is struggling to close a $9.9 billion budget shortfall and it will be touch-and-go whether the lawmakers can patch together enough revenue and budget savings to completely close it by next Monday. There are also sharp differences between the house and senate on medical liability, insurance regulation, and transportation.

Failure to reach agreement on any of those fronts could prompt Gov. Rick Perry to call a special session this summer, to which Perry would probably add redistricting to the agenda. This would hurt Democrats because they would have another issue to keep them in Austin, the Republicans would have time to get the redistricting process and plan right, and the Democrats would lose their biggest stopper - the senate’s two-thirds rule. In a regular session, two-thirds of the senate must agree to bring a bill to the floor, meaning that even if the Republicans all voted together, they would have to pick up at least two Democrats. In a special, that drops to a simple majority, which allows the Republicans to pass a plan even if they lose every Democrat - and three Republicans.

Initial polling shows Texans reacting very negatively to the walkout. Add in some of the bills that died from the walkout - tougher penalties on child pornographers, allowing students who are victims of violence to change schools, automatic expulsion of students who assault teachers, increasing the school property-tax exemption for the elderly and disabled, the creation of “Choose Life” license plates - and all of a sudden Republican challengers to the rural Democrats have some hot-button campaign ads. With Bush atop the ticket, Republicans could bolster their majority by several seats - and make future Democratic walkouts vastly more difficult to pull off.

Suspended NY Times reporter Rick Bragg says he’ll quit. If this were any other institution, Howell Raines would be calling for the CEO’s resignation.

More on 9/11’s impact: Byron York notes rising support for the death penalty since 9/11:

In a new Gallup poll, 74 percent of those surveyed say they favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder. Just two years ago, in May 2001, support stood at 65 percent, its lowest point in more than two decades.
The latest increase has been slow but steady. In October 2001, 68 percent favored capital punishment. That rose to 72 percent by May 2002, and dipped slightly to 70 percent in October 2002 before rising to 74 percent.

…

Why the new support for the death penalty?

It’s possible that Americans have assessed the “innocence” argument and found it wanting. More important, they’ve seen it in action.

For example, could anyone say that former Illinois Gov. George Ryan’s (R.) blanket commutation of death sentences in his state helped the abolitionist cause? Ryan spared the lives of some brutal and indisputably guilty killers and in so doing created so much publicity that the victims’ families felt compelled to speak out in the press. The result was no help for the abolitionists.

Ryan’s blunder surely played a part in the death-penalty turnaround, but by far the most important event has been the arrival of terrorism in America. If you chart the nation’s support for capital punishment, you’ll see it falling in the period before Sept. 11, 2001, and rising afterward.

As capital-punishment opponent Richard Dieter, head of the Death Penalty Information Center, sees it, the terrorist attacks took attention away from the “innocence” movement, which had been gaining momentum before Sept. 11.

“I think what was creating concern about the death penalty was that people were hearing so much about the errors, wrongful convictions and unfairness in the process, and to some extent that’s been muted now with coverage of other issues,” says Dieter. “The problems that plague the death penalty system are still out there, but they’re not on the front page.”

Perhaps. But it seems more likely that the terrorist attacks had a far more profound effect. “After 9-11, the country has come to grips with something that lies behind a good deal of support for the death penalty,” says death-penalty supporter Bill Otis, a former federal prosecutor who is an adjunct professor of law at George Mason University. “And that is that there is actually evil in this world, that there are people out there who will blow you to bits because they hate you, or for amusement, or to advance some bizarre view of the world, and that the only thing that represents proportionate justice in those cases is the death penalty.”

A Fox News story says that Republicans have had difficulty in recruiting strong candidates for key 2004 Senate races.

I disagree with the story.In 2002, the GOP was able to recruit superb candidates in most Senate races, even though it wasn’t able to recruit some strong candidates, like former Montana Governor Marc Racicot and Louisiana Governor Mike Foster. 2004 will see more of the same.

Contrary to what the Fox News story says, the GOP already has strong candidates almost certain to run for current Democratic Senate seats in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Nevada. Recruitment is proceeding apace in Arkansas, South Dakota and Florida. It’s only in Washington state and Illinois that the GOP has largely failed to recruit its preferred candidates. You can get more information about all these races from my 2004 Senate analysis, which I’m keeping updated with relevant news.