 |
Highly unpopular Was It Something They Said?By Rick Horowitz Congressman Cipher is wrestling with the big issues tonight. He's not normally the cogitating, ruminating type, but at the moment, he's got nothing better to do. He's been standing in this Capitol hallway for hours, waiting for somebody to poke a head out of a door and tell him he can go home. Home for the night. Home for the year. "If these are the corridors of power" -- this is the particular big issue Congressman Cipher is pondering at this instant -- "and I'm standing smack in the middle of one, how come I don't have any?" Power, he means. Wally T. ("Flip") Cipher, grateful heir to the styling-gel fortune and ripple-soled loafer in the Great Republican March of '94, is feeling especially powerless this evening. All over the Capitol, hard bargaining is going on. It's the end of the session and they still haven't hammered out all their differences in those spending bills, so the Republican leadership is negotiating with the Democratic leadership, the House is negotiating with the Senate, Congress is negotiating with the White House, and lobbyists looking for one more last-minute goody are swarming like...like... Like lobbyists. So much action everywhere, and Congressman Cipher is standing in the hallway cooling his jets. Congressman Cipher isn't in the leadership. He's in the followership. Which should mean he believes in everything his leaders are doing. They're his leaders, after all. They're picking their battles and taking their stands for him, for all the Republicans. So why doesn't he feel more appreciative? Because they're getting clobbered, that's why. The same way they always get clobbered when they get into one of these budget squabbles. And he's getting clobbered with them. Congressman Cipher has just seen the latest poll. (When you're standing in a hallway, you've got plenty of time to read polls.) And suddenly he's got that old heartburny feeling, and that ringing in his ears that means just one thing: Trouble ahead. According to this poll, more voters -- lots more voters -- expect to vote for Democrats than for Republicans in the 2000 congressional elections. If it actually happens, Congressman Cipher knows, it could be the end of the Republicans' tiny little majority in the House. It could even be -- gasp! -- the end of Congressman Cipher. And after everything he's done! All those votes he's cast exactly the way he's been told to cast them, all those speeches he's read in his best C-SPAN voice. Where's the gratitude? Don't these voters realize that the Republicans have been fighting for them? Nope. Not according to this poll anyway. According to this poll, voters think it's the Democrats who'll make the right decisions to improve the health care system, and the right decisions about Medicare. They think it's the Democrats who'll do a better job of improving education. These are big issues with voters, and they want the Democrats to handle them. Congressman Cipher feels a little dizzy. And then there's Social Security. If there's one thing Republicans have been saying for months -- for months! -- it's that they're the ones who'll protect Social Security, that it's the Democrats who want to ruin it. That's just how they've tried to frame these budget battles -- that they're all about protecting Social Security. "The Democrats want to raid your trust fund!" Congressman Cipher and his friends have shouted at every opportunity. "The Democrats want to raid your trust fund!" And what did it get them? The voters say they still prefer the Democrats on Social Security -- and it isn't even close. Congressman Cipher is taking slow, deep breaths. He's trying to think this thing through. "Maybe they thought we said 'raise,'" he mutters. "'The Democrats want to raise your trust fund!' Some of these baby-boomer types, they don't hear so well anymore. Maybe they..." That heartburny feeling is getting worse all the time. Posted
11/12/99. Find relief from what ails you right here at "Rick's." Fresh
stuff twice weekly -- tell your neighbors!
|
  |
Rick Horowitz