Political Winds

It will be interesting to see if any talk show hosts, politicians and pundits step back from their embrace of Ann Coulter. Of course she’s always been bombastic, utterly careless about the truth and Olympian in her obnoxiousness - the very things that qualified her for stardom on cable TV talk shows. But you have to think that Chris Matthews or even someone at Fox News might be feeling rumblings somewhere in their lost souls about Coulter’s latest outburst. Here’s what she had to say in her column about triple amputee and former Democratic Senator Max Cleland, who has been campaigning for John Kerry:

Cleland lost three limbs in an accident during a routine noncombat mission where he was about to drink beer with friends. He saw a grenade on the ground and picked it up… Indeed, if Cleland had dropped a grenade on himself at Fort Dix rather than in Vietnam, he would never have been a U.S. senator in the first place. Maybe he’d be the best pharmacist in Atlanta, but not a U.S. senator. He got into office on the basis of serving in Vietnam and was thrown out for his performance as a senator.

Cleland wore the uniform, he was in Vietnam, and he has shown courage by going on to lead a productive life. But he didn’t “give his limbs for his country,” or leave them “on the battlefield.”

Cleland, I have to say, showed remarkable restraint in his intitial response, saying

I volunteered for a combat mission with the 1st Air Calvary division going into break the siege at Khe Sahn, and if that isn?t a combat mission, you ought to ask some of the people that were there and the 200 guys that were killed in that mission.

And the Republicans say those Democrats are engaging in “gutter politics” for daring to question Bush’s patchy National Guard record…

The Republicans like to say they’ve been winning the “war of ideas.” “Good ideas always beat out bad ones,” Newt Gingrich used to say. But when you get past the broad pitch for lower taxes and a kick-ass defense, the GOP hasn’t sold a thing - except slogans: “It’s not the government’s money, it’s your money!”

Let’s talk about “your money.” George W. Bush can’t sell the ideas underlying his budget because they would never fly with the voters. Better to sloganeer. Take a look at the hilariously titled budget page on the White House Web site. It says, “A Blueprint For New Beginnings. A Responsible Budget for America’s Priorities.” Sounds fantastic - just what the country needs: a forward-looking budget, a sensible and sober-minded budget, a budget that will cut the deficit in half in five years! “Yee-oowwwaaahhh!,” as Howard Dean would say.

Now, imagine, just for a wildly improbable moment, that George Dubya actually went to the people to explain in some detail the difficult choices he faced and the tough decisions he had to make. What if he actually tried to sell his idea of cutting back or eliminating 128 programs - budget items like aid to local police, fire and emergency rescue departments; modernization of the air traffic control system; programs to improve writing skills and teach foreign languages, increase the number of high school counselors, reduce alcohol abuse in secondary schools, and provide employment services for the disabled. What if he told us why he had to put the squeeze on those programs and cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by seven percent rather than put on hold the idea of making permanent his tax cuts for the rich - at a cost of $1.1 trillion. What if he actually tried to make the argument that continuing to shift the tax burden from investment and wealth to work is sound economic policy? Or that enforcement of environmental laws is less effective than industry self-regulation?

Of course, these fundamental Republican ideas and budget priorities are not really marketable to the American people. They can’t be sold on their merits, especially when voters see the numbers: those cuts in 128 programs will save the government a grand total of $4.9 billion out of a projected deficit this fiscal year of $521 billion.

So Bush won’t even try to engage in a real war of ideas. He’ll do what he always does - offer a few slogans, obscure the details, twist arms on Capitol Hill and hope for the best.

Check out Sally Jenkins’ piece in the Washington Post on the NFL’s fatuous outrage concerning the half-time exposure of one of Janet Jackson’s breasts.

You don’t hear the term “rock-ribbed Republican” as much as you used to. Maybe it’s because the phrase is associated more with old-fashioned country club Republicans than it is with radical right-wingers, neo-conservatives and the like. In any case, I think the media has underplayed the potential for defection of significant numbers of old-line Republicans to the Democrats. This conclusion, I acknowledge, is based largely on anecdotal evidence. Case in point: my mother has an old friend who comes from a wealthy, pillar-of-the-business community, rock-ribbed Republican family in North Carolina. The friend has always been a Republican, but the other day she registered as a Democrat. She is a conservative in the traditional sense of the word and strongly disapproves of Bush’s radicalism.

I know the polls show something like 90% loyalty to Bush among Republicans. But I’m sure there are a lot of people out there like my mother’s friend, or if you like, Republican-turned-Independent Sen. Jim Jeffords.