ABOVE: Congressman Eric Cantor is exploiting elderly Americans' fear of health reform
HUAC stood for the House Un-American Activities Committee when, 60 years ago, the young Richard Nixon made it his springboard to the vice-presidency. Republicans wits say that today it stands for Health, Unemployment, Afghanistan and Climate—the four issues which will hand them control of congress after next year’s midterm elections. Since they are barely even with Democrats in the polls, they are counting their chickens dangerously early. Their biggest problem is that they lack a recognisable leader like Newt Gingrich, who was critical to their 1994 success. Nor do they have anything like Newt’s Contract With America, with its populist promises of term limits and welfare reform.
But the Republicans’ whip, Congressman Eric Cantor from Virginia, may be their best prospect since Gingrich. Cantor was smart enough to realise that Obama’s weak point on health reform was the need to finance it through savings on Medicare. Elderly voters are passionately attached to Medicare, and Cantor devised the strategy of claiming that Obama wanted them to pay for illegal immigrants’ healthcare.
Cantor is the biggest Republican recipient of Wall Street money in the house and one of the biggest of health industry funds. He manages to juggle a reputation as a moderate in New York and Washington with an image as a conservative firebrand in his native south. In 2002, he easily defeated his Democratic challenger Ben Jones, who played “Cooter” in The Dukes of Hazzard television series—no mean feat for the only Jewish Republican in the House.
Cantor ostentatiously uses his BlackBerry during Obama’s addresses to congress and accuses him of lacking “some adult sense of responsibility.” Yet he is now sitting down with the Democrats’ House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, to work out the eventual compromise on health. Is he trying to be more bipartisan? As he put it recently: “The ascendancy of our party is going to be premised on whether people really believe that we’re deserving of leadership again, not that we’re just here throwing bombs or obstructing, that we’re thoughtful, responsible.”?
UNUSUAL AMENDMENTS
The bar for responsibility is not set too high among senate Republicans these days, judging by some of the 300-plus amendments they proposed on the health reform bill. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah offered amendment F-7, which would add “transition relief for the excise tax on high-cost insurance plans for any state with a name that begins with the letter ‘U.’”
Then there’s Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona. His amendment C-10 would stop the federal government from defining what services private insurers must offer. “I don’t need maternity care,” Kyl explained in committee, to justify his amendment. “I think your mom probably did,” replied Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow.
THE CLINTON'S PROBLEMS
Bill Clinton, who knows a thing or two about midterm defeats, thinks the Democrats have been hurt recently but it won’t be a 1994-style turnover of power in 2010. The biggest single blow the Dems took then was over gun control reforms. The National Rifle Association mounted a campaign against congressman in tight races who backed the reforms and, according to Clinton, took out 15 of them. But Obama’s team have learned from this by avoiding gun control. The issue that worries Clinton, he confides to friends, is the kind of weakening of the dollar that would allow Republicans to claim Obama had frittered away the might of the greenback.
Hillary has her own problem—a rather ill-advised approval of £2.5m in grants to Libya from the state department’s economic support fund. The problem is with two sub-grants to promote democracy and civil society. One is $200,000 for the Gaddafi Development foundation (hard for the most bleary-eyed staffer to miss that name), which is controlled by the colonel’s son Saif. The second is the Wa Attasimou project, run in conjunction with the UN development programme by Gaddafi’s daughter Aisha. The House appropriations committee has sidestepped Hillary and demanded that Obama delete the grants.
Meanwhile, Hillary is letting both Hollywood and congress know (guess which is her priority) that she had nothing to do with the decision to “postpone” the Dalai Lama’s White House visit. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is passionate about Tibet, is furious. Hillary hints that the treasury and White House economics team were behind the decision, which was made to balance the 35 per cent tariffs imposed on Chinese tyre exports—tariffs made to win over Democratic senators on the climate bill.
THE MASONIC CONSPIRACY
What with the new Dan Brown novel, it’s open season on Freemasons on Capitol Hill. One of the best-known is Joe Wilson, the South Carolina Republican congressman who is still enjoying attention for shouting “You lie!” at Obama last month. (Since his outburst, Wilson’s re-election fund has raised $2.7m.) There are Masons in congress and senate and on both sides of the aisle, including Eric Cantor and the venerable Robert Byrd of West Virginia. That state also boasts the only mason who is a Knight Templar, Democratic Congressman Nick Rahall, a 33rd Degree mason with Lebanese roots.
