The Democrats' dilemma - National Review's conference on role of conservatives in Democratic Party

National Review, Dec 17, 1990 by Richard Brookhiser

Who Will Say It?

ASSUMING that there are conservative Democratic voters and (some) conservative Democratic issues, where are the conservative Democratic politicians? The conference was attended by two U.S. representatives, Beverly Byron (Md.) and Gene Taylor (Miss.); two state legislators, David Halbrook (Miss.) and William Bulger (Mass.); Koch; and Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder. Many of the pols, unused to such a venue and perhaps afraid that their presence would be reported in the press, even as Koch once threatened to have the vice squad release the names of johns-took pains to establish their liberalism on key issues. Koch boasted that he had campaigned for the legalization of abortion as long ago as 1962, while Congressman Taylor thumped the tub of protection, asking how many people in the audience were wearing American watches. (I held up my forty-year-old Elgin, but he was not impressed.)

The Democrats generated the most heat on the subject of the Civil Rights Bill. Governor Wilder blasted the Bush Administration for characterizing the bill's affirmative-action provisions as quotas. "As one who has had some experience with real racial-quota laws, let me say that the Civil Rights Act [sic] of 1990 is not one of those laws. . . . Surely, a President who stands up to the intimidation of Saddam Hussein must stand up to the intimidation of extremists like Jesse Helms." Decoded, what the governor said was this: Helms is a racist, reelected in a racist campaign; Bush and Helms agree on the Civil Rights Bill; therefore, anyone who agrees with them is a racist too.

That means, then, that Ed Koch is a racist, for Koch only an hour earlier had denounced what he called the Kennedy-Hawkins bill: "I will not call it a civil-rights bill, because it's not.

. . When affirmative action is presented as goals, timetables, and sanctions, it means quotas.... If that isn't a quota bill, I don't know what is." Governor Wilder's attempt to exclude opponents of the bill from the civilized community suggests that he, and the leadership of the Democratic Party, fear that Koch's opinion is widely shared, and that only a pre-emptive moral strike, employing nuclear and biological weapons, will save the bill, and themselves.

In the second, conservative half of his speech, the governor focused on fiscal responsibility, as practiced by himself in Virginia. "It's meant making some tough choices. It's meant having the willpower to say no."' I thought I had heard this before, and indeed had-from Charles Krauthammer's former employer. We must cut spending and pay as we go. If [Congress doesn't] hold the line, I will. That's what the veto is for." Thus Walter Mondale, in his acceptance speech at the 1984 Democratic convention. The point of the recollection is that fiscal responsibility" is some of the saddest fustian in American politics. The seriousness of the rhetoric depends entirely on the politician's record. Wilder's in Virginia is, so far, good. What it would become on the national level remains to be seen.