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Tax-Cut and Spend Republicans
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Party
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Oct 03, 2005 09:13pm |
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| Category | Commentary |
| Media | Newspaper - Washington Post |
| News Date | Tuesday, October 4, 2005 03:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Monday, October 3, 2005; 8:42 AM
As Republicans celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Contract With America, where is the zeal for smaller government that was such a central aspect of the 1994 Republican Revolution?
In the five years he has been in office, President Bush and the GOP-led Congress have added $1.5 trillion and counting to the federal debt they inherited after Bill Clinton left office. Even many of today's conservative pundits and activists are questioning the party's priorities.
But does the president deserve all the blame?
With a large number of Republicans left over from the 1994 revolution, what happened to the zeal for reining in spending?
In a story that ran in The Washington Post in 2000 during the election, Dan Balz and I wrote that Bush was staking ground as a new kind of Republican, "a tax-cut and spend" politician.
Bush's approach has always been more about political strategy than governing philosophy. In other words, it's a way to win elections. After getting a scare in the 1998 midterms, in which Republicans failed to expand their majority, even amid the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, many Republicans bought into the Bush-Rove strategy for expanding the party's power. |
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