Republicon contenders back Health insurance veto

G.O.P. Contenders Endorse Health Insurance Veto By PATRICK HEALY The four leading Republican presidential candidates have aligned themselves with President Bush’s veto on Wednesday of an expanded health insurance program for children, once again testing the political risk of appearing in lock step with a president who has low approval ratings and some critics of the veto within their party. It is yet another issue — like the Iraq war, North Korea’s nuclear program and the management of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina — where the Republican contenders are treading delicately as they gauge how to position themselves with an unpopular president on contentious issues. While all four are defending the veto, some in full-throated language, the candidates are at the same time forgoing praise of Mr. Bush’s judgment on the issue or of his leadership in general. The candidates’ embrace of the veto puts them in closer step with Mr. Bush, however, than they have been on some other major issues; former Gov. Mitt Romney, for instance, has warned the United States against becoming overly trusting of North Korea’s promise to dismantle its nuclear program. Some of the Republicans have also avoided sounding as optimistic as Mr. Bush about Iraq’s future. And Senator John McCain of Arizona, among others, has assailed the administration’s competence on both Iraq strategy and the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. As for the children’s insurance veto, the candidates, in aligning with Mr. Bush, are mindful of the concerns of fiscal conservatives that expanding the program could result in huge future costs. Unlike with Iraq or Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Bush’s capacity to be a drag on the candidates’ fortunes is smaller on the insurance veto, Republican analysts say, because the veto is not especially unpopular with Republican primary voters. They are the current target audience for the candidates, according to their campaign advisers, so the electoral gamble of supporting the veto — if not Mr. Bush — is relatively modest at this point. “I don’t think the candidates can run with the president, and on the president’s positions, over the long haul because eventually they will trip you up,” said Rich Galen, a Republican consultant who is advising Fred D. Thompson, one of the leading candidates. Mr. Thompson has been strongly defending the veto. “You need to decide where you are on any given issue — not necessarily where the president is — and go from there,” Mr. Galen said. “Democrats can say this is a Bush veto or a Bush position, but Republicans don’t even mention that because it doesn’t make sense to talk that way to Republican primary voters right now.” Even so, for the last two days, the veto has put the Republican contenders in the cross hairs of Democratic fire aimed at Mr. Bush. Congressional Democrats, as well as some senior Republicans, have criticized the president for killing a bill that would cover four million more children. Senator John McCain, campaigning in South Carolina yesterday, demonstrated the balancing act for the Republicans by saying that he supported the veto, yet also favored an expansion of the insurance program, at least philosophically. "I certainly would favor an increase, but I think that a $35 billion increase which is funded by a bogus proposal which is a, quote, one dollar increase tax on cigarettes and somewhere around 2012 it basically disappears is not an unfunded liability I think we ought to lay on the next generation,” Mr. McCain said. The president’s veto came as the Republican candidates have been trying to appeal to the Republican base and their fiscal concerns during the nominating process, and it comes as conservatives have become increasingly critical of increases in government spending. Indeed, Mr. Bush himself has been leading a charge to reclaim the mantle of a fiscal conservative, not only to help frame his legacy but also to assist Republicans in their effort to draw a clear contrast with the proposed tax and spending increases of the leading Democratic candidates. The Democrats were quick to seize on the veto of the bipartisan bill to portray Mr. Bush and his allies as “heartless,” in the words of the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada. The Democrats have also highlighted fissures among Republicans over the veto, some of which complicate the situation for the presidential aspirants even further. For instance, one of the Republican supporters of the bill is Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, a popular leader in a state that holds the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses in January. Mr. Grassley has had measured criticism for Mr. Bush, and some Iowa newspapers have closely covered the battle over the bill. Several of the presidential candidates have courted Mr. Grassley in turn; it is too soon to say if their support for the veto will draw his ire or create problems with voters there. In discussing the veto, the candidates have focused largely on what they see as drawbacks in the insurance program, rather than trying to rally behind President Bush or criticize the supporters of the bill. In an interview yesterday on New Hampshire radio, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani framed the insurance program itself as a “typical Democratic, Clinton kind of thing” that substitutes government solutions for private section options. “Half to two-thirds of the children that they’re going to take care of already have private insurance,” Mr. Giuliani said. “They’re going to move them to the government. It is not just a beginning, it’s a big step in the direction of government-controlled medicine.” Mr. Romney told a New Hampshire audience yesterday that the proposed expansion was wasteful duplication. “Can you imagine doing something like that in your enterprise, saying we want to get a new customer, so we’re going to lower the price to get this new account by 10 percent but then we’re going to go to all of our old customers and all give them 10 percent off too?” Mr. Romney said.