If the general election in a president's fourth year is when executive party members conciliate so as to defend their high office, the election following two White House terms is an opportunity for factions to debate and persuade, and assume primacy. For November after next, the first race with a retiring vice president in eighty-eight years, both charter and ballot are fairly wide open.
On the right, there is time to pick and choose. National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru wrote a pair of critical pieces this month, limning competing interests on the right — the first, somebody else's and the second, Ponnuru's own.
Two weeks ago it was Porkbusters, a spry, independent populist group, in whose work Ponnuru saw "dangerous consequences." Some Republicans in Congress — and at least indirectly, President Bush — used the public's rising disapproval of spending earmarks to good political effect, defeating the Democratic party over jurisdiction of the Iraqi campaign by portraying a materiel bill as one foundered with largesse.
Porkbusters advocates, and has inspired, fiscal moderation in Congress on the assumption that if legislators win seats by sending federal monies to their districts and states, access to funds will become a privilege and then a commodity — and then an emolument. For many, especially those angrily picturing spinach farms on a military payroll, to say "Congress" and then "corruption" is to tautologize.
But to veto an authorization, Ponnuru wrote, demonstrated that "fighting pork was more important than fighting the war." More to the point: so what? "If the money isn't earmarked, the agency is free to spend it as it sees fit," and besides, the funds in question don't exceed two pennies out of a Washington dollar.
Ponnuru was off in places: the GOP's denunciation of the bill was shrewd politics, full stop. Redirecting money on grounds that it will be spent anyway is, elsewhere, called embezzlement; and the correlation is just a rhetorical twitch away. In Washington, it can be argued as to which congressional shenanigans bring about which. Otherwise, Ponnuru was right. There are more thorough — if laborious — methods to reduce federal excess. Bearing "hostility to earmarks" is mistaking a gambit for a platform.
Today Ponnuru offered a grave estimate of Rudy Giuliani's commitment to Ponnuru's cardinal issue of abortion. Suppose, he wrote, a Supreme Court shaped by Giuliani buried the constitutional right to abortion that a prior court unearthed. If a "Democratic Congress sent Giuliani legislation to codify Roe — and thus to take back that freedom from the states — would he really veto it?" If not, "pro-lifers would have gained almost nothing." Not that day, no, but if the court ruling were to be sustained as long as the previous one, Republicans, if still in the minority, would have several chances to reclaim the legislature. And all this lacks the comparative implication of what exactly the anti-abortion constituency has gained over the last seven years.
Where conjecture begins to tip over Ponnuru's argument is on the war. "Toughness and competence are not a policy; and it is not obvious that Giuliani is more competent, or tougher, than his principal rivals." OK, but the policies of Giuliani or one of his rivals couldn't be judged until January, 2009 — so character, public statements and records of leadership must suffice. Does Giuliani excel? Judgment reserved, Giuliani is still among the strongest Republican executives. Ponnuru won't reject the man outright, but he looks ahead to a successor and thinks, "Win or lose, then, Giuliani could damage the brand." Well, that is more of a concern for peacetime. You need to have a brand left to weaken it. How does one explain subordinating national security right now?
Prolongation invites complacency, a little. Eighteen months before Election Day and counting — former senator Fred Thompson half-bid for president just today, as popular as he appears distant from Washington. A Democratic Senate is near to passing an immigration bill, over which Republicans are reportedly blaming the president and his party. Ramesh Ponnuru, exacting, is pretty reasonable, but the broader right may start looking as unmanageable as a clowder soon, and no one should welcome that.