... GOP party leaders desperately want to
avoid the kind of pummeling that Bob Dole took in New Hampshire back in
January 1996... Four years earlier, Pat Buchanan
played the spoiler role, inflicting serious damage on President George
Bush in the 1992 primaries.
So now the party is sporting a new strategy to repel such internecine
warfare in 2000. Vigorously enforce the GOP's 11th Commandment: Thou shalt
not attack a fellow Republican. In this election cycle there seems to be a
special corollary to the rule: No attacking a fellow Republican especially
if he leads Al Gore in the polls 54 to 39 and he happens to be the
governor of Texas. Or to state the intent more plainly: Lay off George W.!
Somehow, Republicans have learned all the wrong lessons from the
debacles of 1992 and 1996. Let's set the record straight once and for all:
George Bush lost the election because he broke the GOP's first through
10th commandments -- Thou shalt never, ever raise taxes -- not because
Buchanan broke the 11th. Buchanan's relentless attacks against Bush for
his betrayal was an act of patriotism...
Have Republicans already forgotten that sickly feeling back around May of
1996 when the primary campaign season had come to an end and we all awoke
one morning to the realization that the GOP presidential nominee was a
lemon (no pun intended)? I have always maintained that if Bill Clinton
could have handpicked his opponent to run against from the some 50 million
eligible Republicans across the country, he would have unhesitatingly
selected Dole.
The real agenda of the 11th Commandment is not to clean up the political
dialogue. It is to suppress competition -- to protect front runners,
incumbents and a rotting status-quo power structure in Washington hostile
to fresh faces and fresh ideas.
Nothing could more reinvigorate the GOP than a genuine knock-down drag-
out fight for the Republican nomination -- a true clash of ideology and
policy ideas. But this is precisely what the party establishment wants to
avoid. In fact, if the party regulars had their way, we'd dispense with
the formality of a primary season altogether and simply crown George W.
with the nomination here and now...
The 11th Commandment is defended by some under the pretense that it is
necessary and proper to inoculate good Republican ideas and good
Republican candidates from hurtful attacks. Nonsense. By definition, good
candidates and good policy initiatives can withstand half-witted assaults.
No idea in modern times was ever more ridiculed by the old-guard
Republicans than Ronald Reagan's 30-percent "voodoo" tax cut. When George
Bush famously attacked the Reagan plan in 1980, it was Bush, not the
Gipper, who looked clueless and out of touch.
The real danger of the 11th Commandment is that so often Republican
primary candidates really do promote harebrained ideas that deserve to be
squashed. John McCain's support for tobacco tax hikes, and for sending
American ground troops into Kosovo, Elizabeth Dole's fascination with gun
control and Buchanan's protectionist trade policies jump immediately to
mind.
The false premise of the 11th Commandment is that big-tent Republicans can
all get along. Even a casual observer of the past five years of the
Republicans in Congress -- and the daily clash between the liberal
Rockefeller and the conservative Reagan wing of the party -- should be
able to detect what a delusional myth that is...
So when the party leaders tell Forbes and Buchanan to obey the 11th
Commandment, they should politely reply: "Go to hell."
