Reagan majority alive and well

Insight on the News, Dec 1, 1997 by John Berlau

Bill Clinton's seer, Dick Morris, claims recent balloting indicates that the Clinton era is over and Democrats are likely to face `unmitigated disaster' in the 1998 elections.

The media and political pundits barely stifled a collective yawn at the end of the 1997 elections. Coverage of the returns of Nov. 4 and what they meant was over in a day or two. Bored by what they apparently considered trivial issues, such as Virginia's property tax on cars, most pundits accepted the Democratic spin that voters were happy with incumbents because of the strong economy.

With no victories to boast, the Nov. press release of the Democratic National Committee, or DNC, actually credited the Clinton administration for Republican wins. "The results of yesterday's elections show that Americans are happy with the direction the president and vice president are taking the country, and that's why they overwhelmingly reelected incumbents or their own parties," the press release quoted DNC Chairman Roy Romer as saying. "Incumbents owe a huge debt of gratitude to the president and vice president for their leadership."

The cognoscenti of spin in both political parties giggled, but the man who played the key advisory role in reelecting President Clinton sees the message of the off-year elections very differently. "whoever wrote that [Romer's statement] believes in medical usage of marijuana," Clinton's former pollster Dick Morris quips to Insight. "People voted Republican," he says, "because they're looking for something new, because they feel Clinton has given his best ideas to the country and the Republicans are the only ones with something new to offer."

Morris says he believes his old boss is "basically out of steam" and sees the recent hearings on IRS abuses as a turn for the worse in Clinton's political fortunes. "The IRS issue is the first in about three years the Republicans have been able to float, maintain and win with," Morris says, "and it's a symptom of [Clinton] losing control over the agenda." Mulling the 1997 election results and the fact that sixth-year congressional elections historically do not bode well for the president's party, Morris makes this bold prediction about 1998: "I think the Republican sweep this year is the handwriting on the wall that it's going to be an unmitigated disaster for him."

Morris calls the Virginia elections a "generic" example of what he expects in 1998. He calls Republican governor-elect James S. Gilmore III's winning use of the car tax "brilliant" and "very effective." From the very start of his campaign, Gilmore promised to abolish the property tax for cars valued at $20,000 and under, and his campaign spread red-and-blue road signs all over the Old Dominion emblazoned with the message "No Car Tax! Vote Gilmore." He defeated the popular Democratic lieutenant governor, Don Beyer, with a landslide 56 percent of the vote, helped the GOP win the other two statewide offices of lieutenant governor and attorney general -- and helped gain control of the Senate for the first time in the commonwealth's history.

Some even are saying that Clinton drew the dividing line for 1998 when he went campaigning in Virginia and declared that voters there are "selfish" for wanting to get rid of the tax on the family car. At a rally for Beyer the day before the election, Clinton proclaimed, "This really is a question about whether Virginians will be selfish in the moment or selfless for their children and their future."

Conservative pollster Kellyanne Fitzpatrick calls this statement "one of the worst things he's said in the five years of his presidency." She tells Insight she was surprised a politician as smooth as Clinton would make this gaffe because "he is the master of never putting his foot in his mouth by pointing his finger at the voters. He always makes himself one of them." Fitzpatrick adds that "this country is rabid about taxes."

Indeed, in ballot initiatives across the United States, "selfish" voters said no to politicians who wanted to take more of their money for government "investments," such as a new stadium in Pittsburgh, schools and roads in Orange County, Fla., an elephant house at the Cincinnati zoo, road improvements in Colorado and a light-rail system in St. Louis.

Taxes also were the main issue in New York's 13th District where two culturally conservative pro-life candidates duked it out for Republican Susan Molinari's vacant seat in Congress. As late as October, Democrats were selling the race as a portent for 1998. A campaign adviser for Democratic candidate Eric Vitaliano was quoted in the Oct. 19 Washington Post as saying, "Like what Gettysburg was to the Civil War, what happens in Eric's district is going to be a sign of what will happen in next year's elections."

If so, the Democrats will be as badly beaten as the Confederates below Little Roundtop. In what was supposed to be a dead heat, Republican candidate Vito Fossella won with 62 percent of the vote after signing the Americans for Tax Reform pledge not to raise taxes, pushing tax cuts to benefit small businesses and reminding voters of Vitaliano's support in the state assembly for tax increases. In New York City, Republican Rudy Giuliani, credited with reducing crime and restoring civility, also won a landslide victory for his second term as mayor of a city that long has been synonymous with the words liberal Democrat.