Liberals Will Lose This Revolution
Many workaday Americans are wondering why our government is having to suffer through such things as the so-called “train wreck” - the federal government shutdown that came about when the president vetoed the Republicans’ balanced budget legislation. Why can’t Washington just work things out? Why does there seem to be so much rancor and hysteria?
As head of a public policy think tank whose scholars have studied the Washington scene for nearly a quarter century, I can give you an answer: This is the kind of confrontation it takes to get the liberal Establishment to begin loosening its vise-grip on America. Few Washington outsiders have any idea of the degree to which liberals have entrenched themselves over the past three decades and how firm their grip has become.
For many years, liberals have considered their side literally to be “the government”; conservatives are the invading Philistines. Neither the Reagan presidency nor the conservative congressional landslide of 1994 has punctured this mentality. The very idea of anyone actually contesting their hegemony strikes liberals not as the give-and-take of politics but as a catastrophe - as if the whole world suddenly had gone crazy without warning.
Liberals truly are shocked. That’s why, to listen to them talk, an outsider might think conservatism had swept the nation’s capital in recent months. But it hasn’t. What you’re hearing are simply the cries of those inside the liberal citadel - a bunch of frightened people who are just beginning to realize that the enemy is massing outside the gates and that he’s serious.
It has taken conservatives three decades of hard fighting just to get close enough to the liberal citadel in Washington to begin throwing ropes over the walls. Now, we’re dodging buckets of boiling oil and getting ready to climb over. Then the real fighting will begin.
One government shutdown or one session of Congress is not going to correct decades of liberal mismanagement, intrusion and excess. In fact, in the coming years, I think we’ll see a number of political, social, intellectual, ideological and budgetary impasses similar to the “train wreck” we’re experiencing now. And America will be much better off because of them.
Why? Because America needs a healthy clash of ideas, a collision of priorities, the impact of the old hitting the new in order to move our society forward. What we’re seeing is a shift of historic proportions in how America addresses its future.
Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., says it will take six to 10 years to overturn the status quo in Washington. For the first time in U.S. history, he turned a non-presidential election into a national referendum, using the “Contract with America” to help elect 73 freshmen Republicans. They have voted for term limits, fought for tough product liability and tort reform and attacked excessive governmental regulation. They have lost these battles, but eventually, they will win.
Meanwhile, congressional liberals are resisting change at all costs. In the House, they throw sound bites; in the Senate, they threaten to filibuster. As for President Clinton, he has been largely missing in action until recently. As New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd noted, “The man who ran as a ‘change agent’ is marketing himself now as a brake on change.”
But presidential vetoes don’t stop revolutions. And make no mistake: A revolution is going on today in Washington, transforming it and the nation.
Conservatives are working to “end welfare as we know it” by changing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program from an open-ended entitlement - open to anyone who “qualifies” - into an annual appropriation based on need. Similarly, Medicare and Medicaid, two other huge entitlements, also are undergoing significant reform. Even the most sacrosanct of all entitlements - Social Security - may be saved from bankruptcy by this revolution. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., says the program’s cost-of-living adjustment may need to be reviewed. This, from the liberal Moynihan, represents a major breakthrough.
The debate is opening up. For years, it was “politically incorrect” to condemn the country’s illegitimacy rate. Not today. It was taboo to point out the enormous debt we are piling on our children. Not anymore. And it was reactionary to suggest racial preferences are harmful to the ideal of a colorblind society. Today, affirmative action is high on the change list of the national policy agenda.
During the Reagan years, new ideas came from the executive branch. Today, they are coming from the legislative branch, especially the House of Representatives. Clearly, not all of these ideas will be enacted, but one thing is certain: They are challenging the status quo, opening up the debate and shaping the future.
This is the type of “train wreck” America should celebrate, not fear.
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