Four items today:
1. NPR's Mara Liasson predicts
that in a second term Bill Clinton will propose many new
government programs, but that doesn't make him a liberal.
2. Sam
Donaldson says Republicans shut the government down and asserts:
"I don't think this was a Republican conservative tide in 1994."
3. Among the DNC donors
listed in the report the Democrats initially refused to release: Hollywood
celebrities from Robert Zemeckis to Danny DeVito.
4. A TV network
host admits supporting George McGovern - when she was seven years
old.
1) A lot of
little government programs add up to big government and putting mandates
on business is the latest way liberals have found to impose their views,
but that's escaped NPR's Mara Liasson. On Washington Week in Review Friday
night on PBS (November 1) Liasson assured viewers that Republican are
wrong to tag Clinton a liberal:
"There's this myth that if Clinton does get the Democrats back in
control [of Congress], he'll revert to the quote 'old Bill Clinton.' The
Republicans would like you to believe he'll become a liberal again. I
don't think that's going to happen. I think the White House has prepared a
second term agenda that is geared with either a razor-thin Democratic
majority in mind, or Republicans still in control. They are going to be
able to get the same program through no matter what. And it's going to be
these small, incremental things, teeny tiny proposals that he's made this
year, nothing big, no big government programs."
2)
Republicans and conservatives may gain House and Senate seats on Tuesday
and Bill Clinton is winning by stealing conservative issues and claiming
credit for the accomplishments of Congress, but Sam Donaldson doesn't
think the country has moved right.
In the roundtable
portion of Sunday's This Week with David Brinkley Sam Donaldson went so
far from reality that even Cokie Roberts felt compelled to correct him:
Sam Donaldson: "George is always seeing a conservative tide. If three
county commissioners are elected in an off season and they happen to be
Republican conservative, you say there's a Republican conservative tide. I
don't think this was a Republican conservative tide in 1994."
Cokie Roberts: "How come only Democratic incumbents lost and no
Republican incumbents lost?"
Donaldson: "Because I think it was the voters saying throw the bums
out."
Roberts: "But no Republican incumbents lost."
Donaldson: "But I'm taking about conservative tide. There was an
anti-Democratic tide, absolutely, Cokie. They said throw these Democrtaic
bums out they've had all these years in Congress and we don't like it and
we don't like our lives and they're in."
George Will: "Speaking for conservatives, let's just say 1994 is
alright with us no matter what you call it."
Donaldson: "Are you going to shut down the government again, did that
strategy work?"
3)
At a campaign rally in New Jersey on Sunday, actress Whoopi Goldberg
introduced the President. While she's on the road for the campaign, her
friends in Hollywood have been writing some large checks. When the
Democratic National Committee last week released a donor list they
initially withheld, the Washington Times checked to see who was among
those making the $10.1 million in donations that arrived in early October.
Among the names:
- TV producer
Norman Lear: $80,000
- Movie director
Robert Zemeckis: $50,000
- Actor Robin
Williams and wife Marsha: $30,000
- Eagles singer
Don Henley: $30,000
- Actor Danny
DeVito: $5,000
- Movie Director
Rob Reiner: $5,000
- Former 20th
Century Fox owner Marvin Davis: $5,000
Meanwhile, the
October 31 Washington Post had this item in a "day in the life"
story on the campaigns:
"3pm, Washington. Kevin Spacey, the movie actor is touring the
Clinton-Gore headquarters....The entire Clinton-Gore Washington operation
screeches to a halt. Eventually they get Spacey to participate in a daily
campaign ritual. The staffers have taped a sheet a butcher paper to a
door. On the paper, in crayon, somebody has drawn the White House and the
number seven - as in seven more days and it's over. As the Olympic
fanfare blares from a boombox, and the staffers cheer him on, Spacey jumps
through the paper like Superman."
4)
Opening the Saturday Today show on November 2, co-host Jodi Applegate
promoted an upcoming segment. In so doing she showed that members of the
media don't grow liberal with age, they start out that way.
Jodi Applegate: "Did you hear about the Weekly Reader poll that was
out this week?"
Jack Ford: "Did you used to get them in school? I loved them."
Applegate: "Oh yeah. In 1972 I voted for McGovern, because 'govern'
was in his name. This was my thinking when I was seven years old. Anyway,
they're uncannily accurate at predicting the outcome of the presidential
campaign so we'll take a look at why that might be."
How much do you
want to bet that she's voting for Clinton this year because she thinks the
C in Clinton stands for "compassion"?
-
Brent Baker
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