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| Potomac Crossings --By George Mason In Posterum Navigabo That's Latin for "I'll do the navigating from now on." It should be the motto of the 200 or so reactionary, authoritarian and extremist political pressure groups now uniting against Senator John Ashcroft's candidacy to be U.S. Attorney General. Ideologically, the coalition represents a diverse political spectrum all the way from socialism by coercion to socialism by intimidation. They even have developed a common dogma. Writing in The Washington Post, Robert L. Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, listed the most important elements of it. "If you add the votes of Gore and Nader, the left won the popular election with the largest center-left vote since LBJ beat Goldwater in 1964. Gore's message and issues were far more popular than Bush's. Therefore George W. Bush is an accidental president, taking an office he did not win, leading a conservative movement that is running on empty. He can be defeated by a growing progressive coalition armed with a majoritarian message and agenda." That dogma is a theatrical formula for creating farce first and tragedy later. Why tragedy? Generating political theater for the consumption of television audiences is not a substitute for governance. It's a lose/lose option. The tradition is that presidents pick their cabinets and both sides then settle down to governing. The idea that the losing side gets to approve of the philosophy of the winner's cabinet is an inside-the-Beltway radical idea, unworthy of national support. So far, though, political theater has worked in pushing Linda Chavez to withdraw her candidacy for Secretary of Labor. Her problems wouldn't exist without the immediacy of television. You have to view the defeat of Linda Chavez and the attack on John Ashcroft through the same prism if you are to understand their ferocity and their fervor. In Election 2000, Big Labor re-emerged as a political powerhouse. Remembering that today's union movement is not so much manufacturing as teachers and public employees unions, the AFL-CIO leader John Sweeney did an incredible job of deploying an army of 100,000 union activists around the country. He produced a near victory for a slumping Gore campaign, a handful of new Liberal Senators and came within 2,400 votes of taking control of the House. What produced this stunning effort? It was - Russ Feingold and John McCain take note - the union ability to fund political activities with all union dues while denying the 40-percent or so of their members who disagree the practical right to opt out. This ability to compel political contributions is the principal engine driving the far-left agenda in American politics, according to Stefan Gleason, a National Right to Work Foundation vice president. Since, 1988, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Communications Workers of America v Beck, that it is illegal to force American workers to pay union dues for politics. Linda Chavez, with a deep and profound understanding of the union movement, had stated her determination to enforce Beck, something the Clinton administration avoided on every occasion. John Ashcroft has exhibited the determination to investigate the Reno Justice Department's handling of union campaign corruption cases such as the mob-dominated Laborer's International Union of North America (LIUNA) and its president and fervent Clinton supporter Arthur Coia. Chavez and Ashcroft in combination represent people with the knowledge and experience to unearth Clinton-Gore fund-raising scandals and rescind long-standing cozy arrangements, says Bob Novak. Two candidates with further possible legal exposure to deep-seated and long-standing cozy corruption are AFL-CIO Secretary and Gore backer Richard Trumka and the newly-named chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton crony, Terry McAuliffe. On Thurday, Bush defused the Chavez issue by naming Elaine L. Chao as his new Labor Secretary Designate. Chao, the wife of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), is a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and the Chair of its Asian Studies Center Advisory Council. She is the former president and CEO of United Way of America, Director of the Peace Corps and a Deputy Secretary of the Department of Transportation. With an MBA from Harvard, she is considered to have expertise on Asia, civil society and women's issues. Unlike Chavez, however, she has no long conservative issue paper trail but does claim a history of being able to work with AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney when he was on the Board of The United Way. Her views on labor issues are unpublished. Over 200 lefty groups rallied at The Mayflower hotel this past week and a select group of them then met at the headquarters of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in Washington last week. The AAUW bills itself as a tax-exempt, non-partisan advocate of "education, research and self-development for women."(Doing "research" allows a 501(c)(3) to be a tax-exempt charity and not a political organization. That's if you are on the Left. On the Right, it gets you an IRS audit.) According to journalist Byron York, organizers passed out a confidential draft of an "Ashcroft Target List" that divided the Senate into five categories: (1) definitely opposed (2) leaning against (3) true undecideds (4) leaning for (5) definitely for Ashcroft. Every Democrat except two newly elected ones, were listed as "against" or "leaning against." What got the room excited was that five Republicans - Collins and Snowe of Maine, Specter of Pennsylvania, Chafee of Rhode Island and Jeffords of Vermont - were also listed as "undecided." A day later, all Republicans but Chafee declared their support of Ashcroft so the judgement of the list is somewhat suspect. Anxious to take advantage of the brief Democrat control of the Senate committees until noon on January 20th, the group found out that Patrick Leahy ( D-Vermont) has already scheduled hearings to start Tuesday. The group is receiving help from access to the opposition research files of the late Mel Carnahan's campaign. (Though his widow is not taking part, his files are.) They plan to divide the files among the groups and attack different aspects of the Ashcroft record, creating a withering crossfire. Their strategy, as always, is to label Ashcroft an out-of-the-mainstream extremist on each and every issue. The sub text is even more enlightening. They intend to underscore their extremist charges by saying that John Ashcroft is excessively religious and moral. That is to say, they intend to play the "Here comes the Ayatollah" card with Clintonian suburban women. Why this strategy? The great contribution of Bill Clinton to modern political thought is the idea that his party could gain white votes in Suburban America by talking moderation (socially Liberal but fiscally Conservative). He took the black vote as a given and was not disappointed. According to columnist George Will, Clinton repositioned his party as the servant of the comfortable middle class eager for more comforts. From 1980-1988, Charles Cook points out, Republicans won between 55-61 percent of the suburban vote. Clinton carried the suburbs by two points in '92 and five points in '96. In the 2000 election, 43 percent of all votes were suburban votes and Bush carried them by just a slim margin of two points. The bottom line is that Linda Chavez lost Bush staff support because she used poor judgement during the vetting process. Elaine Chao is not going to have confirmation problems of any magnitude. That means that the Left is free to concentrate on the AG issue. Because of the Senate custom that a nominee may not talk to the press until after confirmation, Ashcroft can be attacked but cannot personally defend himself. The Right does not have the ability to produce a matching pro-confirmation coalition with similar financing, weight or media heft. Ashcroft, therefore, will need the full strength of the President-Elect himself if he is to succeed. ### |
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