Copyright 2000 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St.
Louis Post-Dispatch
December 17, 2000, Sunday, FIVE STAR LIFT
EDITION
SECTION: NEWS, Pg. A10
LENGTH: 1366 words
HEADLINE:
BUSH'S CONSERVATIVE BACKERS SHUN TALK OF CONCILIATION;
"I DON'T BELIEVE IN
BIPARTISANSHIP," FIREBRAND PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY SAYS;
PRESIDENT-ELECT CAN EXPECT
SCRUTINY
BYLINE: Jon Sawyer; Post-Dispatch Washington
Bureau Chief
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
Now that he's survived Hurricane
Recount, President-elect George W. Bush can turn his attention to bigger
challenges ahead -- like Phyllis Schlafly.
Schlafly, the longtime
conservative activist who heads the Alton-based Eagle Forum, says the talk of
bipartisanship that has filled the air since Bush's delayed victory over Vice
President Al Gore is a Democratic snare that Bush entertains at his political
peril.
"It's a terrible model," Schlafly said. "I don't believe in
bipartisanship. It's just an excuse for covering up Democratic mistakes."
Schlafly said she was stunned to hear that Bush was considering
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, an opponent of national missile defense, for
defense secretary, and that North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt, a Democrat who favors
national school performance tests and opposes vouchers, was on Bush's list of
those being considered for secretary of education.
"It's just off the
wall," Schlafly said. "I can't imagine how these names got into the mix in the
first place."
The Cabinet prospects of Ridge and Hunt have faded, thanks
in part to the vocal opposition of Schlafly and conservatives like James C.
Dobson, president of Focus on the Family. But the battle for the heart and soul
of Bush's administration is far from over.
The dust-up over just the
possibility of moderates in Bush's Cabinet indicates the scrutiny the
president-elect can anticipate -- on policy, appointments and the timing of his
initiatives -- from supporters in his Republican conservative base.
The "big issues"
The conservative priorities come straight from
Bush's own campaign platform. The question is whether and when Bush should
pursue them, with the narrowest of mandates himself, a Congress split down the
middle and what many see as the political imperative to score early successes
and prove that he can lead.
* Conservative defense activists want Bush
to press ahead immediately with national missile defense, even if that means
abrogating the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.
*
Anti-abortion forces want immediate votes in Congress to ban so-called
"partial-birth abortions" and action by Bush to reverse Bill Clinton's approval
of federal grants to international population-control groups that support
abortion.
* School-voucher advocates want Bush to make good, soon, on
his pledge to support school choice to benefit children trapped in failing
public schools.
* Supporters of Social Security privatization want Bush
to carry through, now, on his promise to radically restructure the nation's
retirement program.
"I think it's a mistake if he avoids the big issues,
if he tries just for little things," said the Cato Institute's Michael Tanner,
an advocate of Social Security privatization. "What he needs is big issues,
where people will forget Florida and where Democrats will pay the price if they
are perceived as being responsible for gridlock."
Clint Bolick, who as
litigation director for the Institute of Justice is a leader in the fight to
uphold the constitutionality of school vouchers, says Bush comes to office at a
time when the voucher issue will be front and center in Washington. The major
test of its constitutionality is headed toward the Supreme Court, he noted, and
Congress will have another chance to approve the major voucher experiment in the
nation's capital that Clinton vetoed twice.
"There's very little mileage
in tepidly pushing school choice," Bolick said. "You've either got to go to the
mat or else do nothing. We don't yet know where Bush will go."
Douglas
Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, says a
presidential veto no longer looms over bills that would ban partial-birth
abortion. But getting those measures through Congress at all is going to be
tougher, with the loss of at least four anti-abortion votes in the Senate.
Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, lobbied hard
against talk of Tom Ridge at the Pentagon. He's pressing for a strong advocate
at the Defense Department, particularly on the question of moving forward
quickly on missile defense.
"I would like to see the president right out
of the box announcing that he's going to deploy missile defense, starting in six
months' time," Gaffney said. "It's consistent with what he said in the campaign,
but the people around him will try to dissuade him.
"It's an early test
of what he's made of -- of whether he honors what he said in the campaign is the
single most serious national security vulnerability that we face."
Conservative activists hint at more give on tax cuts, with many
supporting initial focus on cuts in the estate tax and repeal
of the marriage penalty. Both proposals enjoy broad Democratic support. Both
have already cleared Congress, only to be vetoed by Clinton. Neither poses the
political challenge of Bush's more ambitious plan for a 10 percent
across-the-board cut in tax rates.
Grover Norquist, president of
Americans for Tax Reform and a close associate of former House Speaker Newt
Gingrich, R-Ga., says Bush will have ample opportunities next year to score
victories that build political capital while at the same time reassuring the
conservative base.
He ticked off a long list of legislation for which he
said there were already bipartisan majorities -- from expansion of free trade to
the deregulation of electric utilities and bankruptcy and tort reform, as well
as large chunks of Bush's tax-cut agenda.
"People forget that the
stopper in gridlock wasn't the Democrats in the House and Senate," Norquist
said. "It was Clinton."
Finding common ground
Norquist
predicts that Bush will find common ground with the Democrats on an HMO bill of
rights, one that contains a sharply limited right to sue, and that relief from
the cost of prescription drugs would be rolled into Medicare reform. He believes
there will be a commission to address Social Security and Medicare -- but that
it will be an "action" commission focused on building public support for real
reform.
Bush might reach out to African-Americans by appointing one of
two former Democratic congressmen, both black, to the Department of Education.
The first name mentioned is William Gray, head of the United Negro College Fund
and former head of the House Budget Committee. Also mentioned is Floyd Flake,
the charismatic minister from Brooklyn who is an outspoken backer of
private-school vouchers.
Scott Reed, who managed Bob Dole's 1996
presidential campaign and is heading a grass-roots campaign to press Bush's
conservative agenda, said it was important for Bush to choose "people who have
substance behind them -- who are identified with issues important to the Bush
agenda."
Reed said conservative activists will also look hard at Bush's
choices for attorney general and for secretary of health and human services, the
two positions with the most say over key issues such as abortion, welfare,
judicial nominations and Social Security reform.
Supreme Court
showdown
One challenge Reed said he hopes won't come to Bush, at least
not soon, is a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
Bush can't afford a
showdown over the court, Reed said, not with a shaky mandate and the sour
aftermath of Florida's ballot count and the high court's intervention on behalf
of Bush. In the current environment, he predicted, Bush would probably turn to a
centrist like David Souter, the man his father appointed to the Supreme Court in
1990.
Reed acknowledged that if Bush went for "a Souter-type nomination,
you would have a blow-up from the Phyllis Schlafly side of the party. Does that
matter? I don't know. It's too early to tell."
It's not too early for
Schlafly, who says Bush should demand a strong conservative for the Supreme
Court -- someone like Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., she said -- even if that means
a knock-down drag-out fight. If Bush isn't going to insist on Supreme Court
appointments that match his own philosophy, she said, then what was the election
about?
"If Bush hasn't gotten that message, then it really is hopeless,"
she said. "If he appointed another Souter he would really be a fool."
NOTES:
THE BUSH TRANSITION To reach reporter
Jon Sawyer: E-mail: jsawyer@post-dispatch.com Phone: 202-298-6880
GRAPHIC: PHOTO PHOTO headshot - (Phyllis) Schlafly -
Heads Alton-based Eagle Forum
LOAD-DATE: December
17, 2000 
