THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 22, 1996 TAG: 9602220008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
In 1992, George Bush came to an economically troubled New Hampshire apparently unaware of the angst and was stunned by Pat Buchanan's 37 percent showing.
History has repeated itself. Days before the primary, putative front-runner Bob Dole said he didn't know taxes, jobs and economic distress were going to be big issues. Buchanan did. Preaching a populist sermon, he won the primary Tuesday. The Republican establishment is stunned.
Are these people slow learners, or what? It's the middle-class, stupid! For 20 years working Americans have been squeezed. Jobs have gone overseas. The two-wage-earner household has become the norm with accompanying strains on the family. The quality of life for the average person has declined; job security has been lost. Education counts more than ever, and schools underperform.
To many, the American Dream appears to be in peril. Parents worry about employment for their children, their own retirement and the final years of their aging parents. What's the response of the Republican Party?
Given a historic mandate to do something to improve the nation's prospects in 1994, Republicans advocated education cutbacks, austerity on entitlements, little solace for worried wage earners and tax breaks for the prosperous. Is it any wonder Pat Buchanan is running well? He's the only one in the field asking the right questions. Unfortunately, his answers make little sense and their pedigree is anything but Republican.
Buchanan is an isolationist, a protectionist, and sometimes sounds like a theocrat. He appears to believe the enemy is Wall Street and the Fortune 500. His essential message is us-against-them. It's warmed-over Perot.
The alternatives appear to be men with liabilities of their own. Lamar Alexander is an insider posing as an outsider. A millionaire man of the people, he's another Southern governor who made interesting land deals and whose wife was a surprisingly successful investor.
Pundits claimed this would be a coronation, not a contest for Bob Dole. Apparently he believed it and didn't bother to prepare a campaign. Dole has offered no alternative vision to Clinton's. As a result, he comes across as interested in preserving the status quo and serving special interests, a Mondale of the right.
This race ought to be about how to balance the budget and still grow the economy, how to cut back regulation while preserving the environment, how to compete in a global economy without reducing our standard of living, how to offer incentives for self-help without rewarding self-indulgence, how to keep a viable safety net without bankrupting the country, how to remain a prosperous middle-class society instead of declining into feuding haves and have-nots.
Those are big issues requiring big ideas that differ from those of the Democrats. So far, the only ideas - dubious and divisive - have come from Steve Forbes and Pat Buchanan. Most of the race has been devoted to simple-minded sound bites, shameful mudslinging, Republican self-laceration. If this goes on until November, the GOP could lose not just the White House to a man widely regarded as damaged goods but the hold on Congress it achieved just 15 months ago. Stunning. by CNB