Michael Tomasky: I'd like to begin by talking about the historical moment. Karl Rove wants to create a realignment along the lines of that which coalesced around the New Deal. This realignment would undo a lot of the work of the last 60 years, including, of course, a lot of your work. Do you think we're at such a turning point?Clinton also spoke about taxes and class warfare:Bill Clinton: I do think it's a very important moment. Essentially, Karl Rove's politics are a combination of efforts by the increasingly conservative Republican Party to recover from the '64 election and assume a dominant position in America -- through the advocacy of ideas and policies that were designed to have more appeal to the middle class, through the use of socially conservative issues that were designed to get people to vote for them for reasons other than economic ones, and through the extraordinary ability to increase their dominance in the mainstream press [and to] have a competing right-wing press and label Democrats . . . almost turn them into cartoons in a way that got them votes from people who otherwise never would have voted for them. And that's basically been their strategy.
So they believe those things, coupled with their extraordinary ability to raise money from the people they're helping financially with the government, will enable them to pursue policies which are way to the right of where the American people are.
I don't think we're headed for a realignment. If anything, we should be realigning in the direction I took the country. When I left office we had a 65 percent job approval, or something like that, so two-thirds of the people favored my policies. And that's why they attacked me personally so much, why they tried to attack Al Gore and make him look dishonest. And to say that compared to President Bush, and their backgrounds in public life, that Gore was dishonest was ludicrous. But they got away with it.
And if you look at these tax cuts, they got a good return for their investment. I mean, people say, "Gosh, how did Bush raise $200 million, $300 million?" I say it's peanuts compared to the tax cuts he gave. It's not even a tithe, you know? Not even 1 percent!
I don't think we have to do as much conscious adding to the base in the way I did it. I was never against wealth and business creation. My theory was that class warfare wouldn't take us very far, but that if we were growing jobs and growing the economy, the government then should make extra efforts to help the poor. And we did a lot of that.He had this to say about the right-wing's style of practicing politics:Now what we should say is that they, not we, have brought class warfare back to America. You know, every time I complain about these tax cuts some conservative says I'm practicing class warfare. I am not. I pay these taxes. And I live in New York state and Westchester County, so I think I probably pay as high [of] rates as anybody in America. And I should. Nobody makes me live in this country. America has been good to me. And I think for somebody to give me a tax cut and then turn around and say, "We've gotta have $87 billion spent in Iraq, but we're gonna kick 300,000 kids out of after-school programs, 84,000 kids out of student loans . . . 25,000 uniformed police off the street? We're gonna kick a coupla thousand police off the street in New York City who put their lives on the line on September the 11th, and they're gonna give me a tax cut?" That's class warfare! And I think we ought to say that!
And the other thing I think is, we can smile when we say that. I don't want our side ever to treat the Republicans with the sort of personal animosity and contempt with which Hillary and I and Al were treated. I don't like that, I don't believe that, I don't think that's necessary. But we got to argue. And we got to fight hard. Otherwise they'll run right over us like they did in 2002.
This is a contact sport. They're supposed to try to beat us. Now, they do things by and large that we don't think are legitimate. And lord knows they did while I was president.But . . . nobody gags us! The press has moved way, way, way to the right. And the mainstream press was incredibly supine in the face of all this secrecy, you know, covering up the [Ronald] Reagan and [George] Bush [Senior] records, covering up the [Miguel] Estrada legal opinions, covering up the 9-11 report, covering up the global-warming deal and the air-quality issue down there [in lower Manhattan]. And it all started with putting the governor's records in the Bush presidential library. And [the press] just laid down and let it happen. But we don't have to contribute to it.
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