Wedge shots: Democrats are thrusting back with a set of issues - education topping the list - meant to drive a wedge between the GOP and suburban families

National Review, Sept 1, 1997 by Rich Lowry

IN 1990, Democrat Zell Miller, Georgia's 16-year lieutenant governor, won the governor's mansion by racking up huge margins in metropolitan Atlanta and in the rural parts of the state, including northern Georgia, where he had grown up. But by the end of his first term Miller had lost support in his home territory and seemed increasingly vulnerable. He had unsuccessfully pushed to alter the state flag, which was modeled on the Confederate Battle Flag. He had raised the price of hunting and fishing licenses. And he was closely associated with an unpopular President Clinton. When Republican Guy Millner challenged Miller in 1994, Millner ran strong in rural areas, which should have spelled Miller's doom.

But Miller made up ground in the Republican suburbs of Atlanta, where he picked up about ten points. Miller's efforts in gaining passage of welfare reform and a "two strikes" law made GOP voters more comfortable with him, while his program of HOPE scholarships --essentially free college education, funded by a state lottery --proved hugely popular with suburban parents. By election day, the state had awarded roughly 80,000 scholarships, a number that has swollen to more than 240,000. "When you're handing out free college education," says Miller's director of communications, Rick Dent, "that's a very popular thing to do."

Miller's approval rating is now in the 70 per cent range. It's no accident that President Clinton made a version of the HOPE scholarships part of his 1996 campaign. Nor is it surprising that congressional Republicans accepted the resulting grab-bag of college tax credits and deductions as a major part of this year's tax package. In the Seventies and Eighties, the GOP had a well-worn set of "wedge issues" -- welfare, crime, taxes -- with which to separate the Democratic Party from its electoral base. Now that the effectiveness of those issues has been blunted, the Democrats are thrusting back with their own set of issues -- education topping the list -- that are meant to drive a wedge between the GOP and the suburban families who should be among the party's bulwarks.

According to a survey by Congressional Quarterly, President Clinton won 24 of the United States' 28 biggest suburban counties in 1996, a suburban sweep reminiscent of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Prior to 1992, 17 of these Clinton counties hadn't voted Democratic in a presidential election since the 1960s, and 7 of them didn't vote for Clinton in 1992. There are, of course, several factors that trend-hunters should take into account: a weak GOP presidential candidate last year, depressed GOP turnout, the more multicultural demographics of some of the older suburbs. But the bottom line is clear: "The young families that everybody thought were sort of a lock for Republicans in 1994," says Ed Kilgore, political director of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), "really came back with a vengeance."

Democrats hope to keep driving this trend with a soft liberalism as anodyne and pleasant as a well-kept suburban lawn. Government as taxer and spender is out, but government as security blanket and helpmate in achieving the American Dream is very much in. As Clinton says of the budget, "It reforms and cuts yesterday's government so that we can help provide our people the means to meet the challenges of tomorrow." Or in the formulation of Democratic pollster Alan Secrest, who worked for Gov. Miller's 1994 campaign: "If you're a Democrat and you can keep in balance . . . two values, accountability and opportunity, you will have substantially advantaged yourself." Accountability is symbolized by issues like welfare reform, opportunity by education.

Clinton made education the theme of his State of the Union address, announcing a ten-point plan heavy on standards and testing. He calls investing in education "America's most important priority" and says the budget plan is "the best education budget in a generation." It is no accident that education is such a rhetorical priority. In August of 1996 pollster John Zogby's survey for Reuters had education as the top concern of voters. "That's never happened before -- it's always been the economy and jobs, crime and health care," says Zogby. "There's a sense throughout the country . . . that there are just some things that the [local] property tax can't do." Dick Morris contends that Clinton has done for education what Nixon did for crime.

The analogy suggests that symbolism will be as important as substance. The Federal Government, after all, can do little about either crime or education, but getting on the wrong side of the symbols can be devastating nonetheless. Burned by their experience with "national" standards and testing during the Bush Administration, Republicans are leery of Clinton's initiatives --which has Democratic strategists licking their lips. Bill Goodling (R., Pa.), chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, wants to stop development of a new national test. A co-sponsor of one of his resolutions is Rep. Major Owens (D., N.Y.), the Brooklyn liberal. The last time Republicans had such a strange-bedfellows alliance was on the 1995 terrorism bill -- a prelude to losing the crime issue in 1996.