Commentary: Bush opens
’03 with right hook

By CHUCK RAASCH
GNS Political Writer

WASHINGTON — Since Sept. 11, 2001, George W. Bush sometimes has governed more like an old-fashioned liberal than a compassionate conservative. He has increased federal spending on homeland security, created the biggest new government agency since Harry S. Truman reorganized the Pentagon and signed a massive education bill pushed by liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

Bush’s allies say all this was out of political and national security necessity. But it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that after his party made gains in November congressional elections, Bush came out in ’03 as a fighting conservative.

All, some say, to prove he is not his father.
In a span of two weeks, Bush:

— Proposed new tax cuts of $674 billion over 10 years; he unveiled it while Democrats finally had coordinated attacks on rising federal budget deficits.

— Re-nominated two controversial conservatives for federal judgeships (Priscilla Owen and Charles Pickering) who had been rejected by Senate Democrats in 2002. Some were surprised Bush opted so soon for a rematch.

— Joined the fight against the University of Michigan’s use of racial preferences in admissions. Bush critics, and even some allies, were surprised that he would jump into a racially sensitive debate so soon after former Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., stepped down as majority leader in December. Lott had come under attack for uttering racially insensitive remarks at former segregationist Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party.

— Proposed a “sanctity of life” day just in time for the 30th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortions. Pro-abortion rights groups were already worried that Bush, with Congress in Republican hands after the November elections, would begin stacking the federal bench with anti-abortion judges and pushing legislation eroding abortion rights.

“It’s a very dire situation,” said Kate Michelman, president of the NARAL Pro Choice America Foundation, of Republican plans to roll back abortion rights. “It’s hard to overstate it.”
Conservatives are delighted.

With the House of Representatives and the Senate in Republican hands, fresh off a decisive midterm electoral victory over the Democrats, “Bush is saying, why not go for broke?” said conservative activist Keith Appell, who is helping anti-abortion groups gear up for new legislative fights.

“He does not want to make the same mistakes that his father did,” Appell said.

For two years, Bush has gotten the benefit of the doubt from conservatives partly because he stands in such stark relief to Bill Clinton, who was reviled by the right. But there would be potential problems among conservatives if Bush had begun 2003 as a centrist. He had only to look to his own family tree for a warning.

Former President George Bush learned of the perils of scorning conservatives in 1992. After he had campaigned in 1988 to continue the Reagan revolution, the senior Bush later agreed with Democrats that tax increases were necessary to address the mounting federal deficits of the early 1990s. Furious conservatives either stayed home or cheered Pat Buchanan through the 1992 Republican primaries, and the older Bush lost the presidency that year to Bill Clinton.

“W” did get a tax cut passed in 2001 and spent 2002 clamoring for more. Conservatives were satiated. But Bush also created a huge new Department of Homeland Security, and he signed an education reform bill that critics have derided as an “unfunded mandate” because it creates new testing and performance demands without adequate funding to cover the new costs. For decades, conservatives have railed against unfunded federal mandates. The 1996 Republican platform called for the abolishment of the Education Department altogether.

Appell said conservatives “swallowed their criticism about the education bill, which they saw as more of a Ted Kennedy bill than a George W. Bush bill.”

They did so, Appell said, because of potential for action on other areas like abortion. Conservatives believe they are about to get a law restricting late-term abortions, and a spate of conservative appointments to the Supreme Court and other federal courts around the country.

“If he gets a 'partial-birth' abortion bill (through Congress), he will sign it,” Appell said. “If he gets another (conservative) on the Supreme Court, conservatives will be fine.”