Word: reformer
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During the campaign, when it was hardly a certainty that he would beat the incumbent Ann Richards, he had four issues - juvenile justice reform, tort reform, education and welfare reform. He was coached to talk about those four issues and that was all he did talk about. He had become the precise opposite of the rambling scatter-shooter I had met in his office. He was somewhat wooden, but he stuck to the four issues relentlessly and it proved to be a winning strategy. In fact he was so wooden and so programmed that I don't think anyone...
...After making plenty of December noise about mucking up George W. Bush's first days in office with campaign finance reform, soft money's Don Quixote emerged from Trent Lott's office Friday with a deal to give the new guy time to kick off his legislative agenda with something a little more on-message...
...like the head of steam gathering behind a big tax cut, sometimes a mandate is just an invitation for more grandstanding. Most Republicans, Bush first among them, have only the slightest flicker of interest in reform, thanks to some legitimate free-speech problems with a soft-money ban and the iron hands of Lott and chief Senate fund-raiser Mitch McConnell. (He who controls the reelection money controls many a politician, and yes, that was McConnell emceeing Bush's inaugural.) Most Democrats, chief Democratic fund-raiser Bob Torricelli first among them, find that their yen for reform tends to wane...
...expect this year's battle to feature lots and lots of alternatives to McCain-Feingold from both sides of the aisle, and then lots and lots of unacceptable amendments to whatever version of it survives. Some Republicans want to package it up with electoral reform - the better to kill two birds with one stone, Democrats say. Democrats, having picked up five seats, may give the Arizona senator the numbers to keep McConnell from reading the phone book until August. But don't be surprised if they suddenly start finding things wrong with his bill...
...TIME's congressional correspondent, Douglas Waller, has been keeping an eye on the debate surrounding campaign finance reform, and says any troubles the bill faces won't arise until voting actually starts. "McCain and Feingold claim they've got enough (60 votes) to make the bill filibuster-proof. That means they probably have all 50 Democrats and 10 Republicans lined up at the moment" - but the big question remains: How many of them will lose their stomach when confronted with the fact that this is no longer a theoretical issue. Plenty of senators, Democrats in particular, according to some reports...