They’re heading not for the “last roundup” — but for the pre-election roundup.
This time the cowboys are the politicos in the White House and in the GOP in Congress…rounding up the straying base, like the old cowboys of old rounded up the cattle. Question: can they round all of them up in time for November?
Yes, if they use things to get back the wandering cattle — and to scare the living daylights out of them.
And that, apparently is what is happening — and about to happen. Real soon.
In the first sign of the White House and Congressional Republicans truly getting their political act back firmly in sync, the GOP-dominated House got the ball rolling on a tax cut that will most assuredly pass the GOP-dominated Senate — and wind up on President George Bush’s desk. And this will be one confirmed “mission accomplished”:
The U.S. House passed a $69 billion tax cut for investors and 16 million households facing the alternative minimum tax, sending the measure to the Senate for action as early as tomorrow.
The House vote to extend the 15 percent rate on dividends and most capital gains, which Republicans said would sustain a growing economy, gives President George W. Bush a rare legislative victory amid a stalled legislative agenda and declining poll numbers. It also would stop a $31 billion tax increase on households with incomes as low as $50,000 in an election year.
Extending low rates on dividends and capital gains will “free up additional capital that fuels the economic growth we’ve experienced over the last three years,” said Representative Melissa Hart, a Pennsylvania Republican.
Democrats said they were being forced to support tax cuts for wealthy investors in order to prevent millions of families from being subject to the alternative minimum tax.
“If you want the AMT the way they are offering it, you have to swallow with that a tax cut bill that costs over $40 billion and this only would help a fraction of 1 percent of the wealthiest Americans in the world,” said New York Representative Charles Rangel, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee.
The legislation now goes to the Senate where it will need a simple majority to pass. Most Democrats and some Republicans, including George Voinovich of Ohio, oppose extending the tax breaks on investments at a time when the national debt may soon reach $9 trillion.
But it is expected to pass. What does it mean? A clear political victory for GWB and a benefit largely to high income Americans, the >Los Angeles Times notes:
House and Senate Republican leaders reached agreement Tuesday on a $70-billion tax cut package that would extend some expiring tax breaks and authorize new ones, particularly for upper-income taxpayers.
The bill represents a victory for President Bush, who had urged Congress to extend the temporary cuts enacted in his first term. Failing to do so, he argued, would be tantamount to a tax increase that could derail the economy.
Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), one of the two senators who negotiated the final bill with the House, hailed the agreement as a “great day for the economy and American taxpayer.”
But Democrats called it another giveaway for the rich at a time when the budget deficit was already at an all-time high. “This tax bill shows the administration’s true colors,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, “and only the very wealthy are going to see green.”
All of this comes at a time when the administration and top GOPers are trying to round up conservatives who are straying from the GOP’s fold. >The Washington Post:
Disaffection over spending and immigration have caused conservatives to take flight from President Bush and the Republican Congress at a rapid pace in recent weeks, sending Bush’s approval ratings to record lows and presenting a new threat to the GOP’s 12-year reign on Capitol Hill, according to White House officials, lawmakers and new polling data.
Bush and Congress have suffered a decline in support from almost every part of the conservative coalition over the past year, a trend that has accelerated with alarming implications for Bush’s governing strategy.
The Gallup polling organization recorded a 13-percentage-point drop in Republican support for Bush in the past couple of weeks. These usually reliable voters are telling pollsters and lawmakers they are fed up with what they see as out-of-control spending by Washington and, more generally, an abandonment of core conservative principles.
There are also significant pockets of conservatives turning on Bush and Congress over the their failure to tighten immigration laws, restrict same-sex marriage, and put an end to the Iraq war and the rash of political scandals, according to lawmakers and pollsters.
