Archive [March 2000]

I AM ABOUT TO ANNOY SOME OF YOU PEOPLE (AND YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE). I AM GOING TO START OUT THIS ISSUE OF MY NEWSLETTER TALKING ABOUT GOLF. AND HERE’S A WARNING FOR YOU: DO NOT SEND ME ANY LETTERS OF COMPLAINT. WELL, YOU CAN SEND THEM, BUT I AM NOT GOING TO PAY ANY ATTENTION TO THEM. BECAUSE GUESS WHAT — THIS IS MY NEWSLETTER.

In January, I was privileged to play in the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic in Palm Springs — played 27 holes every day. Folks, I have to tell you, I have always had respect for the entrepreneurs that make up the PGA tour, the individual players, but I have a newfound appreciation for what they go through to make a living. It’s far more difficult than you would ever imagine. On television, you see all the exotic places they play, but you can’t see what it takes to get there, and to stay focused amidst all the hoopla.

My partners were Chris Chandler of the Atlanta Falcons and Tom Glavin, pitcher for the Atlanta Braves. We rotated professionals, a different one each day. When I got my pairing sheet at registration, I was stunned. Arnold Palmer. David Duval. Justin Leonard. On the final day, Fuzzy Zoeller. You cannot draw better professionals to play with.

We start on the back nine at Arnold Palmer’s private course — our first hole is number 10. I saw Arnold Palmer, and well, I about fainted. That’s as good as it gets. I drop-kicked my tee shot, meaning the club hit the ground before I hit the ball. Facing crowds doing what I do for a living, speaking, is a snap. But playing golf in front of thousands of people, when everybody in your foursome is three to four times better than you, is another story.

They all boom their drives way down over the water. I barely make it over the water, leaving myself about 200 yards to the green. The pin is tucked behind a little sand trap. So I pull out a five wood and aim for the center of the green, hoping to miss the sand trap. As usual, I push the ball to the right. It drops right over that sand trap and comes to rest 20 feet beyond the pin on the green. I’m left now with a downhill putt. I’m a 16-handicap for this tournament, and this was one of the holes where I got a stoke. I walk up and sink that putt — it rolls in the cup for a birdie. I start off with a legit birdie, a net eagle. Arnold Palmer looks at me and says, “I’m impressed.” Arnold Palmer! Well, that made the whole week.

It turned out to be my best hole. I “contributed” five or six shots to our team every day — but I was in heaven. One of the greatest things that’s happened to me is to meet people who are the best in the world at what they do. When you’re with them, you find out all about people who are the best; you learn why they’re the best. You witness their work habits. You see their devotion to what they do.

At the 16th hole, after I hit the green with my tee shot on a par three, ABC’s Jimmy Roberts interviewed me. He asked, if I were invited to play Augusta National with Bill Clinton, would I go?

Here’s my answer: “Yes. You know why? Because on the golf course you can tell exactly what a person’s made of by the way he plays. You can tell his character; you can tell if he quits, you can tell if he’s a cheater, you can tell if he’s dishonest, or if he has stick-to-it-ive-ness. This game is a metaphor for almost every situation you run into in life. So, yes, I’d play with him, because I think I’d find the real Bill Clinton out there.”

I can predict to you that I’d find stick-to-it-ive-ness. We already know Bill Clinton is an avid golfer; he has even been known to golf alone. In the dark. In the rain. (We can also assume that he’d lie to his scorecard.)

On the other hand, I’m not sure I’d find stick-to-it-ive-ness if I were to golf with certain conservative pundits, who have recently taken to gloomy assessments of their own political camp.

Get this from Bill Kristol, writing in The Washington Post on Feb. 2: “Leaderless, rudderless and issueless, the conservative movement, which accomplished great things over the past quarter-century, is finished.”

And what, you may ask, prompted this bleak assessment from the editor of the vaunted Weekly Standard? John McCain won the New Hampshire primary. And to Mr. Kristol, along with a surprising contingent of his fellow travelers in the Washington pundit class, promptly declared conservatism dead.

