Reaganomics without Reagan

In July the Party of Compassion found a new hero. A Republican hero at that. He was Robert Dole, the Kansas Republican, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The New York Times and the Washington Post eulogized him, and he was turning up on all the sober Sunday morning talk shows. Even George McGovern said admiringly that “Bob Dole has grown.”

What had Dole done to win the hearts and minds of these liberal critics, so fiercely anti-Dole during the 1976 presidential campaign? He had merely steered through the Finance Committee a bill calling for what the Post termed “the largest tax increase in peacetime history.” What’s more, President Reagan backed Dole—tentatively at first, and then with the full weight of the White House. His chief advisor, James Baker, obliquely took credit for steering Reagan away from Reaganomics. He told an English interviewer that he was not compromising the President’s anti-tax principles, “Pm simply adjusting them to realities.”

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Joseph Sobran

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House of Representatives

In July the Party of Compassion found a new hero. A Republican hero at that. He was Robert Dole, the Kansas Republican, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The New York Times and the Washington Post eulogized him, and he was turning up on all the sober Sunday morning talk shows. Even George McGovern said admiringly that “Bob Dole has grown.”

What had Dole done to win the hearts and minds of these liberal critics, so fiercely anti-Dole during the 1976 presidential campaign? He had merely steered through the Finance Committee a bill calling for what the Post termed “the largest tax increase in peacetime history.” What’s more, President Reagan backed Dole—tentatively at first, and then with the full weight of the White House. His chief advisor, James Baker, obliquely took credit for steering Reagan away from Reaganomics. He told an English interviewer that he was not compromising the President’s anti-tax principles, “Pm simply adjusting them to realities.”