Hitting hard, fast and often, the Republicans pressed the attack on Democrat Bill Clinton at their convention Tuesday and promised a Texas-sized cavalry charge to rescue embattled President George Bush.
From the opening prayer to the end of the day, the Republicans fought to dampen the momentum of Clinton and running mate Sen. Al Gore of Tennessee and build the case for Bush, who is far behind in the polls.
The Democrats in Congress, they said, are to blame for the nation`s problems because Bush had plans to clean up a hornet`s nest of social and economic ills, but got no help from them.
The attacks signaled a shift into a new phase of the convention. Monday`s aim was to seal the support of the Republican right wing with addresses from former President Ronald Reagan and Bush`s primary campaign opponent, Patrick Buchanan, who placed himself firmly in the Bush camp. The party also approved an ultraconservative platform.
But Tuesday, the party shifted to a prime-time TV attack on Clinton and Congress, always a ripe target, pressing some themes the GOP will use in the fall campaign.
Keynote speaker Phil Gramm, the U.S. senator from Texas who bolted the Democratic Party to become first Reagan`s, then Bush`s ardent defender and supporter, said Clinton`s economic program was ”worse than sleaze” and would wreck the economy.
Gramm, who earlier said a cavalry charge to rescue Bush ”is just over the horizon,” recounted the successes of the Reagan years and the first Bush administration, particularly in guiding the U.S. through the collapse of communism.
He said Clinton`s defense plans would wreck the economy and ruin U.S. security in a dangerous world.
”Clinton and the Democrats in Congress don`t want to build defense down, they want to tear it down. If they succeed in implementing the Clinton plan, 1 million people now in uniform and in civilian defense jobs will be thrown into the street and defense spending as a percentage of the budget will plummet below the level that existed on Dec. 7, 1941,” Gramm said, referring to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Bush has tried many times to get his economic programs through Congress, but has run into a wall of Democratic opposition, Gramm said.
”The Democrats who control Congress by overwhelming margins have used their majority to throttle the president`s program and strangle the nation`s economy in a partisan gridlock the likes of which we have not seen in this century,” he said.
”Had Congress said yes, the deficit would be falling and mortgage rates would be 6 percent today. But the Democrats said no.” The health insurance problem would have been fixed, drug thugs ”grabbed by the throat” and the economy would be in good standing, he said.
”Our president asked Congress for the tools to rebuild the economy and for weapons to win back our streets,” Gramm added. ”And Congress bent them and broke them and threw them away.”
The Election Day choice will be a simple one, according to Gramm. The Democrats and Clinton want higher taxes and the Republicans want more jobs. The Democrats want big government, the Republicans want to balance the budget. ”The change the Republicans want today is to stop the growth of government, to control spending, to balance the budget and to cut taxes again,” Gramm said.
There have been hints that Bush might call for tax cuts when he accepts his party`s nomination on Thursday. Clinton, Gramm said, is like a ”used car salesman” with a vehicle that looks new outside, but holds an unpleasant surprise under the hood.
”When you look under the hood, you discover he is hawking a model from the `70s, a Carter-mobile with the axle broken and the frame bent to the left. It was a lemon for the nation in the `70s . . . and it is still a lemon today.”
Housing Secretary Jack Kemp, favorite of the conservatives and already near the top of the list of candidates for 1996, spearheaded the Cabinet-level attack on Clinton and the defense of Bush.
He followed the pattern of other speakers, recounting Reagan`s and Bush`s White House years and their impact on the world, particularly on the part of the world the former president called the ”Evil Empire.”
”Ladies and gentlemen, communism didn`t fall,” Kemp said. ”It was pushed. And it was our ideas that did the pushing and our Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan and George Bush, that helped change the world.
”Now we must change America. Our goal must be nothing less than to double the size of our economy, to bring prosperity, jobs, ownership and opportunity to all Americans, especially those living in our nation`s pockets of poverty.”
He criticized the Democrats` plan for a ”new covenant,” saying, ”It`s not change. It doesn`t put people first, it puts government first. It doesn`t empower people, it empowers bureaucracy. It doesn`t encourage investment and growth, it spends and spends and spends.”
Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia itemized a set of ”contrasts” between the Democrats and the Republicans that he said points out critical differences in philosophy between the two parties.
One important contrast, he said, was between ”the Republican commitment to the values of the American people and the Democrats` growing commitment to the promotion of a multicultural, nihilistic hedonism that is inherently destructive of a healthy society.
”We have 6,000 years of written historical experience in the Judeo-Christian tradition,” Gingrich said. ”We know the rules that work. We know that learning, study, working, saving and commitment are vital.
”That is why Republicans would replace welfare with work. That is why Republicans would cut taxes to favor families and encourage work, saving and job creation.”
House Minority Leader Bob Michel of Illinois said it was time to clean up Congress and send the Democrats home. ”The time has come to let the fresh, invigorating winds of Republican renewal and reform sweep along the musty, dusty corridors of Democratic power,” he said.
”You all recall how the American founders complained about `taxation without representation.` Our complaint tonight is that Bill Clinton, (House Speaker Tom) Foley and (Senate Majority Leader George) Mitchell will give us taxation without hesitation.”
Massachusetts Gov. William Weld joined in the attacks, but had a special message at the end of his address. He said he supports a woman`s right to choose abortion. The party`s platform calls for a constitutional amendment forbidding all abortions.
”Unlike the Democrats, George Bush and the Republican Party are not afraid of a little disagreement,” Weld said. ”My appearance before you tonight proves it.”
Weld was the Republicans` answer to the Democratic decision not to allow Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey, an abortion opponent, to address the Democratic National Convention last month.
Earlier Tuesday, a collection of lesser party lights went to the podium to praise Bush and offer their own assessments of the Democratic ticket and the Democrats in Congress.
One of them also revived a theme from 1988, the Willie Horton issue used to accuse Democrat Michael Dukakis of being soft on crime. Horton was a convicted murderer who committed a rape whlie on a weekend prison furlough while Dukakis was Massachusetts` governor.
California state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren told the delegates he was one
”Republican and law-enforcement official who won`t be cowed” into apologizing for the Horton TV ads attacking Dukakis. Lungren called Horton a
”liberal icon” who proves the Democrats are soft on crime.
”When we begin to talk about crime, they trot out their liberal icon and invite the press to worship at the altar of righteous indignation,” Lungren said. ”We Republicans refuse to confuse the victim with the victimizer.”
The Horton TV ads, prepared not by the Bush campaign but by an independent committee, hit their target but also subjected the Republicans to years of criticism that they had injected race into the campaign to draw white conservative votes to Bush.
