The GOP Machine
May 30th, 2003 at 9:02 am by Susan
E.J. Dionne on the new rules in politics:
With a slim congressional majority, Bush would have been expected to seek genuine compromise — under the old rules. But Washington has become so partisan and Bush is so determined to push through a domestic program based almost entirely on tax cuts for the wealthy that a remarkably radical program is winning despite the odds against it and lukewarm public support.This is a shock to congressional Democrats, most of whom came to political maturity under the old arrangements that placed a heavy emphasis on comity and the search for the political center. In all the years when progressive interest groups and foundations were attacking partisanship as a dismal force in politics, conservatives such as presidential adviser Karl Rove, antitax activist Grover Norquist, Tom DeLay and, yes, Newt Gingrich, were building a great Republican machine. The new tax bill is a monument to their success.
Faced with an administration intent on moving the political center to the right, Democrats are torn between old impulses and a recognition of the new order. This week Democrats were by turns patting themselves on the back for their unity and acknowledging the new world that Rove, Norquist and company have created.
