Word: reforms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2000
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...BUCHANAN Reform Party in chaos, polls are slipping. Time to try to slip back into the Crossfire...
...talking about in the other conventions--and have a genuine debate, not an infomercial," Huffington says. She and her co-conveners--who include Scott Harshbarger of Common Cause and antipoverty activist Jim Wallis--have whittled their agenda down to three items. One day will be devoted to campaign-finance reform, the next to the growing income gap between rich and poor, and the third to "reforming"--read liberalizing--the nation's drug laws...
...goes well, organizers hope, this trinity of issues will form the nucleus for a "new politics," re-energizing the half of the electorate now so alienated from the old politics that it no longer bothers to vote. Campaign-finance reform is the thread that ties all other reforms together. "It's no accident that the major parties aren't addressing the income gap and are ignoring the failed war on drugs," says Harshbarger. "The constituencies that are hurt by these issues aren't donating millions of dollars to the political parties. Unless you fix campaign finance, you can't move...
...monochromatic ideology of the shadow conventions has proved to be self-reinforcing as Republicans get skittish about signing on. John McCain will open the gathering in Philadelphia with a call for campaign-finance reform, but--here as elsewhere--not many of the party faithful will follow him. Jack Kemp, originally publicized as keynoter, withdrew from the conventions last week. "Jack just feels this isn't something he's comfortable participating in," says a spokesman. "The more he looked into it, there just didn't seem to be the balance and the genuine debate he'd been hoping for." Kemp...
...course, the Democrat who made that crack in the first paragraph will snort at the idea of George W. Bush - scion of old WASPs, Galahad of tort reform, living fat on Texas oil money and "presiding" now and then over lethal injections - as a hero of the anti-elitist masses. But that will be the Democrat's mistake...