Fred Barnes declares that the country has moved left, and the issue of taxes just doesn’t resonate with voters any more. With John McCain stirring the political pot in the early primaries, a number of pontificators immediately declared that Nothing Will Ever Be the Same Again. In this latest hysteria, the talking heads are seriously declaring the political order defunct. Political parties are passé. Independent voters are the “new paradigm.” Dick Morris writes that “it’s time for bold, imaginative leadership to rescue our democracy from the special interests who hold it so tightly in their grip.” He recommends a new “reform” party. (Yawn.)

Of course, there are lots of reasons to be upset that the Republican primary process has been hacked by John McCain’s band of merry Democrats. But this tactical predicament is no reason to throw over conservatism! Blaming conservatism for a campaign season’s strategic mistakes is like blaming your car if you get lost. You’re blaming the only means to get you out of your difficulty, and to take you where you need to go.

Still, you cannot overestimate the degree to which Washington fosters a blame-conservatism-first mentality. It’s the default setting for the pundit class: if something isn’t working, better move left. At the first bump in the road, better drop all that conservatism. It’s a bunch of hooey.

Indeed, would you care to hazard a guess as to what is the dirtiest word in America in the year 2000? No, it’s not “Lewinsky.” Or “fluorocarbon.” Or “cigarette.” There’s a word that blows all these others out of the water. It’s a word so offensive that, were one to utter it at a Washington cocktail party, one would be hit with projectiles of brie flying from the mouths of horrified guests.

That word is “partisan.” There is no more cardinal sin in the eyes of the media or the left-leaning political establishment today than being partisan. Or “pawtisan,” as James Corporal Cueball Carville would put it. Partisan, defined as any conservative Republican expressing his or her core beliefs.

Many Republicans have been cowed out of even talking about their principles — especially when it comes to issues of right and wrong. It’s an affront to civility. No, they are supposed to turn to their liberal Democrat colleagues and meekly inquire if there isn’t some way we can all “just get along.”

That, dear friends, is the recipe for disaster. That is what will keep conservatives from winning elections as far into the future as the eye can see.

Some of you may think the rules are being rewritten by Senator McCain, the liberal media’s favorite Republican. Here is a man who can “work with” liberal Democrats to “reform the political fundraising process,” you might like to think. Here’s someone who says he wants to make sure the rich never get tax cuts — just as the Dems promise. Here’s someone who can really sock it to eeeevil Big Tobacco, joining hands with liberals, and singing Kum By Ya.

But let me be the one to tell you that someone who takes those kinds of stances is someone who is going to perform disastrously against a real Democrat come the general election in November. And that’s because he’s playing the Democrats’ game.

The only way Republicans win is by being conservative, loud and clear and confident. And they always win against liberals when they proudly and genuinely adhere to that battle-tested conservatism. They even win “impossible” races.

People like to forget these things, but after 1976, it was said that Ronald Reagan was washed up. That was the year he lost the Republican nomination to sitting President Gerald Ford. Those in the know said Reagan was too old. They said he was too extreme, that he was a dangerous warmonger. They said he was too stupid — he was a mere actor, after all.

They said other things, too — all insulting. The pundits and the talking heads believed they were hammering the last nail into the coffin of conservatism — and they celebrated its demise. Reagan was said to be conservatism’s dying gasp. But just four years later, Reagan beat a field of moderates by preaching a message of unapologetic conservatism, and he trounced Jimmy Carter that November with his promise of a strong U.S. military, and big tax cuts for all. In 1984, Reagan’s record of conservative accomplishment — rebuilding our defenses and rejuvenating our economy — brought a historic reelection landslide of 49 states that may never be surpassed.

Look at the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress. They said it was a scientific impossibility for Republicans to gain control of both houses of Congress. All the experts insisted that local voters wanted Democrats in there to bring home the bacon from Washington. “All politics is local,” in the infamous words of the late Tip O’Neill, one of the biggest spenders of them all.