HUAC stood for the House Un-American Activities Committee when, 60 years ago, the young Richard Nixon made it his springboard to the vice-presidency. Republicans wits say that today it stands for Health, Unemployment, Afghanistan and Climate—the four issues which will hand them control of congress after next year’s midterm elections. Since they are barely even with Democrats in the polls, they are counting their chickens dangerously early. Their biggest problem is that they lack a recognisable leader like Newt Gingrich, who was critical to their 1994 success. Nor do they have anything like Newt’s Contract With America, with its populist promises of term limits and welfare reform.
But the Republicans’ whip, Congressman Eric Cantor from Virginia, may be their best prospect since Gingrich. Cantor was smart enough to realise that Obama’s weak point on health reform was the need to finance it through savings on Medicare. Elderly voters are passionately attached to Medicare, and Cantor devised the strategy of claiming that Obama wanted them to pay for illegal immigrants’ healthcare.
Cantor is the biggest Republican recipient of Wall Street money in the house and one of the biggest of health industry funds. He manages to juggle a reputation as a moderate in New York and Washington with an image as a conservative firebrand in his native south. In 2002, he easily defeated his Democratic challenger Ben Jones, who played “Cooter” in The Dukes of Hazzard television series—no mean feat for the only Jewish Republican in the House.
Cantor ostentatiously uses his BlackBerry during Obama’s addresses to congress and accuses him of lacking “some adult sense of responsibility.” Yet he is now sitting down with the Democrats’ House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, to work out the eventual compromise on health. Is he trying to be more bipartisan? As he put it recently: “The ascendancy of our party is going to be premised on whether people really believe that we’re deserving of leadership again, not that we’re just here throwing bombs or obstructing, that we’re thoughtful, responsible.”?
UNUSUAL AMENDMENTS
The bar for responsibility is not set too high among senate Republicans these days, judging by some of the 300-plus amendments they proposed on the health reform bill. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah offered amendment F-7, which would add “transition relief for the excise tax on high-cost insurance plans for any state with a name that begins with the letter ‘U.’”
Then there’s Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona. His amendment C-10 would stop the federal government from defining what services private insurers must offer. “I don’t need maternity care,” Kyl explained in committee, to justify his amendment. “I think your mom probably did,” replied Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow.
THE CLINTON'S PROBLEMS
Bill Clinton, who knows a thing or two about midterm defeats, thinks the Democrats have been hurt recently but it won’t be a 1994-style turnover of power in 2010. The biggest single blow the Dems took then was over gun control reforms. The National Rifle Association mounted a campaign against congressman in tight races who backed the reforms and, according to Clinton, took out 15 of them. But Obama’s team have learned from this by avoiding gun control. The issue that worries Clinton, he confides to friends, is the kind of weakening of the dollar that would allow Republicans to claim Obama had frittered away the might of the greenback.
Hillary has her own problem—a rather ill-advised approval of £2.5m in grants to Libya from the state department’s economic support fund. The problem is with two sub-grants to promote democracy and civil society. One is $200,000 for the Gaddafi Development foundation (hard for the most bleary-eyed staffer to miss that name), which is controlled by the colonel’s son Saif. The second is the Wa Attasimou project, run in conjunction with the UN development programme by Gaddafi’s daughter Aisha. The House appropriations committee has sidestepped Hillary and demanded that Obama delete the grants.
Meanwhile, Hillary is letting both Hollywood and congress know (guess which is her priority) that she had nothing to do with the decision to “postpone” the Dalai Lama’s White House visit. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is passionate about Tibet, is furious. Hillary hints that the treasury and White House economics team were behind the decision, which was made to balance the 35 per cent tariffs imposed on Chinese tyre exports—tariffs made to win over Democratic senators on the climate bill.
THE MASONIC CONSPIRACY
What with the new Dan Brown novel, it’s open season on Freemasons on Capitol Hill. One of the best-known is Joe Wilson, the South Carolina Republican congressman who is still enjoying attention for shouting “You lie!” at Obama last month. (Since his outburst, Wilson’s re-election fund has raised $2.7m.) There are Masons in congress and senate and on both sides of the aisle, including Eric Cantor and the venerable Robert Byrd of West Virginia. That state also boasts the only mason who is a Knight Templar, Democratic Congressman Nick Rahall, a 33rd Degree mason with Lebanese roots.
