A Struggle Between Populists and Elitists Has Replaced Liberal vs. Conservative (1992)

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• published: 04 Jun 2016
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Jeffrey L. Bell (born December 13, 1943) is an American Republican Party politician, political consultant, author and former presidential speechwriter. He was the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from New Jersey in 1978, was a candidate for the Republican nomination for the Senate in 1982, and was the nominee against Democratic incumbent Cory Booker in 2014. Bell is a former president of the Manhattan Institute, has served as a fellow of the Harvard Institute of Politics at Harvard University; a visiting professor at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University; and as the DeWitt Wallace Fellow in Communications at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. He presently serves on the board of directors of the American Conservative Union and of the Campaign Finance Institute at George Washington University. Bell is also a visiting scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.[2] From 1988 to 2000, Bell served as president of Lehrman Bell Mueller Cannon, an economic and political forecasting company based in Arlington, Virginia. A principal of Capital City Partners from 2000 to 2012, a public affairs firm, Bell participated in the firm's contract with the United States Department of Health and Human Services to promote greater awareness of human trafficking in the United States. From 2010 to 2014, Bell was the director of policy of the American Principles Project (APP),[3] a Washington-based advocacy group. He headed APP’s "Gold Is Money" project, which advocates a return to the gold standard in the United States. Bell is the author of two books on modern American politics. The first, Populism and Elitism: Politics in the Age of Equality, published in 1992, was called by political journalist Fred Barnes, then with The New Republic, “the most important political book” of 1992. His second book, The Case for Polarized Politics: Why America Needs Social Conservatism, was published by Encounter Books on March 6, 2012. James Taranto in a February 2012 Wall Street Journal article, summarized the Bell thesis as follows: Social conservatism, Mr. Bell argues in his forthcoming book, "The Case for Polarized Politics," has a winning track record for the GOP. "Social issues were nonexistent in the period 1932 to 1964," he observes. "The Republican Party won two presidential elections out of nine, and they had the Congress for all of four years in that entire period. . . . When social issues came into the mix—I would date it from the 1968 election . . . the Republican Party won seven out of 11 presidential elections." In 1975, Bell was responsible for a speech given by Ronald Reagan when he was running against President Gerald Ford in the Republican presidential primaries. In it, Reagan proposed a "systematic transfer of authority and resources to the states - a program of creative federalism for America's third century. Federal authority has clearly failed to do the job. Indeed, it has created more problems in welfare, education, housing, food stamps, Medicaid, community and regional development, and revenue sharing, to name a few. The sums involved and the potential savings to the taxpayer are large. Transfer of authority in whole or part in all of these areas would reduce the outlay of the federal government by more than $90 billion, using the spending levels of fiscal 1975. With such a savings it would be possible to balance the federal budget, make an initial $5 billion payment on the national debt and cut the federal personal income tax of every American by an average of 23 percent." Bell's speech was intended to provide Reagan with a philosophical edge over President Ford. The Ford campaign, however, seized on it as evidence that in primary states like New Hampshire, which pay no state sales tax or income tax, that the state would have to come up with its own funds for programs. Reagan lost the New Hampshire primary to Ford, and the Bell policy was interpreted by some as a contributing factor. Democratic Senator Harrison A. Williams resigned from the Senate in 1982 after being convicted of taking bribes as part of the Abscam sting operation. Republican Governor Thomas Kean appointed Nicholas F. Brady to serve until a special election could be held. Bell decided to run again, but was defeated in the Republican primary by moderate Republican Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick. Fenwick was subsequently narrowly defeated in November by Democrat Frank Lautenberg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bell