Word: republican
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...death in your shadow and, best of all, you cruise straight past the primaries and into the general election as "a uniter, not a divider," with none of the debts and scars and promises that slow candidates down just at the point when the campaign becomes a sprint. The Republican faithful would forgo their normal feedings of litmus tests and put up with this soggy message of "compassionate conservatism" because Bush has a message for them too. Three words: I can win. Now he just has to prove it will work...
...Bush team loves to recall the moment in the summer of 1997 when Karen Hughes, Bush's communications whiz, walked into the Governor's office with a poll showing him suddenly ahead of all the other Republican contenders. "You've got to be kidding me," Bush said, a reply conveniently retailed to reporters since. The polls were a bit fluky: a Republican working for Bush conceded that some 40% of those who picked Bush in the early days thought they were voting to bring back the Old Man, not Junior. But that was also the summer when the giants started...
After the moneymen, the next constituency to woo were the heavyweights who really control the Republican Party these days--the Governors, with their early-warning systems and their fund-raising networks and their serene distance from the party in Congress. One of the first to sign on was Montana's Marc Racicot, who had called in September 1997 out of the blue and told Bush that if he runs, "I'll be there." You're early, the Governor replied then, given the fact that he hadn't even announced whether he was running again for Governor. "Well," Racicot replied...
Before 1998, the Republican Governors had never coalesced as a power base, partly because there had never been such a critical mass, 32 of them in all. In contrast to the sinking Congress, the Governors were emerging as stars, centrist and practical CEOs who were busy fixing welfare and improving schools and cutting taxes while Gingrich fiddled. And they came to the table bearing gifts: their organizations, their financial backers and their endorsements. Unlike Clinton, Bush had never been a big mover among the other Governors, never an intellectual force or a policy genius. But they all knew him, many...
President Clinton led the charge against the Republicans. "The American people will not stand for this," he boomed. "Let there be no mistake, the vast majority of the Democrat caucus walked away," House Speaker Dennis Hastert countered. But as the majority party, House Republicans are the ones who will be charged with explaining why, in the wake of the Littleton massacre, the party could not muster the votes to regulate gun sales in America. When the immediate political dust settles and the gun control issue is revived in campaign 2000, "nobody will remember the fine points of why this legislation...