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| Visions & Revisions |
Everything in Moderation
11/01/2005
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For their
part, urban Republicans aren’t going to waste their money on somebody who is
really conservative because they know those candidates don’t stand a chance. So
essentially, Republican voters who live in places like Los Angeles and New York
get more pragmatic and they support the person who is less liberal. It’s kind of
strange, but when Republicans finally decide they are going to support me, they
suddenly see only my conservative side. I’ve attended fund-raisers with
Republican groups and there were introductions made in which people said, “He
won’t raise taxes a penny!” and “He’ll lower the cost of government!”
You criticize union power, yet you supported Antonio Villaraigosa [current
mayor of L.A.] in the recent mayoral election. He is an unapologetic liberal and
a former union organizer.
Well, he is somewhat apologetic because now he has ambitions for higher
office. I didn’t support him in the primaries, but you have to pick somebody in
the final race, and his opponent [incumbent James Hahn] was in the pockets of
the liberals and the unions. Villaraigosa has surrounded himself with some
strong conservatives, among others. Plus, he has energy and magnetism, and he
realizes that if he wants to go far politically, he will have to come back
toward the middle. Hopefully, he is getting the message that the middle road is
fiscally, socially and morally the best for everybody.
Are American voters more moderate than the extremes that are currently
shouting at each other?
I think they are. Roger Ailes, who is now the head of Fox News, was President
Reagan’s image maker. He once wrote that making an audience like you is the most
important thing a politician can achieve when giving a speech. The voters in
this country don’t want someone who is going to beat up on the opposition all
the time; they want a father, and a father is not going to beat up his children.
Ailes’ theory works. And, by the way, Ronald Reagan was not an arch
conservative.
Yet arch conservatism has worked well for the GOP in recent years. How will
party moderates contribute to this success in the future?
Again, I wish we could use some word other than moderate. When it comes to
actually governing, I was a lot tougher fiscally than almost any other
Republican I have seen in California, or Washington for that matter. They may be
more conservative than I am on social or ideological issues, but not on the
tough matter of actually going in and cutting down the budget.
In light of soaring trade and budget deficits, has the Republican Party abandoned the hard work of fiscal conservatism?
That’s a very good question. We’re going to be trillions in debt, mostly to
the Chinese, and someday they are going to call in that debt, stop buying our
bonds and move on to a stronger currency. Something has to be done to address
the trade imbalance, but you can’t do it by restricting imports. That would be
devastating. You would probably have to do it by lowering the standard of living
within a reasonable range. But what politician is going to do that?
In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, former Republican Senator John C.
Danforth wrote, “As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal
deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on
the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.”
We’re spending much more time talking about any number of trivial issues than
we are discussing the balance of trade, the budget deficit, etc. [C. Northcote]
Parkinson, the English economist—and my favorite writer—said something to the
effect that the amount of time spent by a large group talking about a matter is
inverse to the importance of the matter.
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