Word: reformer
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...Bush was confident he could navigate the tax-cut terrain. After his first successful legislative session as Texas governor, when he and the Democrats in the legislature had cut deals on welfare and juvenile-justice reform, Bush proposed a total overhaul of the unfair property-tax system. His plan was widely viewed as a make-or-break gambit. "He absolutely cannot politically afford for it to fail," wrote the Houston Chronicle at the time, if he had any hopes of higher office. His plan would have slashed property taxes as much as 40 percent, but made up the lost revenue...
...Oversight subcommittee of Commerce, he got subpoena power and the chance to expose everything from tainted baby formula to toxic-waste dumps to influence peddling in the contact-lens-solution business. He was a tireless, exhaustively prepared prosecutor, but he was not ideologically predictable. He supported serious campaign-finance reform before McCain made it cool - and before his own travails at the Buddhist temple demanded some public penance...
...time. He once described himself as a "raging moderate," but he was also a loner, far from the backslapping Democratic cloakrooms. Once on board the Clinton team, he took his place to the right of Clinton and Hillary, pushing the fights to shrink the government, balance the budget, reform welfare, free up trade...
...then there is Bush himself. He promises that what you see is what you get, but then look at what you get: In Texas he tried for huge, sweeping tax reform, but when only half of it passed, he said he was fine with that. So which part of his current tax plan is he willing to compromise over, the part his party donors expect or the part that $22,000 mom is counting on? Who's winking at whom? Whose fingers are crossed...
...Nader victory now will not necessarily help the Green Party in four years. If this is all about the 5 percent, the experience of the Reform Party should also provide a poignant example. This year, Pat Buchanan had the opportunity to blow $26 million dollars that equally fervent Ross Perot supporters won for the Reform Party in 1996 by garnering 7 percent of the vote. Reporting at the Reform Party convention(s) in Long Beach, found old-time Reformers flabbergasted by the way Buchanan could bring his hard-line Republican supporters into their party in search of money. Some...