Social Security Reform and HillaryCare
David Brooks has a fascinating article in the NYT today about the hopes of some Democrats for a re-realignment on the scale of 1994:
They feel that Social Security is to Bush what health care reform was to Clinton – the big overreach that will allow the opposing party to deliver a devastating blow to the president, and maybe even regain control of Congress. Their core belief is that Republicans have won of late because they have been ruthless and disciplined while Democrats have been responsible and wimpy. It is time, the neo-Gingrichians say, to scorch the earth. “I believe that the Republican majority has acted in such a dictatorial fashion that a full-scale revolt is the only solution,” the Democratic consultant Howard Wolfson told Michael Crowley of The New Republic.
That means waging a Gingrich-style war on the entire Congressional power structure. That means furiously opposing every other Bush initiative. That means giving up any hope of trying to work with Republicans, but staging an all-out effort to crush and delegitimize them.
The problem with the neo-Gingrichians is that they have their history backward. Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992 with only 43 percent of the vote. When Gingrich began his assault, there already was a potential conservative majority in the country; it’s just that many of these conservatives, for historical reasons, tended to vote Democratic in Congressional races.
Brooks is entirely correct; 57% voted Bush-Perot in 1992, and the 1994 results confirmed the 1992 results — it was Clinton, with gays in the military, the tie vote tax increase, and HillaryCare, who was the aberration. It was a terrible tactical blunder on President Clinton’s part to govern left. President Bush’s situation is entirely different, with Republicans continuing to increase their margins in the House and the Senate. We hope the neo-Gingrichians run their party.