But the GOP won Congress for very clear and specific reasons that year: Republicans nationalized the elections with the Contract With America. They made conservative reform in Washington the preeminent idea in the minds of the people walking into those voting booths. Do you want government health care intruding into your lives and pocket-books? Or do you want less government and lower taxes? When the question becomes that clear, you know what the answer is going to be even before Election Day. Plus, of course, it didn’t hurt that I, the Majority Maker, was shining the light of truth.

Look at the election of Republican Gov. George Pataki in liberal New York state. Look at the election and re-election of Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in New York City — the mecca of liberalism. Look at the election and re-election of Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman in New Jersey, another liberal stronghold. (Ultra-lib Bill Bradley was a senator there for 18 years.) What do these Republicans all have in common? They all promised to cut taxes and enact other conservative reforms, just a mention of which drove the liberals who run most of the institutions in New York and New Jersey crazy.

Conservatism wins, every time it’s tried — as long as Republicans don’t act as if they’re ashamed to be conservative.

Unfortunately, certain people who purport to be conservatives allow themselves to wallow in a pool of self-pity. “Isn’t it a shame we don’t have a Reagan?” they whine. “Isn’t it a pity Americans aren’t eager for tax cuts the way they were in the 1980s?” they mope. “Isn’t it terrible that all the issues today belong to Bill Clinton and the Democrats — education, health care, teen smoking?”

Whenever I hear this kind of spineless drivel, it makes my blood boil. It’s pathetic. It’s defeatist. And all it does is let the enemies of freedom set the agenda. Besides, the fact is that all of these lamentations are demonstrably untrue.

Now I, El Rushbo bow to no one in my admiration of Ronald Reagan. Yes, granted, there will probably never be “another Reagan.” Someone able to rouse the nation from malaise to vitality almost instantly upon taking office; someone who by the very force of his personality, leadership and genius in the use of American power could turn the tide of the Cold War — battling the Kremlin on one front, and doves in Congress on another; a Republican who could get a liberal-Democrat-controlled House of Representatives to pass deep, across-the-board tax cuts for every American taxpayer. These are all Mount Rushmore-caliber achievements.

But “another Reagan” is not in the cards. You won’t have much luck waiting for “another George Washington,” either. Abraham Lincoln didn’t have to be George Washington to save the Union. He did have to rise to the seemingly impossible task before him, with honor and courage, to in a time of crisis place the interests of the nation above his own. And Lincoln paid the ultimate price, as Reagan almost did, as victim of an assassin’s bullet. But if you think that Abraham Lincoln was moaning and whining to those whose votes he asked for that he wasn’t another Washington, go back and re-read the Lincoln-Douglas debates (or if you went to an American school, I should say, read the Lincoln-Douglas debates).

What we need is not another somebody else from the lexicon of American greatness, but a leader who believes the things he is supposed to believe. And — most important — is willing and able to take the heat from the media and the liberals for advocating those beliefs. We need conservatives who aren’t afraid to act like conservatives. Because conservatism always triumphs — as long as it is presented to the American people with clarity and confidence.

Thus, conservatives should never concede any issue to the left. Never. Education is not a Democrat issue. Whenever Algore calls for more taxpayer money to be sent down the sinkhole of the union-dominated federal education bureaucracy, Republicans in Congress should be running for the nearest microphone to talk about private vouchers and parental empowerment. Instead, all too often, we hear cowardly peeps of “us too.” We want to waste more taxpayer money on education, too. When will we ever learn? Democrats always win at that who-can-spend-more-money game. Just look at the Bradley-Gore debates; they consist entirely of competition as to who can spend more, grow the government largest, and create the most dependents.

