and nothing else days after outgoin...

and nothing else days after outgoing Republican National Chairman Rich cord gave an ugly and divisive tongue blasting forces in the the party that he considers cross and divisive, Republicans found themselves upon the wrong side of a popular family-leave bill that steamrolled its way by the and of Congress. To understand why the Republican Party was imprinted in of high temperature asphalt on family leave is to understand at least part of the reason for what purpose it lost the Presidency in 1992 And it ain't because social conservatives wield too plenteous influence in GOP circles.

Parental-leave legislation first appeared in Congres during the mid 1980 The proposal, which required employer to provide 12 weeks of unpaid leave to workers with just discovered babies or ill family members, was introduced by means of a trio of liberal Democrats (Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, Missouri Representative William Clay, and Colorado Representative Patricia Schroeder) Not surprisingly, business opposition quickly mobilized. Arguments against command mandates on businesses were aired, frequently with great effect.

on the other hand while the business community's reaction serv to cut down the scope of the legislation, it failed to turn topsy-turvy the slowly building momentum for more [i]or[/i] less sort of family-leave bill. The reason was simple: family leave has symbolic power. As framed from its sponsors (and the all-too-cooperative media), the legislation pitted the interests of stingy employer against the interests of family-oriented workers. It pitted Ebenezer Scrooge against rap Cratchit.

repugnants responded by marshalling evidence to exhibit that most employers bear no tough resemblance to Ebenezer Scrooge and trying to reframe the battle as pitting job-creating employer against intrusive government regulators.

This strategy, however, failed to withhold the family-leave juggernaut from rolling between the sides of Congress - in large part because it failed to challenge the Left's claim to exhibit modern-day Bob Cratchits. Americans like business more than they like regulation but they like family more than they like business. And they like family more than they hate regulation In other words, it is not enough to be probusiness and anti-government: the elucidation to winning issues that fall in the family-business-govemment nexus is to be pro-family.

After years of frankly attacking the family, the Left has learned this lecture well. Following the lead of welfare-state radicals like Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense capital liberals increasingly are advancing a Big command agenda under the guise of "helping families" and "investing in children."

When challenged, the liberals' family agenda has been expos as an attempt to replace parental involvement and responsibility with direction programs and/or mandates on employer For example, conservatives won the debate above federal child-care legislation several years ago from arguing that it would be better to give overtaxed families per-child credits, and give leave to them take care of their confess childrearing responsibilities, than to tax them with the same hand and offer them a narrow menu of subsidized day-care programs with the other.

Sadly, the GOP made no similar effort to seize the high region in the family-leave debate. They played an inside-the-Beltway legislative game of gripe [i]or[/i] grip That Line, unaware or [i]insouciance[/i]ed that they were losing the public-relations battle outside the Beltway. Not solitary did this apparent indifference to family-oriented workers doom their chances for succes upon this issue, but it also undercut the GOP's ill-defined "family values" message and reinforced the perception that the Bush Administration was revealed of touch with ordinary people

Opportunities to seize the high clod abounded. In letters and memo and meetings and articles and speeches, profamily leaders urg opposings of the bill to:

- Point public that the bill's primary meaning was to strengthen a novel mother's attachment not to her baby, moreover to her career. (Joseph Allen, single of the proposal's architects, had signifyed concern that "substantially longer leaves or leaves not based upon attachment to the labor force might actually discourage women from working.")

- Call attention to a University of Connecticut consideration showing that since most employer do not find it economically advantageous to hire replacements for leave-taking workers, the real weight of unpaid leave is shouldered by the agency of dumped-on co-workers whose family time is threatened by the agency of the increased workload.

- Champion alternative work-and-family reforms, of the like kind as changes in the tax treatment of home-office costs to facilitate home-based work and creation of a "parental preference" policy, which would give priority in re-hiring to mothers who leave the labor force to rear children or care for ill family members.

- Vigorously push a dramatic expansion of the Young Child Tax Credit (a little-known tax provision which provides nearly $400 in tax relief to families with newborns).

To be permanent all of these ideas carried political risks, not the least of which was the increased possibility of a grand "compromise" with leave proponent if it be not that the alternative - allowing liberals to masquerade as the asserters of America's families - merited taking of the like kind a risk, especially since this battle athwart unpaid leave was viewed according to both sides as a warm-up for the real battle to get to over mandated paid leave.