COMPLETING THE REVOLUTION by ROBERT D. NOVAK

Author:ROBERT D. NOVAK
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political
Publisher: FREE PRESS
Published: 2000-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

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Campaign finance reform represents an important opportunity for the Republicans, but it would have to be done by somebody outside Washington who could stand behind a plan that really did reform the system and without a clear benefit for either side. It would have to restrict labor, but it would also have to restrict soft money from corporations.

Let me be clear: It’s not going to be easy to bring around the party leadership to this point of view after all these years. It’s all a matter of how much the Republicans want to be a real radical reform party. The voters are looking more and more for candidates with clean hands, and to have clean hands, the Republicans have to get rid of this PAC/soft-money system.

I think there’s a lot of merit to that position. It would make for a better system, and it would help the Republicans in the presidential campaign if they could say that they had taken anti-regulatory, low-tax positions not because they are getting big PAC checks, but because they believe in the merits of their case.

I also think the Republicans would be well advised to come out against all the subsidies that parties and candidates receive from the government. Consider the $3 checkoff for financing the presidential campaign that’s on everyone’s federal income tax form. Every year, the number of people who say that they want their money to go to financing elections keeps declining: from 27.5 percent in 1976, when the checkoff began, to 12.5 percent in 1997, the last available year of IRS statistics. The percentage drops a little every year.

But Congress keeps appropriating the money, and a lot of people don’t know that there is a very heavy subsidy through this $3 checkoff for the conventions of both parties: $12 million for each national convention. The Republicans obviously don’t want to give up that money, but I think it would be a good political move—even daring—for them to do so. They might have to hold a slightly less glitzy convention, but they would come across as a reform-type party. There were hints that they might take that step in 1996, but they never reached fruition.

I know that historically it is uncharacteristic for the Republicans to be a reform party, but they are confronted with a great opportunity if they choose to seize it. A reform party appeals to swing voters, who respect politicians who put their money where their mouth is. And the GOP should not ignore the Reform party constituency—voters attracted to candidates as dissimilar as Ross Perot, Jesse Ventura, and Pat Buchanan who call for the existing system to be demolished.

The reason that campaign finance reform is good for the Republicans in 2000 is not so much that there is an army of voters who are waiting to be energized by campaign finance reform itself, but because the lack of reform limits the Republicans’ ability to engage the red-meat issues that will get their voters to the polls.

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