How about tax cuts? A lot of you seem to think taxes are finished as an issue for Republicans. My friends, there has never been a better time for tax cuts as an issue. Today, a higher percentage of Americans’ income is being grabbed from them by government than ever before. While per capita income is now $28,878, per capita federal, state and local taxes come to $10,298. That’s 36 percent of the money you earn by the sweat of your brow. A tad more than those ATM fees you like to squawk about, hmmm?

In 1904, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes made his famous observation that “Taxes are what we pay tor civilized society.” You know what the tax burden was back then? Federal, state and local governments combined collected an average in total taxes of $20 in 1904 dollars, or $364 per person per year in 1999 inflation-adjusted dollars. State and local taxes alone were $246 — higher than the $118 Washington was levying in federal taxes.

Taxes have gone up over 2,800 percent since then. The Tax Foundation found that just from 1981 to 1999 the federal government increased the taxes it collects per person by more than 45 percent. Under Clinton, federal taxation now exceeds 20 percent of gross domestic product for the first time since World War II. In 1950 federal taxes were less than 15 percent of GDP. In 1965, when big spender Lyndon Johnson was President, they were still under 17.5 percent. State and local taxes taken alone were less than seven percent of GDP in 1950, and less than nine percent in 1965. Today they are in the double digits. And combined, federal, state and local taxation exceeds 30 percent of this country’s material output. That’s an outrage.

It is a moral issue. It’s about people being able to keep their own money. With all this talk about surpluses and retiring the national debt, the moral case for tax cuts has never been more compelling. If there really is a surplus that exists beyond the hot air of Bill Clinton’s latest speech, then by definition, that means Washington is collecting too much in taxes, and taxes should be cut. If the government of the United States really is taking in more revenue than it’s spending — even now, as bloated and profligate as it is under Clinton-Gore — then no one can make the excuse that the people shouldn’t get that money back. And I mean pronto. Tout-de-suite. (A little multi-lingual lingo there.)

If only more Republican candidates would make the case for tax cuts the way I, your highly trained broadcast specialist, do. If only more of those who ask for your votes would make the moral argument for keeping the government out of your wallet in order to earn your vote. Because I’ll tell you something, folks. Bill Clinton has been going around biting his lower lip and making a moral case for himself for close to a decade now. And it works. Too often, people on our side have allowed themselves to be just as mesmerized by the Clinton song and dance as the arousal gappers have been. It’s conservatives who hold the moral high ground on every issue. But what good is holding the high ground if you’re afraid to stand on it?

Algore is trying to get away with much the same thing: He emotes about spending the remainder of his lifespan saving our children from the eeeevils of tobacco and the internal combustion engine. And we’re all supposed to hail him as the caring candidate — unlike those mean-spirited, partisan Republicans. Well, I hate to be the one to spring this on the unsuspecting, but it’s the Democrats who are against change, and who are protecting the status quo that is keeping people shackled. Conservatives, on the other hand, are the ones with the solutions.

Your health care coverage isn’t exactly what you would like? The Democrats say let’s have the government take control of one seventh of the U.S. economy, so we can all wait in line for months even for life-saving heart surgery, like the Europeans; a conservative says let’s empower patients with medical savings accounts that are shielded from taxes. You’re worried that you’ll never in your life see a Social Security check? The Democrats say let’s once again open the spigots and pour more taxpayer money into a system that is dying a slow, agonizing death. A conservative will point to other countries that have given their own citizens the power to invest their own share of payroll taxes in stock and bond funds, so that their retirement nest egg grows and grows.

You wish the public schools were better?

The Democrats say: money, money, and lots more money thrown at a failed, corrupt, socialist system. Conservatives, on the other hand, want all children to have access to better schools, even if that means private and parochial schools. Conservatives want vouchers available that parents can use at the school of their choice.

Conservatism is common sense in action. It’s people living in freedom without government trying to socially engineer them at every turn. This is what every Republican has to realize. Conservatism is worth defending against the media heat. It’s worth promoting. It should be made the cornerstone of every political campaign. When candidates muster the courage to do that, you know what? They soon find they’re not candidates anymore. They’re winners.