Living Politics: President Bush's War At Home

Oddly enough, there seems to be a class element at work, too. The House leaders--Majority Leader DeLay and Speaker Dennis Hastert--are blue-collar types, and proud of it. DeLay in particular sees himself as representing antielites, the New South, evangelical Christians in his hometown of Houston. They don't say it in so many words, but the House guys are suspicious of Frist, whose family wealth (from managed-health-care systems) is enormous and who was schooled up East at Princeton and the Harvard Medical School.

Why they should hold that background against Frist--and not President Bush, who came to power by way of Andover, Yale and the Harvard Business School--isn't quite clear. One reason is that Bush has a common touch that Frist has never had the chance (or bothered to) develop. The president also spent six years as governor of Texas. No airs possible there.

Frist's work on the stem-cell research issue in 2001 fueled the hard-liners' suspicions. A doctor and scientist, he floated his own compromise on the topic in advance of Bush's. Though Frist's ideas were considered harshly conservative by pro-choice forces, the fact that he sought a scientific middle ground (akin to the one Bush eventually reached) didn't sit well with GOP jihadists: he had nudged the president in a direction they didn't want him to go.

Now comes the tax debate. The Senate has always been more skeptical of the president's $726 billion plan than the House, which passed it more or less as is. In a complicated procedural move, Frist last month was able to get the Senate to preliminarily approve a measure authorizing a tax cut of between $350 billion and $550 billion. But in the secret maneuvering that followed, three GOP senators--Snowe of Maine, Voinovich of Ohio and Grassley of Iowa--banded together to insist that only the lower figure would apply.

House leaders insist--and Frist's aides deny--that the Senate leadership knew about this maneuver and may have tacitly approved of it. DeLay & Co. were furious. "The House, and the White House were completely blindsided," a top administration official told me. "To say that everyone was angry is an understatement." Conservatives blame not only Frist, but his lieutenant (and former rival for the top job) Sen. Don Nickles of Oklahoma.

Now it's up to Bush to undo the deal. The arithmetic is such that, without a bill worth at least $550 billion, he won't be able to win the centerpiece of his plan, an end to taxation of stock dividends. He made an opening bid this week, declaring in public that only the higher number would be acceptable. He'll have to follow that with some individual lobbying, which shouldn't be impossible for a president with a 70 percent approval rating. It's not clear what carrots and sticks he'll use. Sending in Tommy Franks presumably isn't an option.

© 2003