>But also became zealots in using incremental policies and wedge issues to
>expand their base. They combined quite radical goals with careful
>moderation of immediate demands to implement their policy.
>
>THey were quite happy to hack away at policies bit by bit, year after year,
>rather than trying for everything at once. Abortion is the perfect example
>as they moved from demands for immediate overturn of Roe to incremental
>changes in the rules, such as abolishing later-term abortion. Tax cuts
>come piece by piece, year after year, just as deregulation has shifted to a
>bit by bit movement.
>
>Look at Social Security-- instead of supporting complete abolishment, Bush
>went for partial privatization and a very longterm shift of the inflation
>adjuster of payments. And even this has been judged by the conservative
>establishment as too large a jump on such a popular policy and they are
>reformulating for a more incremental approach.
>
>It is precisely because I am a devoted student of the "other 60s" and more
>modern folks like Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist that I am an
>incrementalist, even as I think we need a long-term strategy for radical
>change. Each step may be incremental but the multi-year changes can be
>quite radical.
>
>I support Fair Share as part of that longer term radical change in health
>care in the US.
>
>
>
The example you use disproves your argument. Bush failed to get rid of Social Security because it was a big, comprehensive, universal program. If it had only covered, say, workers at Wal-Mart, it would have been easy to junk.
That's true generally. The GOP find it easy to chip away at Medicaid because it's for poor people. They can't do it for Medicare, which covers everybody who makes it to age 65.
Seth