Word: dole
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...Dole's brand of conservatism, however, which favored Small Government yet was susceptible to the charms of Washington when it came to things like farm-price supports, was being outpaced not only by the triumphant liberals but also by another kind of conservatism. A new right wing was consolidating within the party, causing internal splits that Nixon's loss to Kennedy made worse. On one side was an old-line Republican establishment built mostly on the East Coast and in the Midwest. Its guiding doctrine was containment, not just in international affairs but at home as well. Republican moderates resigned...
...suggest again seriously for almost three decades. He supported giving nato field commanders the authority to launch nuclear weapons. On Election Day, Goldwater was crushed, getting just 39% of the vote. The G.O.P. lost two seats in the Senate, 37 in the House. It was a sign of Bob Dole's popularity in his district that he managed to hold onto his House seat, though by just 5,000 votes, while Goldwater, whom Dole had supported, lost Kansas handily...
Where was Dole in all this? In and out of synch. As a Congressman in the early '60s he steered clear of racial politics. Dole supported the major civil rights bills, a political possibility for him because he represented a wheat-farming district that was less than 1% black, where racial friction was about as much of a problem as overcrowding. When the New Frontier evolved into the Great Society, he voted against some War on Poverty measures like public-housing subsidies and the bill that established Medicare. But his Small Government conservatism was open to the Big Government payout...
...Dole's hawkishness on Vietnam and crime issues and his unwavering loyalty to Nixon were enough to keep him in good standing with the right wing. When word got out in 1971 that Nixon was planning to make Dole chairman of the Republican National Committee, there were protests to the White House from nearly half the 43 Republicans in the Senate. Many were moderates who were afraid he would concentrate party assets on conservatives. They were wrong. One of the main lessons Dole learned from Nixon, who expanded social spending at home even as he escalated the war in Vietnam...
...Social Security and Medicare. (When the G.O.P. Congress made a feint at Medicare last year, its approval rating plummeted.) The predictable result was a massive increase in the federal deficit, $1.5 trillion over eight years, and a crisis that reopened the split between supply-siders and fiscal conservatives like Dole and George Bush. To this day, movement conservatives resent Dole for pushing through a $98.3 billion tax increase in 1982 followed by another for $50 billion two years later--the undertakings that led Newt Gingrich to call him the "tax collector for the welfare state"--and for supporting...