Bush Burns the Right

The conventional wisdom in politics is--or at least used to be--that a Republican hoping to become president had to appeal to the right to get nominated and then woo the center to get elected. A Democrat had to work the other side of the compass: move to the left to get nominating convention delegates, then move toward the center to get votes in November. Bill Clinton, defining himself as a New Democrat in 1992 and 1996, broke that pattern by sharply distancing himself from his party’s far left. Now Texas Gov. George W. Bush seems to be pulling a Clinton, separating himself from his party’s more immoderate partisans via some intriguing comments.

Twice recently Bush has bemoaned what he called his party’s “gloom-and-doom scenario,” its tendency to speak “a sterile language of rates and numbers,” its “disdain for government itself.” His proposed alternative: “making sure people understand that we care a lot about people.” In fleshing out this generalization Bush has sometimes come remarkably close to sounding like a Democrat, accusing House Republicans, for example, of trying to “balance the budget on the backs of the poor.” The nation’s persistent human problems, he insists, must be addressed with more than rhetoric. “The strongest argument for conservative ideals--for responsibility and accountability and the virtues of our tradition--is that they lead to greater justice, less suffering, more opportunity.”

This intraparty chastising well in advance of the first presidential primaries bespeaks either an astonishingly reckless politician or a supremely confident one. Bush is not reckless. He believes the polls that place him miles ahead of other Republican aspirants, a standing validated by the huge campaign war chest he has raised and by the sweeping endorsements he has won. He regards himself as all but nominated and without the need to cater to far-right elements in his party.

Shrewdly, Bush isn’t waiting until next year to burnish his claim to be a “compassionate conservative.” He knows, as the ideologues in both parties tend to forget, that elections aren’t decided by the approximately 80% of voters who are consistently loyal to one or the other major party but by the 20% in the broad center of the political spectrum. Bush’s comments have infuriated some Republicans but are likely to help his quest for the White House.