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STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD
Posted on 06/14/2002 12:43:12 PM PDT by ZGuy
When Ronald Reagan took the oath of office in 1981, there were very few Reaganites in Washington. Even congressional Republican leaders were not active supporters of Reagan’s drive for a less intrusive government and freer markets. Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee called the new President’s 25 percent across-the-board tax cut “a riverboat gamble,” and House Ways and Means ranking Republican Barber Conable explained that he “wasn’t really for” the reduction. The model for a Republican politician in the minds of most Republican congressmen was still Richard Nixon, or even Nelson Rockefeller.
David Hoppe, who served as Jack Kemp’s chief of staff in the 1980s and now fills the same position for Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, says it was not until 1985 that a majority of the House Republican caucus would see themselves as Reagan Republicans, and not until after the 1994 election that Reaganites would constitute a majority of Senate Republicans.
Today, more than 90 percent of House Republicans (all but about 20) and 80 percent of Senate Republicans (39 out of 49) can essentially be characterized as Reagan Republicans. One good measure is that 205 House Republicans and 38 GOP senators have signed the Americans for Tax Reform pledge to vote against tax hikes. Meanwhile, George W. Bush ran successfully in 2000 as the quintessential defender of the Reagan coalition.
Before Reagan’s election it was difficult to shame a Republican senator or representative into voting more conservatively. But Reagan was a big winner. And over time, most House and Senate Republicans moved toward his positions, or were replaced by younger politicians who did. In Washington, the Reaganization of the Republican party is now nearly complete.
Unfortunately, a quick inventory of the 27 Republican governors finds a very different reality at the state level. The few Reaganite governors who oppose tax hikes, work to reduce spending, challenge labor union bosses, and promote choice in education include Jeb Bush of Florida, Bill Owens of Colorado, and Frank Keating of Oklahoma—then the pickings get slim. Many Republican governors have fought for one or two conservative initiatives, but few have pressed a broad conservative agenda.
Only eight governors have signed ATR’s no-tax-hike pledge, and these include two who actually raised taxes while in office (Democrat Don Siegelman of Alabama and Illinois Republican Jim Ryan). Tennessee GOP governor Don Sundquist has spent four years trying to impose an income tax on Tennessee. Michigan’s John Engler fought school choice and spent political capital to tax interstate catalogue and Internet sales.
Of the 3,655 Republican state legislators, fewer than one third have signed the no-tax-hike pledge. More concretely, recent years have seen state and local government spending grow faster than the economy, even as GDP grew more quickly than federal spending from 1995 to 2001.
Why has Reaganization not yet spread more fully to the states? Spending restraint should actually be easier for state governments, who have no ability to inflate the currency and far less ability to run yearly deficits. And in 11 of the 50 states, there is unified Republican control of the governorship and both houses of the legislature—something Reagan never had, and George W. Bush enjoyed only for the first five months of his Presidency.
Governors and state legislators today are where Republican congressmen were pre-1980: They have no role model. There is not a Reaganite governor who also has a state legislature willing to enact serious reforms. State-level Republicans present the same defense as pre-Reagan congressmen: “At least I am better than the Democrat I defeated.”
But this will change after November 2002. There are at least seven states that may elect Reaganite governors and state legislatures. Those are Florida, Kansas, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Texas. Even if only a few of these states win unified control for conservative governance, a Reaganite model is likely to emerge.
Examples matter. A successful Reaganite state government could pioneer new conservative policies across the board. It will only take one state to move the Reagan revolution to the state level. On November 5, 2002, we may get several.
Thank God for Ronald Reagan! Congress would still be full of RINOs if it hadn't been for him. Quite an awful scenario to imagine!
And still, I think most Republicans are far from really being Reaganites. They may have the right ideology--more or less--but they lack the necessary amount of leadership. We need more.
Tennessee should be added to that list. Van Hilleary is the Republican nominee and I'd definitely call him "Reaganite".
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