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08/13/2003: "Moderates Being “Clubbed”"

Here’s an idea for a new summer reality show: “Those Wacky Extremists.” It would cost almost nothing to produce, since you could build the entire show from a single Big-C Conservative extremist organization, the “Club for Growth.” This group is so hungry for publicity, so flush, and so generally clueless that they’d no doubt pay to be on a show that would allow them to flaunt their single-minded “dedication” even if they get mocked in the process. The Club’s mission, a charge they pursue with the fervency of a high moral crusade or even a religion, is elimination of taxes. (It is, of course, only a coincidence that the members of the Club are wealthy individuals who have gotten a substantial return on their Club donations from the Bush Administration’s massive tax cuts.) Their strategy of late has been to work to defeat senior Republican senators and representatives. No, that’s not a typo. They’re after Republicans, even extremely senior (and thus powerful) figures as four-term Senator Arlen Specter from PA. So why are they trying to do what Democrats could only hope to accomplish in their dreams? Well, they believe that Specter is a “moderate.” Check the SherWright.com Devil’s Dictionary Devils Dictionary and you’ll see why that’s a problem. So why is Specter a “moderate,” even when he voted for the Administration’s latest tax gift to posterity (and was Clarence Thomas’ confirmation champion and is a flat tax advocate?) Specter is considered a “moderate” because he used his influence to divert $250 Billion of the Administration’s original tax cut proposal to education, so that the final cut came in at a “bare-bones” $1.3 Trillion. (As an aside, what’s the point of going to all the expense of having children if we let them slip by with only $7 Trillion of our current expenses, when we could just as easily make it $10 Trillion or even more? But I digress.) The Club’s modest aspiration is to (according to the 8/10/03 New York Times) “replace the party” by actively working to defeat Republications that don’t pass their tax obsession litmus test. The bottom line is that this group is not really a “club” in the sense of guys getting together for fun, but a “club” in the sense of what cavemen used to keep their women in line.