New Congress More Conservative, In Debt To Christian Right

by Doug Ireland

Arrogant and authoritarian, with a hair-trigger temper, Livingston is a devout Catholic who regularly consults the reactionary bishop of New Orleans on political matters. His election as Speaker will mark the successful completion of last year's failed coup against Newt, which was motored by the social conservatives of the Christian right. That it succeeded this time was due to nine months of careful preparation, and the threat by a half-dozen hard-right GOPers to break party ranks and vote against Newt on the House floor even if he had been re-elected by a majority of the party caucus. The blackmail worked, and Livingston is now beholden to these paladins of paleo-politics.

The election exit polls suggest that the most important vote this year was cast by Alan Greenspan when he cut interest rates another quarter-point -- just enough to paper over the fault lines in the economy through election day. The more that voters perceived the economy as doing well, those polls say, the more likely they were to vote Democratic. With no clear economic message as a central theme, the Republicans saw their House majority shaved. But with a few notable exceptions, most of the freshman Democrats, especially those who won open seats, are neocon Democrats or Blue Dog budget-cutters like Kentucky's Ken Lucas, Mississippi's Ronnie Shows and Indiana's Baron Hill. In large measure, the retiring Democrats were more liberal than those who replaced them. (And the Washington Post has revealed that the key element in Dick Gephardt's plan for retaking the House in 2000 is a "southern strategy" based on recruiting more conservative candidates like Lucas and Shows, who are both anti-abortion and anti-gay.)

In contrast to Gingrich, Livingston is a skilled legislator who will use the working relationships he has built up with conservative Democrats over two decades to forge cross-party coalitions. In the current Congress there is a bloc of some 40 Democrats who frequently vote with the Republicans on economic issues and another floating group of 60 to 80 who vote with them on social issues, especially those targeting gays. Their ranks have now increased.

Livingston can be counted on to give primacy to economic matters, but as the puissant chairman of the Appropriations Committee he pushed through amendments to money bills banning federal funding for abortions and clean needle exchange. And while he may prefer to corral as many Democratic votes as possible and create a clear record of accomplishments for the Republicans to run on in 2000 by keeping budget bills free of extraneous issues, you can be sure that Livingston's back-room commitments to his soul mates on the Christian right include items on their social agenda. Thus, early passage is probable for legislation like the so-called HIV Partner Protection Act, a bill co-authored by New York Democrat Gary Ackerman and Tom Coburn, a GOP religious zealot from Oklahoma, that would destroy the confidentiality of HIV testing by requiring that all new infections be reported by name, thus driving many of those in high-risk categories underground (which is why the Centers for Disease Control has strongly opposed this bill). And there's more to come.

The Senate, too, is more conservative, even though the numbers didn't change. Arkansas Democrat Blanche Lincoln, a Blue Dog, is succeeding the more liberal Dale Bumpers, while Illinois' scary Peter Fitzgerald and Ohio's George Voinovich are far more conservative than the Democrats they replaced. Even North Carolina's John Edwards, who defeated reactionary Lauch Faircloth, campaigned as a Clinton critic while praising Jesse Helms.

Most of the big races were decided by local factors: New Yorkers, for example, don't give senators or governors fourth terms, and they decided that 18 years of Al D'Amato was enough, especially when he ran an incompetent, entirely negative campaign. And while a significant gender gap carried many Democrats home, unless a mad zealot shoots an abortion doctor just before every election that may not hold in the future -- especially in 2000, when the likely GOP presidential candidate is George W. Bush, who carried a majority of women in his re-election as Texas governor. Not only did exit polls show Bush trouncing Al Gore in two years, but a Gallup poll taken just before the election showed that, among Democrats, Gore had dropped 10 points in one month. Gore had been out campaigning in every major media market, so that says the more voters get to know Gore, the less they like him. That's bad news for Democrats as they prepare for 2000.