On August 19th, 1991 - ten years ago yesterday - tanks rolled into Red Square under the command of what the BBC called "diehard Communists who had decided they could take no more of perestroika."
On August 19th, 2001 - ten years to the day - the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler writes on the front page: "Democrats plan to launch an assault on President Bush's budget and tax policies this week, including town hall meetings, protests and attack ads, to undermine his political support when Congress returns to work on the 2002 spending bills."
There is, of course, a quantitative difference between these two events. The Soviet rebels used the traditional Iron Curtain tools of tanks and guns to try and take over the government in Moscow. The Democrats in the House and Senate will use their traditional tools of "protests and attack ads" to try to accomplish the same goal here.
Just as an aside: One hopes that none of the attack ads, protests, or town hall meetings Kessler wrote about are being paid for with the dreaded soft money. Surely, The Brethren in the National Press Corps would consider as newsworthy the funding mechanism for this coordinated Democratic attack. Surely.
Let's look at the twin issues of the budget surplus and the stagnant economy.
The Democrats have been able to whip up the major dailies to run headlines like "The Shrinking Budget Surplus" that have all the subtlety of a movie trailer for a Japanese horror film.
The subliminal message is that we are one teeny, tiny, baby step away from people selling apples on street corners, while sadly singing the anthem of the New Depression following the collapse of the New Economy; a high-tech variant on "Brother Can You Spare a Dime:"
Once I had a dot-com,
Made it run,
IPO'd on time.
I had lot's of options,
Now they're gone.
Greenspan,
Can you pare the prime?
The fact is, the budget surplus this year will be the second largest in American history.
What? What did he say? The budget surplus will be the second LARGEST in American history.
Here's a question to ask your Democratic friend in the next cube: How is it that the tax cut (which was ridiculed because major provisions don't kick in for six to ten YEARS) has had such a devastating impact on the budget surplus, having been signed into law just 74 DAYS ago?
Next, the economy: Democrats would love nothing more than to run the 2002 mid-term elections in the face of a weak economy. That's why they are so eager to have The Brethren write "the economic sky is falling" articles with the Godzilla headlines.
Last October, just before the election, when the Bush campaign began pointing out the signs of a slowing economy, the Democrats howled that Bush was engaging in psychological economic warfare: That by saying the economy was slowing he was making it so.
As it turned out, the Democrats knew the economy was slowing, but chose not to disclose that information for - I can't believe I'm about to type this - partisan political gain.
The Democrats are doing exactly what they excoriated Bush for doing: Playing psychological games with the economy in the hope that a weak economy will make their mid-term election candidates stronger.
"Brother Can You Spare..." lyrics, a Bill & Hillary "Catchy Caption" and translations from the Russian. All on the Secret Decoder Ring.
No one. NO one (with the possible exception of Bernie Sanders in the House and Paul Wellstone in the Senate) believes that raising taxes in the face of a weak economy is a good idea.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) controls the Senate calendar. If Daschle is serious about the horror story the Bush tax plan has become; if the Democrats think the Bush tax legislation is so awful; and, if the Democrats want to fight the 2002 elections in the arena of economic strength, then let's see the Senate Democrats bring legislation to the floor which will INCREASE taxes on working Americans.
No, wait. That will allow Daschle to put our money where his mouth is.
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