Bringing the War 'Home': Go ahead: Make it a political issue - how Democrats and Republicans are using war on terrorism in campaigns

National Review, July 15, 2002 by Ramesh Ponnuru

At the start of the war, liberals worried that President Bush and the Republicans were going to exploit the conflict for partisan or ideological ends. This fear was reasonable. The war did indeed put Republicans in a strong political position, and they might have been expected to use that strength to advance their policy agenda. But it's not turning out that way.

In the area of domestic policy, Democrats are having at least as good a war as Republicans are. Yes, Bush was able to win an increase in defense spending. But he has not gotten Congress to cut taxes or to allow more energy production. Democrats, on the other hand, were able to federalize airport-security workers within two months of the attacks. They have also taken advantage of voters' inattention to domestic issues. They have blocked Bush's judges without paying a price. The farm bill that recently passed Congress expands the subsidies that have kept the Democratic party alive in socially conservative rural states. Without the war, it might have been debated.

If Republicans continue the political strategy that has yielded these results, they could suffer serious defeats in the November elections -- losing seats in the Senate and maybe even losing control of the House.

The Democrats have been as successful as they have been only because Republicans have not politicized the war. They have not, for example, used the war to point out the folly of liberal positions on racial profiling, border control, and multiculturalism. Bush could have asked for a bigger increase in the defense budget than Democrats could tolerate, and then fought over the issue. (He would have won.) Instead, he opted for an increase that could pass Congress easily.

Bush has reasons for playing nice. The armed forces didn't need a congressional debate; they needed money, quickly. We'd all rather have Bush concentrate on defeating our enemies abroad than on beating his opponents at home. Picking public fights with the Democrats does not come naturally to Bush, and on some of the issues where liberals might be vulnerable because of the war -- e.g., immigration and racial profiling -- he actually shares their positions. But whatever his reasons for adopting it, the current Republican strategy is a dangerous one for the GOP.

The strategy has five components. First, champion further tax cuts -- Republicans are still willing to fight over them. Second, attack Democrats on procedural issues. (Criticize Daschle as an "obstructionist," that is, rather than make the case for the judges and bills he's obstructing.) Third, blur differences on domestic issues other than taxes: Offer watered-down versions of the Democrats' prescription-drug subsidies, run away from Social Security reform, etc. Fourth, use policy to woo discrete groups, tariffs for steel workers being the most notorious example. Fifth, count on the fact that voters trust Republicans on national security and that President Bush is popular to lift the party's candidates to victory in November.

The new push for a Department of Homeland Security fits perfectly with this strategy. Republicans think it will move the political debate to their terrain. Tod Lindberg made this case in The Weekly Standard: Congressional Democrats will be too tied up with the reorganization of security agencies to talk about the environment, prescription drugs, and their other favored issues. Democrats will instead have to talk about security, a Republican issue.

But the new department could end up being a political debacle for Republicans. It shares the basic flaw of the party's overall strategy: It provides no reasons for conservatives, or anyone else, to think it important to elect Republicans.

Let's start with conservatives. Midterm elections are famously "base elections," in which parties win or lose depending on whether they mobilize their core supporters (and not on whether they appeal to fence-sitters). But the avoidance of fights with Democrats, the blurring of issue distinctions, and often the pandering to interest groups all tend to dispirit the GOP's conservative base. Karl Rove has already expressed concern that conservative turnout fell in 2000. Conservative voters strongly support Bush, but that support may not be a reason for them to go to the polls this year, when he's not on the ballot.

There are plenty of security issues in which the Republican base takes an interest: military action against Iraq, missile defense, arming pilots, racial profiling, border control, and accountability for errant security officials. Whether the Coast Guard is fully or partly in a Department of Homeland Security is not one of these issues. If anything, conservative voters are likely to be unhappy about the expansion of government that is almost certain to accompany reorganization.

It's especially important for Republicans to use legislative fights to mobilize their troops since Democrats are better at using other means of communicating with their voters. They have the media, and they have better get-out-the-vote organizations than Republicans. Homeland security won't really tie up the Democrats: Gephardt doesn't need the floor of Congress to scare core Democrats about Republican plans to re- institute lynching, despoil the earth, and throw old folks into the snow.