How America’s right will be roused into action

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How America’s right will be roused into action

By Grover Norquist

The case for Republican pessimism is well understood. Too much President George W. Bush

for too long. Gasoline at $4 a gallon. Most Americans believe we are heading in the wrong

direction. Iraq drags on. Republicans are listless. Time for something new.

The election is Tuesday, November 4, still four months away, and the case for a Republican

resurgence is strong, if unseen by the establishment media.

What is the centre-right coalition that rose up to elect Ronald Reagan in 1980, install a

Republican Congress in 1994 and for the next five elections, and drag Mr Bush across the

finish line twice? This coalition is made up of voters who, on their main vote-moving issue,

want one thing from the government: to be left alone.

Taxpayers want lower taxes. Businesses want low taxes and less regulation. Investors and

owners of 401ks want low taxes on their retirement portfolios. Second Amendment voters –

the 4m members of the National Rifle Association and 20m hunters – want their guns left

alone. Home-schoolers wish to be left alone to educate their children. Social conservatives –

the so-called religious right – are a parents’ rights movement that wishes to be left alone

with their faith and families. They organised in the late 1970s when the government

threatened Christian radio stations and Christian schools with new regulations.

In 1994, every segment of the centre-right, “leave us alone” coalition felt threatened by

Bill Clinton and a Democrat congress that raised taxes and threatened to nationalise

healthcare, steal their guns, tax private pensions, empower unions against small businessmen

and heavily tax the self-employed and small business owners. Parents were told the “village”

would be running more family matters, displacing their authority.

After 12 years of a Republican Congress and seven years of Mr Bush, all parts of the

“leave us alone” coalition felt safer and forgot the plans Democrats have for them. Since

the 1993 Clinton tax rise, no tax increase has been enacted at the federal level. This is

the longest period in US history – going back to that tea thing – without one. Gun laws

lapsed. There have been no labour union power grabs. Add the boat anchor of Iraq to

a coalition lulled into a false sense of security and many conservative voters failed to

notice that the left is unchanged in its ambitions.

The next four months will provide the necessary and perhaps sufficient reminders to

bring them to the polls in force. First, the Supreme Court will rule that the Second

Amendment is an individual right. All political candidates will have to answer the question

they have evaded since 1994: “What amount of gun control regulation do you support?”

This issue will be front and centre in a way it has not been since 1994, when it won

26 House seats for the Republicans.

The 2m Americans who home-school their children – once convinced their rights were

secure – watched a California court rule that home-schooling parents were criminals.

Their central issue is now threatened by judges appointed by Barack Obama, the

Democratic nominee. They will remember to vote.

Taxpayers will begin to calculate just how much they could lose if the Bush tax cuts

are allowed to lapse. The economist David Malpass says it could be more than $4,000bn

in the 10 years from January 2011. The 60 per cent of Americans who own shares of

stock will calculate what will happen to their pension savings if the dividend tax jumps

from today’s 15 per cent to the Clinton-era 35 per cent and capital gains jumps from

15 per cent to Clinton’s 20 per cent. Mr Obama has endorsed a CGT of 20 or 28 per cent.

And every radio talk-show host and Christian radio and television station knows that if

Democrats take complete control, they will restore the so-called “fairness doctrine” that

would require “equal time” for opposing viewpoints. The rise of Rush Limbaugh, the

conservative radio host, was made possible only after that doctrine was abolished in

1987 by the Reagan administration. The talking heads of the secular and religious right

have their heads riding on this election as on no other in the past. They will engage with

gusto.

The centre-right voters, Reagan Democrats and Ross Perot voters are coming to

understand the sharp edges of the Democrats’ agenda: the old one borrowed unchanged

from Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry.

The writer is president of Americans for Tax Reform and author of Leave Us Alone:

Getting the Government’s Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives (HarperCollins)

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