Word: gramm
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WITH LESS THAN A MONTH TO GO BEfore the Iowa caucuses, Phil Gramm knows this is no time to be timid. So when much of the country praised Bob Dole recently for breaking a legislative logjam and reopening the Federal Government, Gramm, alone among his rivals, rushed a TV spot onto the air that claimed the Senate leader had "caved in" on a balanced budget. Gramm's frontal attack was a bold gamble that Dole's statesmanship, while it wins praise with Americans generally, might bomb with G.O.P. conservatives in the first big presidential contest next month...
Judging from the 550 people who showed up at a roller rink in tiny Eldridge, Iowa, to eat fried chicken and meet the candidate last Thursday, Gramm's bet may be a smart one. The overflow crowd, coming at the beginning of a two-day bus tour around the state, caught Gramm's organizers off guard. Extra tables had to be brought in from the local fire department and satellite parking arranged a quarter mile away. "Is this heaven?" wondered a pleased Gramm as he surveyed the gathering. To a Dole operative the next morning, it sounded more like hell...
While some of his rivals whisper about Dole's age or electability, Gramm challenges Dole head on, blasting him as too willing to compromise on health care, welfare, abortion and tax cuts. As long as the race can be defined as a referendum on red ink, Gramm believes he will profit and Dole will suffer. "It's becoming clear to American voters that if they want a balanced budget, they are going to have to elect a President who is committed to it," he told TIME. Late last week, Gramm struck again: after Bill Clinton announced in his Thursday press...
Dole's reputation as a compromiser has made it easier for Gramm to form a coalition out of a disparate array of conservatives, including antiabortionists, gun owners, antipornography crusaders, tax protesters, working women, stay-at-home moms, even some fathers'-rights activists. At every stop, Gramm emphasizes his zeal to balance the budget, cut taxes on families, end welfare benefits to people with children born out of wedlock and appoint judges who "will interpret not reinvent the Constitution." His flat-tax proposal, which retains the charitable-contribution deduction, is carefully designed to attract check-writing churchgoers...
...Gramm is trying to make up in well-practiced humility what he lacks in charisma. His shoes are falling apart, he explains, and his watch is broken. Six or seven times a day, he ventures into rented halls and coffee shops and describes himself as the late-blooming son of a hardscrabble family who "flunked the third, seventh and ninth grades" and still got a Ph.D. He recalls after his father died watching how his mother and older brother would sit around the kitchen table each month and decide which bills to pay. The bootstrap imagery is designed to dilute...