The Senate's top Republican said yesterday that President Bush's bid to restructure Social Security may have to wait until next year and might not involve the individual accounts the White House has been pushing hard.
The comments of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), made as GOP lawmakers returned from a week of trying to sell the plan to voters, underscored the challenge facing the White House, especially in light of unbroken Democratic opposition.That a politician as closely allied to the White House as Frist would even raise the possibility of putting off the proposal until next year -- possibly dooming it -- was an unexpected blow to the administration.
Read the whole thing here.
One of the more infuriating myths propagated by the left is the assertion that Republicans gain political victories only because they march in lockstep, while Democrats are constantly fighting with each other. In fact the opposite is often the case, as it is here with regard to Social Security Reform.
Democrats this year have adopted a strategy similar to that used by Republicans early in Clinton's term to block "Hillarycare," hoping that a victory on Social Security will energize their party and nationalize the off-year elections the way the Republican victory on health care paved the way for the Gingrich Revolution of 1994.
Sorry, guys. It won't work this time. Clinton was relatively unknown in 1993 and had not yet established a public image that would sustain him through troubles. He had only received 43% of the popular vote in the previous election. And, he was congenitally unable to articulate any fundamental principles upon which his presidency would be based. He had been represented in the popular press as "the incredible shrinking president." He was, in other words, weak and vulnerable and his popular image was problematic and malleable. Bush has none of those liabilities.
Democrats may well win a tactical victory on Social Security but that will not carry over into a broad victory in the off-year elections. The reason is that the 1994 Republican triumph was the result of their being able to "nationalize" the elections through the means of Gingrich's "Contract With America." Democrats, as I have argued several times, do well when issues are articulated in localistic terms [when all politics is local], but when contests are based on broad national themes the Republicans clean their clocks.
In the absence of a vulnerable presidency and unable to articulate a broad national vision that will attract a majority of voters nationwide, the Democrats can at most make marginal gains in the Congressional contests. Their potential is diminished even more by the incumbency rules they established when they were the majority party and which now protect Republicans. It is therefore very unlikely that the Democrats will be able to do more than chip away at the margins of the Republican majority. There will be no repeat of 1994.
No comments:
Post a Comment