Bed-Wetters Block Budget Resposibility, ANWR Drilling

House Budget Measure Is Pulled
Moderates Buck GOP Leadership In Both Chambers

By Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, November 11, 2005

House Republican leaders were forced to abruptly pull their $54 billion budget-cutting bill off the House floor yesterday, amid growing dissension in Republican ranks over spending priorities, taxes, oil exploration and the reach of government.

A battle between House Republican conservatives and moderates over energy policy and federal anti-poverty and education programs left GOP leaders without enough votes to pass a budget measure they had framed as one of the most important pieces of legislation in years. Across the Capitol, a moderate GOP revolt in the Senate Finance Committee forced Republicans to postpone action on a bill to extend some of President Bush's most contentious tax cuts.

The twin setbacks added to growing signs that the Republican Party's typically lock-step discipline is cracking under the weight of Bush's plummeting approval ratings, Tuesday's electoral defeats and the increasing discontent of the American electorate. After five years of remarkable unity under Bush's gaze, divisions between Republican moderates and conservatives are threatening to paralyze the party.

"The fractures were always there. The difference was the White House was always able to hold them in line because of perceived power," said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster. "After Tuesday's election, it's 'Why are we following these guys? They're taking us off the cliff.' "

Acting House Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) did not dispute that.

"One of the challenges of any second-term administration is you always lose a certain amount of identification with the Congress, because everybody in the Congress in the first term knows you'll be out there in the next campaign with them," Blunt said in an interview yesterday. "Your motives are always a little more suspect when you don't have to face the voters again."

The House budget vote was supposed to reestablish the Republican commitment to a smaller government that would change the federal approach to Medicaid, food stamps, agriculture subsidies, student loans and a host of other programs.

But moderate Republicans made it clear that was not the way they wanted the party defined. The GOP leadership had already abandoned a provision in the budget that would have opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, a policy goal Bush has embraced since he came to office. But it was not enough to secure the votes of moderates who said remaining policy changes were hitting the nation's most vulnerable citizens just as the party was preparing another round of tax cuts that would benefit the most affluent.

"I've told the leadership they're asking for the dismantling of the Republican conference" with this budget, said Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.), a leading moderate. "The clear evidence from Tuesday's election results is that Americans are moderate. They need to start listening to us."

Bed-Wetters like Boehlert are in for a rude awakening. The clear evidence is that appeasing Liberals, pandering to the Left will lead to the loss of the House and Senate. Boehlert needs to get out of Washington once and a while and talk to his constituency. The American people are conservative. This has been proven time and time again. Sherwood, if you believe that currying favor with the NYT or Washinton Post is a winning proposition, you are sadly mistaken. When you appease the Left, they merely laugh at you. Reagan was broadly believed to be too Conservative to win the 1980 election. He proved the pundits wrong, not by running to the Left, but by running as himself. Conservatives elected G.H.W. Bush because they were promised another four years of Reaganism, when they didn't get it, conservatives abandoned G.H.W. Bush in 1992. In 1996 they stayed away from the polls because there was little philosphical difference between Dole and Clinton. Conservatives were hesitant in supporting G.W. Bush in 2000, because of his "compassionate conservatism" line. The returned to him in droves in 2004 because of the strength he had shown in the war. Republicans are now in danger of losing them for the next 6 years.

Full Story: Weak Republican Bed-Wetters

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