‘Fairness’ Is Pete Wilson’s New Mantra

Basking in the limelight as he begins a second term, Gov. Pete Wilson is showing why Republicans these days are appealing to both middle America and the rich, the workers and the corporate CEOs.

Read that especially white . The California electorate last November was 81% white; the state’s population just 69% white. GOP politicians are happy to let Democrats fight for people who don’t vote; let them advocate spending tax money on illegal immigrants and on able-bodied adults who won’t work, and--in the coming battle--defend affirmative action programs that smack of reverse discrimination.

In an angry era of purported anti-incumbency, not one Republican incumbent in Congress--Senate or House--was bounced. Neither was any GOP governor. Only one Republican legislator in Sacramento was defeated. There’s a message there somewhere.

Wilson’s message to Californians in his second inaugural address on Saturday and in his fifth State of the State speech today is that not only does he get the message, he is one of the messengers.

For him, the message can be summarized in one word: Fairness. This has become his mantra, his buzzword, his political guidepost--”fairness for those who work hard, play by the rules, respect the rights of others and raise their children to obey the law;” also fairness for his core constituency, the risk-taking capitalists who create jobs.

Speaker Newt Gingrich’s “contract with America?” Wilson has been preaching most of that stuff for years: Get tougher with violent criminals, cut way back on welfare, go after deadbeat dads, increase parents’ rights in their children’s education, provide business tax incentives, cut regulatory red tape, reduce federal power over state and local governments and reform the legal system.

All of it, with some new twists, will be heard again today in the governor’s State of the State Address. And Democrats might be wise not to get too argumentative in their formal response.

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Wilson already has indicated he will propose across-the-board cuts in income tax rates--for the middle class and the wealthy, for individuals and for businesses.

For business, he’ll also bemoan the “red-tape tax of regulation” and suggest a way to cap it. And he’ll again attack “lawsuit abuse” and push for tort reform.

For parents who cannot afford private schools, he’ll call for “fundamental change” in education--including repeal of teacher tenure. Bad teachers should be fired, he’ll insist, and the best teachers rewarded with merit pay.

Once more, he’ll advocate the death penalty for carjackers and drive-by shooters who kill.

But the highlight of his speech to a joint legislative session and a statewide TV audience likely will be welfare reform.

Wilson intends to announce plans for a two-day summit conference on disappearing deadbeat dads. The governor particularly will target the “selfish deadbeats,” as he characterized them in his inaugural address, who “casually” impregnate teen-age girls and vanish. “Their child is their obligation, not the taxpayers’,” he told cheering Republicans.

Society, he said, cannot “continue tolerating the promiscuity and irresponsibility that have produced generations of unwed teen mothers. It is monstrously unfair to the children, to their sad, ill-equipped teen mothers, and certainly to working taxpayers who must support them at a cost to their own children.”

Wilson wants single mothers to identify the father before they get a welfare check.

He also wants to deny welfare for unmarried teen moms who insist on living alone. He thinks the teen should stay with her parent(s), unless it’s an abusive home. And if it is, she and her child should live with a foster family.

A child, he insists, needs a stable home--and so does the child’s child, preferably one with male influence. “We are paying for too many prisons because absent fathers have failed to take responsibility to socialize and civilize their children.”

Wilson further advocates cutting off welfare for able-bodied mothers after two years, although their children would continue to get aid. “We will make it clear,” he declared, “that welfare is to be a safety net--not a hammock.”

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Most of this has broad appeal nationally, as Speaker Gingrich learned. Wilson’s strength, like Gingrich’s, is the politics of ideas--clearly not personality, regardless of the governor’s entertaining song-and-dance at his inaugural gala.

As Wilson knows better than anybody, a couple of years can be a generation in politics. But right now, beginning anew as governor, he seems a 61-year-old with still an unlimited future. He is sounding ideas that are in tune with the voters.