Fertile Ground in ‘08

Fertile Ground in ‘08

I was disappointed with the election results on Tuesday night, but not surprised. The critical issues affecting the outcome of this election were partially ideological, and partially systemic. Significantly, the ideological aspect was not as friendly to the democrats as they will interpret it to be. Victories by most of the democratic candidates in contested districts were by a razor thin margin, and the democrat candidates were espousing positions indistinguishable from GOP positions on issues. Moveon.Org candidates did not capture any contested seats. None. So, what kind of victory is it for Democrats, if they have to abandon their core ideology in order to get elected? The national Democratic Party will now be faced with a critical decision. If they hold to the GOP style positions they took for their campaign face, they will solidify their gains, but alienate their base. If they appease the base, as Clinton did immediately upon election in '92, they will burn the voters badly enough that it will be a generation before anyone believes them again.

So, the Democrats did not win this election, the Republicans lost it. Why? A combination of ideological and systemic reasons. I will deal with the systemic reasons first. If you look at the numbers of the seats that actually moved sides, they are fairly typical of the shifts that take place in a second term, off year, election. The only reason it stood out here were that the Republicans had been doing astonishingly well in all elections since '92, far better than any historical model would have projected. The historical pattern should have had the House shift back to the Democrats in '02. Further, the margins by which the Republicans held both houses were relatively slim, so a normal off year seat loss was enough to shift it. A lot of the "ideological" element claimed in the press, such as dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq, unhappiness with the "direction the country is going," is all part of what I call "administration fatigue". Even Reagan experienced a similar slide, as did Clinton. His second term showed him with a significant loss in popularity even among Democrats, the "blue dress" thing was less causative than symptomatic. Presidents are guests in our homes, and their welcome wears out over the years.

That said, the Republicans made serious, and growing, mistakes since Bush came to office. While they controlled both houses of Congress and the Executive, they failed to deliver on the Contract with America that had brought them their Renaissance. They had jettisoned Newt over minor issues involving allegations of "if he should be allowed profits from book sales while he was speaker". This was mind boggling in its stupidity, and obvious capriciousness. Newt is a PhD. historian, a good writer, who was going to write and sell books regardless of any office he might hold. The idiocy is highlighted by the fact that the former democratic speaker had published and sold hundred's of thousands of copies of his book, while in office, though he had no qualifications and most of the pages were blank! Crates of the book were found stacked up in lobbyist offices where they had purchased them in bulk. The point of this discussion was that the Republican Party, after winning the 2000 presidential election, failed to deliver on core values when they finally had the opportunity. We do not have a flat tax, or sales tax, and still have the IRS. We still have Affirmative Action Programs, in fact they have been strengthened. We have a raft of new Federal Agencies and Regulations, as well as a giant socialized pharmaceutical program. Social Security has not been reformed in terms of either benefits or the eligibility age. The list is endless.

It is not that the Republicans made zero efforts here, it is that those efforts were desultory, lackluster, and leaderless. The real ideological leaders and speakers were driven from the party's leadership, and the remainder spends their time on the defensive about the ideas, not really understanding them well enough to articulately push them through. Having abandoned the field in the battle of ideas, the debate has devolved to the mainstream news and the Democrats versus the talk radio hosts. One can't remain in power if you refuse to fight for what you believe in. I suspect that many in the Republican leadership are simply cowed by being members of the Baby Boomer generation. For people of that age group, from Cindy Sheehan to George W. Bush, their formative years were dominated by the hippies, who sucked all the oxygen out of the room with the Marijuana smoke. Most conservatives of that age group are still apologetic about their values. They act as though the left truly does have the moral high ground, despite the clear verdict of history. Meanwhile, leftists of that generation continue to believe (erroneously) that the vast majority of Americans agree with their whacked out, Age of Aquarius, ideology. John Kerry's recent statements indicated he still believed that people who get bad grades in college get drafted! Both of their minds are stuck in 1969, and the world is viewed though the purple lens of little "John Lennon" glasses. Therefore, the boomer Democrats act with a wild, unwarranted overconfidence, and the boomer Republicans cower from a non-existent animosity towards their values.

How does all this relate to the Elections?

The Republicans need to get back to their basics, and clearly enunciate their values, goals, and objectives. They need to stop trying to be "Democrats Lite". The American people know leadership when they see it, and they like it. This even applies to Iraq. We can't go into a war with the idea that we are using the military to do some kind of social engineering and urban renewal. That's what the spooks and the Peace Corp are for. We went into Iraq to topple Saddam's regime, kill him, kill his top people, and any potential heirs. Why? Because he was a dangerous guy, in a dangerous region, and after 9/11 we can't take any chances. We did not go there to teach Iraqi women the finer points of political organizing, that's their business if they want it. As soon as Saddam is dead, we can go, we should admit it. If the Kurds want us to keep some air cover and advisors for them, they can request it, and we probably should. Their success would shame the rest of the region, by showing what people can truly do if they have the stones for it. As to the War on Terror, the same principles apply. While no US citizens are being held at Gitmo, no one in the Bush administration has bothered to point that out. Neither have we done any wiretapping of US citizen to citizen phone calls without a warrant. Our surveillance is the same surveillance of international calls the NSA has always done, but when Bush explains this, he doesn't do it in the loud, confrontational manner he need to use, when he knows the press won't give it honest coverage. We should be up-front with our policies and utterly disregard political correctness. Let the public know that we intend to keep a real close eye on Muslims, Mosques, and foreigners from places that are heavily Muslim, since that is where the Jihad is coming from. We don't need to be strip searching Irish grandmothers in airports, and we don't need to take away EVERYBODY's civil rights "just to be fair". If the Germans and Japanese declare war on us, we have every justification to surveill and investigate the Bund and the Hibachi houses, but we don't have a need to search the Irish Pubs or Mexican Grill's just to treat everybody equally. We wouldn't be at war with them. That would be absurd, as are our current, sweeping laws, which encompass everybody regardless of ideology, background, or even citizenship status. A lot of the Democrat's propaganda would be defused if we did this right. Let them call us "racist", and "unfair" all they want, they will lose the elections. Be straight, be honest, tell folks what we are doing, and don't feel the need to "Democrat-ize" everything.

The Democrats will be unable to keep the overconfident granola-heads who occupy all their leadership, and the leadership of all their co-traveling NGO's from misinterpreting this as a sweeping mandate for the Age of Aquarius, and will very soon begin to try to push through stuff that will be about as popular as HillaryCare. It will remind America what they really stand for, and clear the field for some solid Republican candidates in '08. Had this loss not occurred now, there would have been an overcorrection then, and the country would have been much worse off. In addition, I expect this power shift will embolden the Jihadists (including Iran), who will believe America is reacting like Spain. The loss of Rumsfeld and the placement of Gates (an FBI pinhead) will mean that the entire security apparatus will be headed by overcautious, risk-averse, bureaucrats, and the Jihadi's will get a rest and recoup period to regroup. From that, they too will successfully carry out some action against us that will be even less popular than HillaryCare. This will remind the American public that we really are at war with the same fanatics we have been fighting since we noticed it during the Carter administration.

A plain spoken, direct, unapologetic conservative, will have fertile soil in which to renew the movement in '08.

By David Roth
November 9, 2006

Posted November 11, 2006 02:49 AM
Read more on Articles - David Roth ~ Domestic Issues and Politics