Our prediction: this will be likely to happen in two ways: high profile proactive stances and issues that will either be partially dealt with or postponed until after the elections. But there will be some kind of movement on several fronts. MORE:
Bush won two presidential elections by pursuing a political and governing model that was predicated on winning and sustaining the loyal backing of social, economic and foreign policy conservatives. The strategy was based on the belief that conservatives, who are often more politically active than the general public, could be inspired to vote in larger numbers and would serve as a reliable foundation for his presidency. The theory, as explained by Bush strategists, is that the president would enjoy a floor below which his support would never fall.
It is now apparent that this floor has weakened dramatically — and collapsed in places.
Elections under George Bush have largely been “mobilization elections” where he sought to motivate his conservative base to go to the polls by pushing the button on hot-button issues.
Newsweek‘s Howard Fineman says: get ready to see a massive attack on the Democrats, stage managed by Karl Rove:
This fall’s election season is going to make the past three look like episodes of “Barney.�
The conventional notion here is that Democrats want to “nationalize� the 2006 elections — dwelling on broad themes (that is, the failures of the Bush Administration) — while the Republicans will try to “localize� them as individual contests that have nothing to do with, ahem, the goings on in the capital.
That was before the GOP situation got so desperate. The way I read the recent moves of Karl Rove & Co., they are preparing to wage war the only way open to them: not by touting George Bush, Lord knows, but by waging a national campaign to paint a nightmarish picture of what a Democratic Congress would look like, and to portray that possibility, in turn, as prelude to the even more nightmarish scenario: the return of a Democrat (Hillary) to the White House.
Rather than defend Bush, Rove will seek to rally the Republicans’ conservative grassroots by painting Democrats as the party of tax increases, gay marriage, secularism and military weakness. That’s where the national message money is going to be spent.
So, once more — as we have said here repeatedly — it will be a case of divide the country up, stir up passions (in this case a polite word for partisan and other hatreds) and get your people out to the polls to vote against people and policies (as alarmingly described by you) that they hate. Not vote for your party or for the job you did in office — vote to keep a segment of America out because they are essentially evil. (Read Fineman’s complete report and that boils it down).
So in recent weeks you’ll likely see:
–A move for a constitutional flag burning amendment.
–A move for a constitutional amendment or some kind of law essentially banning gay marriage.
–Nomination of highly controversial judges to try to perhaps force
Democrats into a filibuster and even activate the “nuclear option” for a big conservative-versus-liberal (with moderates having to choose sides) controversy, to polarize the polity.
–Either partial immigration reform or, due to the ticklishness of the issue, it being put off until after the election (when it would likely be postponed at least partially for several more years).
–Hearings for the new CIA director being used to extract quotes from Democrats that will be used to say that they don’t care about America’s security and are still in a pre-911 mentality.
So Americans will likely soon see a vast array of highly controversial issues suddenly materializing in Congress …issues that Congress is suddenly taking up, coincidentally as mid-term election campaigns start to heat up…issues that will grab the headlines and overshadow other stories and topics — like questions Americans have about the quality of government and decisions they have gotten from the White House and Congress over the past few years.
Can they round all the political cattle up in time? It has been done before.
But the Democrats have had less luck with their cattle, partially due in some key elections to a rustler named Ralph Nader and to Presidential candidates who scared some of their own cattle away.
PS: Didn’t somebody say something about Karl Rove being demoted a few weeks ago?
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey underscores the need for Bush & Rove to regain the GOP base:
Whether Bush himself has lost all of the support claimed is questionable; Rasmussen has Bush at 41%, 74% among Republicans, and their reporting has been more reliable than other pollsters over the past several years. Even those numbers do not carry much good news for Bush among his own base, though. He has lost the enthusiasm among the movement conservatives. Even worse for the GOP in the upcoming elections, their Congresional leadership has done much worse in representing core conservative values, and that’s the real story for 2006. The conservatives can’t do much to Bush except embarrass him with low approval ratings, but they can have a much greater impact on Republican leaders this fall. Unless the GOP wants to return to minority status, Bill Frist and Denny Hastert had better start listening to the base.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.