November 9, 1997

Save Your Confederate Money, South Will Rise Again

Election results are only slightly better than chicken entrails in predicting political outcomes. Nonetheless, we must consider portents where we find them.

Last week’s off-year elections were strategic victories by Republicans favoring tax cuts and family values. Yet, losers are adept at stealing winning tactics. Next year’s congressional races will center on: “What ever you can do, I can do better.”

Big winner at the moment is Virginia’s new Republican governor, James S. Gilmore. He resigned as lieutenant-governor to run for the post vacated by the retiring Republican governor George Allen.

Gilmore won with a 13-point margin over Donald Beyer, a former two-term lieutenant-governor.

Riding on Gilmore’s coat tails were two other candidates for top state posts of lieutenant-governor and attorney general. Republicans will take charge of the state senate for the first time since Reconstruction.

The winning issue was a pledge to eliminate a property tax on automobiles levied in addition to hefty license plate costs. Beyer proposed a tax credit for Virginians making less that $75,000 annually.

President Clinton left a giant fund-raiser at Amelia Island, Fla., early to stump for Beyer at the last minute. He drove a stake through Beyer’s heart by declaring that tax cuts were “selfish and short-sighted.” The president and Beyer wanted more money for education.

Clinton and Beyer tried to portray Gilmore as an “extremist” who would ban abortions and trash the environment. Exit polls indicate the Democrats’ negative advertising turned them off. Tax cuts were central issues in other GOP victories Tuesday. New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani buried liberal Democrat Ruth Messinger by 16 percentage points. It had been 28 years since a Republican mayor had won re-election in the Big Apple.

Giuliani, third man in President Reagan’s Justice Department, won primarily because he brought down crime in his city by 40 percent. He also cut business taxes, reduced the welfare rolls, and drove organized crime out of the produce markets. Messinger’s big pitch was more money for education.

New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman won re-election with a bare one-point margin over liberal Democratic newcomer James McGreevey. Here, again, taxes were the key issue.

Whitman won a narrow election four years ago by promising to cut state income taxes 30 percent. She did so, but local municipalities regained the lost revenue by raising property taxes. One way or another, New Jersey taxes are horrendous -- as I can testify by a mercifully short residence there.

McGreevey set the agenda by promising to cut auto insurance rates by 10 percent. Whitman countered with a promise to reduce them 25 percent and reminded voters she had kept her tax-cut promise four years ago.

Whitman got in trouble when she vetoed a ban on partial-birth abortions and expressed support for affirmative action and gay rights. This earned her the media label of a “moderate” Republican -- the same appellation accorded Giuliani.

For social conservatives, dubbed the religious right by liberals , support for abortion and gay rights is radical liberalism -- anti-family and immoral. Their votes were smothered in the New York City election by the tremendous improvement in street safety-- a family value of the first order. Giuliani’s support for gay rights thus was canceled out.

The role of social conservatives in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, however, were crucial.

In New Jersey, Whitman was challenged by two, staunchly conservative, independent candidates -- Murray Sabrin and Rich Pezzullo. Both entered the race expressly to defeat Whitman. Together they siphoned off one of every seven voters, according to a Washington Post exit poll.

Under these circumstances, it is a wonder that Whitman won even by one percentage point. The role of social conservatives was even more dramatic in the Virginia races.

They had been instrumental in electing Gilmore’s predecessor and stayed united this year. Rev. Pat Robertson, the well known religious TV broadcaster and 1988 presidential candidate, was prominent on the stage during Gilmore’s victory speech.

Richard Nixon broke the Democrat’s 45-year strangle hold on federal government with a “southern strategy.” It appealed to Dixie voters conservative in principle but blindly loyal to Democrats who helped their great-grand-daddies fight Republican damyankees over black slavery.

Today, the socially and fiscally conservative philosophy is infiltrating the Roosevelt-Kennedy liberal northeast.

Following Giuliani’s big victory, he allowed as how he could be persuaded to accept the GOP presidential candidacy for 2000. It most likely is not in the cards. Doctrinaire Republicans will not forget that he endorsed a Democratic governor for New York. Family-values Republicans will remember he courted abortionists and homosexuals.

Whitman, once a widely touted vice-president candidate, has abandoned a core constituency. She has blown her chances for national office.

Gilmore suddenly has become presidential timber with his acceptance by conservative Republicans for his family-values stance, and by Democrats who care more about their pocketbooks than safety nets for special interests.

Abortion, affirmative action, environment and gay rights have faded as definitive, political issues.

Next year, the political battles will be fought around tax cuts and education.

This year, party-line voters split evenly on these issues -- according to a Washington Post post-election survey.

Consequently, conservatives hold the balance of power.

Save your Confederate money. The South will rise again.

PARTING SHOTS

Abe Lincoln understood politics: “The best way to get rid of a bad law is to strictly enforce it.”

* * *

No fooling.

Congressman Pete Stark, a California Democrat, has filed H.R. 2784 titled “No Private Contracts To Be Negotiated When The Patient Is Buck Naked Act of 1997.”

The bill would amend Social Security to limit ability of Medicare physicians to demand more money while examining a patient’s private parts.

Today, nakedness. Tomorrow, the split-back hospital gown.

* * *

This also is for real.

Congressman Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican, has filed a motion to impeach President Clinton for obstruction of justice. Seventeen colleagues support the move.

To pass, the resolution needs only a simple majority of the House now controlled by Republicans. Don’t hoot. This was exactly how President Nixon’s downfall began in 1974.

By Lindsey Williams, columnist for Sun Coast Media Group newspapers