Norman Ornstein
Norman Ornstein
Norman J. Ornsteinis a political scientist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington D.C. conservative think tank. He was the co-writerof It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
CountryUnited States of America
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It was very significant two years ago when Greenspan endorsed the first Bush tax cut plan. So his basically lukewarm attitude now, saying that some of these ideas are good things in principle, but not at the expense of large deficits, has to weigh heavily on those moderate Republicans.
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This is a major fork in the road for him.
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Let's face it. When you're the governor of New York and even mentioned as a presidential candidate, you're going to be under an enormous microscope.
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If you passed a steroids bill now while letting the deficit careen out of control and not doing much to get Iraq on track, they would attract a lot of ridicule for spending their time on it,
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It's the most expansive vision of the executive power of a president in our lifetime. To suggest that (Congress has) given him a blanket authority to do what he has done is a vast stretch.
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There's no question that it will hurt him and it will hurt him significantly. He's still getting the solid support from his base. The question now is whether his performance with the hurricane begins to affect his performance with his base.
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To a large degree the durability of this compromise is going to depend on the actions of President Bush. He can keep it or blow it up. It depends on what kind of judges he nominates.
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We build people up who have positions of power or visibility and venerate them and then have to show they have feet of clay.
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What she did just makes you cringe. It's clearly unethical by any standard.
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When you have a dramatic expansion of the ability of individual members to direct federal funds or to designate contracts, you are creating the most fertile environment for corruption imaginable.
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You have smart people and a lot of money at stake. People are going to find loopholes.
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Radicals don't care about the institutions. They are looking for an ideological crusade. Traditions don't matter.
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Conservatives want smaller government. They want to focus on market-based solutions wherever one can. They want to have as little regulation as possible. But in general, they recognize that government must play an important role for a society to operate.
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There is extreme nervousness about November. The last thing that members want is to be out there in a tough campaign, where the wind is at your face, defending the indefensible.