Gramm pins GOP identity problems on Bush

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By Ralph Z. Hallow and Donald Lambro

NEWSMAKER INTERVIEW:

One of Sen. John McCain's campaign chairmen Wednesday blamed President Bush and Republicans in Congress for having damaged the party's brand identity but promised that the senator from Arizona will soon announce the most comprehensive and detailed economic plan "ever."

The problem for Mr. McCain and other Republican candidates this year is not that the public has changed its mind on what it considers important issues, said former Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas.

"It's just changed its mind about whether Mr. Bush and Republicans in Congress still care about those same issues," he told editors and reporters during a breakfast meeting at The Washington Times.

"We've had eight years of ever-increasing growth in government and in levels of spending," which has blurred the difference between Republicans and Democrats, said Mr. Gramm, a personal friend of Mr. McCain's and vice chairman of UBS, the giant Swiss banking firm for which he once lobbied.

"Bush should have vetoed a lot more [spending] bills," said Mr. Gramm, who sought the 1996 GOP presidential nomination with Mr. McCain as his national campaign chairman at the time. He attributed Mr. Bush's veto aversion - he refused to sign only one bill in his first six years in office - to the fact that he was dealing with a Republican-controlled Congress for most of that time.

Mr. Gramm was also critical of Mr. Bush's handling of foreign policy - Iraq and otherwise - and praised Mr. McCain for having saved the U.S. from defeat in Iraq by speaking out early and often against the conduct of the war by Mr. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

By the time Mr. Bush relented and adopted the surge in military forces that Mr. McCain advocated, it no longer was Mr. Bush's war but "it became McCain's war, incredibly." Mr. Gramm said then to a laugh with some edge: "No good deed ever does go unpunished."

"But without McCain, we would have lost the war on Iraq," Mr. Gramm added.

Mr. Gramm criticized the Bush position on Iran as effectively a do-nothing policy that puts the United States in a position of eventually having to choose between letting Tehran develop nuclear weapons or committing an act of war by destroying Iran's nuclear facilities. He said embargoes and trade sanctions against large nations generally don't work, especially absent an international consensus.