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 espite
the sunny face that the White House is putting on last week's Senate
vote to trim Bush's tax cut, no amount of
PR spin control
can cover up the defeat which the administration has suffered. Bush
asked for $1.6 trillion of tax cuts. Steve Forbes, Larry Kudlow,
and I — and many others — have been pestering GOP leaders
for weeks that this tax cut is too small to begin with given the
size of the surplus and the meltdown of the stock market. And yet,
the Senate slashed Bush's proposal by about 20 percent, to $1.25
trillion.
It's too early
to estimate the magnitude of this political setback. There's still
ample time for the White House to recover. But what is infuriating
and indefensible is that the wounds from this defeat were self-inflicted.
I am speaking of the by now well-publicized betrayal of three GOP
Senate RINOs (i.e., Republicans in Name Only): Lincoln Chumpy …
er … Chafee of Rhode Island, Jim Jeffords of Vermont, and
Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. After weeks of cajoling and pleading
from the White House and their fellow Senate Republicans, the three
RINOs unapologetically handed Tom Daschle a stunning political victory.
The photos of Chafee and Jeffords yucking it up with their Senate
Democratic colleagues shortly after rejecting their president's
plan were pure salt in the wounds.
This will not
stand. This cannot stand.
This act of
party disloyalty must be punished swiftly and severely so as to
insure that the virus doesn't contaminate other week-kneed Republicans.
If a Republican won't vote for a tax cut that would provide a mere
6 cents on the dollar of tax relief to Americans, then why do they
bother to call themselves Republicans at all? What good are they?
Tax cuts are the one issue that unify the party — it's the
GOP's common currency. These days, Republicans don't demand a lot
of toeing the party line in exchange for room under "the big
tent"; But, at the very least, you should have to be for tax
cuts. I've highlighted this quote from Bob Novak before on these
pages, but it's worth repeating in the wake of last week's setback:
"The only reason God put Republicans on this earth was to cut
taxes."
For years left-leaning
Republicans — I refuse to call them "moderates" —
have complained: The reason the Right hates us is because we're
pro-choice, or because we disagree with the party's religious-right
platform. The RINOs are fond of describing themselves as "socially
tolerant and economically conservative." Nonsense. For the
most part the left-wing Republicans are left-wing on economic and
social issues, and this latest vote is just further validation of
that thesis.
Apologists
for Chafee, Jeffords, and Specter observe that these Senators are
in tough Democratic-dominated states where the political center
is the absolute furthest point to the right to which one can possibly
afford to migrate. Nonsense. Cutting taxes is always and everywhere
a winning issue. Even in the Yuppie, latte-sipping towns of Vermont,
the home of Ben & Jerry's rainforest grotto, there's a ferocious
property tax revolt brewing. In Pennsylvania, is Arlen Specter really
worried that his next opponent is going to run around the state
campaigning on the theme: "Arlen Specter cut your taxes too
much!" Moore's political axiom is that Republicans only lose
elections when they raise taxes, never when they cut them.
Self-survival
isn't a persuasive excuse for another reason: None of these three
wayward Republicans are even up for re-election in 2002. Jeffords
and Chafee don't have to face the voters again until 2006 for crying
out loud. They voted the way they did not out of fear of voter retribution,
but because they genuinely think the Bush tax cut is too big and
that this money could and should be better used for bigger government
programs. This was a vote of conviction for these three. They genuinely
believe that the $400 billion they sliced from Bush's tax cut is
better spent on making our $2 trillion federal budget even bigger.
What is clear
is that the Republican party will not exact any form of retribution
against the Benedict Arnolds in the Senate. They should be forced
to go out on a date with Barbara Mikulski. They should be required
to read Hillary's epic, It Takes a Village from cover to
cover. At the very least they should be stripped of their committee
chairmanships and any plum committee assignments. But don't hold
your breath. The GOP party faithful will go to the ends of the Earth
to protect their left flank.
So it is left
up to conservatives to serve out the punishment. The group I run,
the Club for Growth, will start running TV and radio ads slamming
Chafee, Jeffords, and Specter in their home states. The ads will
remind voters, this last week before April 15th, that their senator
voted with the IRS rather than with taxpayers. You can view the
TV ads on our website.
Finally, if
the conservative movement is to be taken seriously, it must flex
its muscles by defeating one of these three apostates in a Republican
primary. At least one of them has to be taken out. In fact, the
Club for Growth is ready and willing to finance any serious primary
challenger to this triumvirate. The objective would not so much
be retribution, though, yes, that would be sweet. No, the objective
is deterrence. After all, all of the research proves that punishment
does deter crime.
I can hear
the squishy country club Republican set howling in protest. "Oh
no, no," they will moan, "nothing could be more damaging
to the party." They're wrong. Nothing could be more damaging
to the party than the pro-tax vote that Messrs. Chafee, Jeffords,
and Specter cast last week.
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