GOP strategy losing impact

By LEE BANDY

lbandy@thestate.com

When Republicans don’t have any substantive issues to run on, they resort to calling Democrats “tax-and-spend liberals.”

It’s a diversionary tactic they’ve used since the mid-1970s. And it has worked. But it’s beginning to show its age.

“They’ve used it so often that they’ve milked all the meaning out of the phrase,” says Francis Marion University political scientist Neal Thigpen, a GOP activist.

“I don’t think the liberal thing has got any merit.”

The Republicans are big on labels. It worked well for them during the Ronald Reagan-Lee Atwater era. Any Democratic candidate was automatically branded a tax-and-spend liberal, whether that person deserved it or not. The charge often was misleading, if not dishonest.

U.S. Rep. John Spratt, a York Democrat facing his toughest re-election ever, is pilloried daily by Republicans as a big liberal, although his overall voting record shows him to be a moderate.

One reason the tax-and-spend charge is beginning to lose some of its steam is voters don’t spring for the bait like they once did.

Experts say it’s an outdated scare tactic.

“It has a hollow ring to it,” says University of South Carolina professor Blease Graham, a Democrat.

Look at state Treasurer Grady Patterson, a Democrat and one of the most fiscally conservative elected officials in the state. In his re-election battle, Republican Thomas Ravenel and others are blaming Patterson for every problem in the state. Never mind that Republicans control most of the offices. The Republicans are trying to brand Patterson as a tax-and-spend liberal.

But it won’t work. It’s not true.

Republicans share in the blame, state Democratic Party chairman Joe Erwin says. “They have nothing positive to offer. The voters are not stupid. They’ll see through this.”

The Democrats’ No. 1 target is Republican Gov. Mark Sanford, whom they call a do-nothing governor.

“He has been a colossal failure,” Erwin said. “He has accomplished nothing with the General Assembly. Yet the state suffers one of the worst jobless rates, and education is moving in the wrong direction.”

Sanford campaign consultant Jason Miller objects to that criticism, citing a long list of accomplishments, including tort reform, tax cuts and government restructuring.

The S.C. business community, which generally supports Republicans, brushes off GOP charges that Democratic gubernatorial nominee Tommy Moore of Clearwater is a flaming liberal.

Ike McLeese, president of the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce, says the people who’ve been in and around state government know Moore to be a person who can bring people together.

“He’s the go-to guy who can make things happen,” McLeese said. “His biggest challenge is to get known by the rank and file. His record is very solid.”

South Carolina Chamber of Commerce president Hunter Howard says Moore is “a good, pro-business senator” who understands the issues and articulates them well.

Political scientist Thigpen, a Republican, assesses: “What his record says to me is that Tommy Moore is a flaming centrist.”

Hardly sounds like a tax-and-spend liberal.

“Republicans have absolutely nothing to run on,” says Lachlan McIntosh, a Democratic consultant. “They’re getting desperate, and it shows.”

Nationally, President Bush and the Republicans have been on a spending spree that ought to embarrass them.

It certainly has earned them the label of “borrow-and-spend liberals.”