I don't mean to be Pollyanna-ish and argue there are no conflicts. But we need to depoliticize more stuff, move more things out of the political realm. When you see arguments--should creationism be taught in the public schools? Once you move to school choice you have eliminated that argument and it's not a problem any more.
There will be conflicts, and this is where Gingrich's observation is so critical. The majority governing party does not eliminate conflict, doesn't resolve conflict. We agree to manage conflict.
I probably did a poor job hauling off and joining the lawsuit against the Communications Decency Act without sitting down and talking to the family groups. On the other hand, my position was--they didn't exactly talk to us about it either. That was a mistake.
Reason: What about those people who would prosecute the sponsors of a privately funded Mapplethorpe exhibit in Cincinnati? Are they leaving people alone?
Norquist: At the national level, conservative groups don't care much about that. At the local level, I talk about focus and resources. How much of your resources do you use to fight for school choice, which gives you complete control over your child's education, and how much do you focus on making it so that somebody in another city can't look at dirty pictures?
I am not concerned that the religious right will run out of things to do. My greater fear is that if you get school choice that the [Christian right] will do what they did 20 years ago--they'll retreat into their own private lives and that they won't come out and vote for tax cuts. My fear is that if they get their main issues settled, they'll go home.
We want to remind everybody who's a single-issue voter for freedom that there are seven other reasons to support it. What the Christian Coalition has done is so important. The Christian Coalition represents a lot of white Southerners who used to be quasi-socialists. They used to buy into the whole Democratic Party's class warfare arguments. With a lot of those constituencies, we've brought them along so that they're as good on the tax issue as anyone else.
Reason: When Republicans talk crime, they mean drugs. How do you convince conservatives that the drug war is a threat to everyone's liberty?
Norquist: We have to get the property rights people and the economic conservatives to point out that the drug war should not include confiscation of property. You can win that fight. You can move away from the idea that tough on crime means being tough on property owners.
The pro-gun movement understands that inanimate objects don't harm people. People do. The Second Amendment movement understands that the anti-drug movement can easily become an anti- gun movement. It's all the same rhetoric.
Reason: You've hosted your Wednesday breakfast meetings for three years now. What inspired you to get all these people representing disparate interests in one room once a week?
Norquist: Sheer terror of Clinton's health care plan. The goal was to stop the government seizure of the health care industry. Had the Democrats taken over health care, I think we would have become a social democracy and we could have never undone it. We wouldn't have won in '94, and even if we did, it wouldn't matter because 50 percent of the population would be on the take. The government has your kids' education, your health care, your parents' health care, and your pension. You want to argue with that government?
There isn't an anti-government party in Germany, Sweden, or France. You have conservatives, but basically it's a European kind of conservatism--one religion hates the other, or we should all own the land on the other side of the river, you know. There's not an anti- government conservatism as a functioning, competing political party that might win an election, because everybody agrees that the government is going to run your health care. Even Margaret Thatcher was really pissy at anybody who wanted to talk about doing something with the National Health Service.
Reason: All the momentum among the chattering classes is for campaign finance reform. What may happen there and what ought to happen?
Norquist: I would hope that we would move toward complete reporting of contributions and eliminating limits. Campaign finance reform is like gun control. I mean, if they're not obeying the other laws, why would a new law help?
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