The GOP may have a new worry: signs business groups may be feeling ignored as the party’s higher-ups put a premium on catering to social conservatives.
In a way, what the GOP faces is like the classic three person-friendship: a triangle could start to form and one person feels edged out as two friends focus on each other. That seems to be what the GOP is facing now, according to the Washington Post:
John M. Engler, the former Republican governor of Michigan who now heads the National Association of Manufacturers, vowed before the November elections to use his trade association’s might to back President Bush’s judicial nominees. But as the Senate showdown approaches, the business group is delivering a different message: Judges are not its fight.
NAM’s decision to sit out the brawl may be indicative of a broader trend. From Wall Street to Main Street, the small-government, pro-business mainstay of the Republican Party appears to be growing disaffected with a party it sees as focused on social issues at its expense
“I’m inclined to support the Republican Party, but the question becomes, how much other stuff do I have to put up with to maintain that identification?” asked Andrew A. Samwick, a Dartmouth College economics professor who until recently was chief economist of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.
“I don’t know a single business group involved in the judicial nominees,” said R. Bruce Josten, an executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Nada, none, zip.”
And, indeed, the biz folks are smart enough to know if all good-will in the Senate goes South, so may many of the policies they seek…or at the very least it would take the policies a lot longer to go north. More:
Economic conservatives grew restless during the first Bush term, when federal budget surpluses turned to yawning deficits, federal spending soared and the Republican-controlled Congress passed a Medicare drug benefit that marked the largest new federal entitlement since Lyndon B. Johnson was president.
Concern eased after the 2004 election. The president’s stated priorities were to control spending, address Social Security’s long-term financing problems and simplify the tax code. But since then, the drive to restructure Social Security has stalled. Efforts to rein in federal spending have been upended by a highway bill that exceeds Bush’s promised price tag and a budget resolution passed Congress that rebuffed the toughest entitlement cuts demanded by the White House.
Instead, Washington’s focus has shifted from fiscal issues to more narrow concerns backed vociferously by social conservatives: the Terri Schiavo case, the nomination of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations and, most of all, the fate of the Senate’s ability to filibuster judicial nominees.
“The potential for high-minded policy reforms to fix entitlements and spur growth and prosperity has degenerated into a hopeless morass,” Republican economist Lawrence Kudlow wrote yesterday on the National Review’s Web site.
It does seem something like GOP bigwigs are focused on shoring up its social conservative base at the expense — it seems — of keeping enthusiastic support among libertarians, business supporters or those centrist voters who opted for Bush and the GOP.
If the compromise on filibusters holds, it seems likely that the Senate will turn to other issues and do its business — including business regarding business — more swiftly. But if the compromise falls apart — particularly if it falls apart due to specific attempts to undermine it — how will business interests react?
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.