Posted on 11/11/2006 4:36:43 AM PST by goldstategop
There's already plenty of punditry about what went wrong. What did the president and the Republican Party do and when did they do it?
Robert Novak summed up the consensus view of the Republican wipeout well, writing that "opposition to the war and the president had produced a virulent anti-Republican mood."
My point of departure from most of the analysis that I've read would be to disagree that this election was about any single issue.
I think this election was about trust. Trust is the glue that holds relationships together.
The war, rather than being THE issue, was more a deal breaker.
It's like a failed marriage. It starts off with trust and hope. Then a lot of little things happen that create tension, disappointment and disillusionment. Eventually, there is a deal breaker. Some incident that destroys any residual hope that things can be worked out, that you can rely on and trust the person with whom you once shared your dreams. That's the end.
I think this is what has happened with the relationship between our president and his party and the American people.
Americans hung tough with the president on Iraq for a good portion of these years that we have been embroiled there. Even after it seemed pretty clear that the initial intelligence that supposedly justified the war was wrong, we still hung tough with him.
But the ongoing death and chaos, with no clear and understandable picture coming from the administration about what the end of all this will look like, shook the nation's confidence.
This, coming with the nauseating string of scandals, abuses of power, undisciplined federal spending, and the failure of the president and his party to deliver on any of the major entitlement reform issues (Social Security, health care) or social issues (marriage amendment), broke the bond of trust.
Anyone knows that when the bond of trust is broken, any relationship – political, business or personal – is over.
To paraphrase an observation once made by the great political philosopher F.A. Hayek, "If politics is the art of the possible, then great leadership is the art of making the impossible possible."
However, for any leader to reach for the impossible and bring it into the arena of the possible, he must have the trust of the people. They have got to believe in him, in his integrity and his vision.
Leadership is hard to find. In my time, the only two Americans I can think of that really had these characteristics were Ronald Reagan and Martin Luther King. They made the impossible possible and changed the world.
I believe these are unusual times when the need for leadership is particularly pronounced.
Great changes are taking place.
The very dangerous threat globally from Islamic extremists and terrorists is different from the types of threats we have faced before.
Domestically, the country is weighed down by dysfunctional systems we created in the last century at a time when many Americans thought that central planning had its place in our lives and when we were rich and independent enough to play these kinds of games.
Now. a good portion of our population and economy is dependent on broken retirement, health care and education systems.
We need to retool and replace the broken and the old with the new and dynamic.
We need a more deregulated health care market, private health and retirement accounts and an approach to education that allows parents to choose how they wish to educate their children.
However, leading a whole nation to abandon the old and familiar and to step into the unknown and the new is no small task. It cannot be done without leaders who have vision, who have courage, and who, like Reagan, see the truth clearly enough and believe in it deeply enough that they will capture the trust of our people.
I haven't spent a lot of time talking about the Democrats because it is so clear that they still are the peddlers of the old and the broken. I have yet to read an analysis that defined this election as an affirmation of the Democratic Party.
We know about relationships that come on the rebound. It's just a matter of needing somewhere to go. But there's no substance and no future. The Democrats will soon remind us again about what getting government into our lives really means. Telling us what we should earn, what we should produce, who we can and can't hire, what the prices of things should be, what we can and can't teach our kids, etc.
Short of a complete transformation of the Democratic Party, if our country is going to maintain its standing as a great nation – the greatest nation – it will be under Republican leadership.
But it's not going to happen without real leaders. This is the challenge for the Republican Party today – to re-articulate its vision and to re-establish the trust it has lost with the American people.
Well said...and it will be extremely difficult for the Republicans (I just can't seem to call them "conservatives")
to get it back. What a waste!
The new leaders may have nothing left to rebuild.
Great summary.
Star Parker is terrific and I agree with her writings almost always.
That being said, we lost by 5000 votes out of millions cast in a national election.
Where is all the "closely divided electorate" propaganda ? Where are the demands for "shared power" ? Why are less than average losses in a two term administration termed a "republican wipeout"?
The truth: MSM traitors who shaped the issues such that decent americans either didn't vote at all, or voted consistent with the wishes of our enemies, are now doing their "pravda thing" with smug confidence beyond even that which has guided them thus far.
The media lied and many will die.
it is called stagnation. don't deal with problems do business as usual and don't really have anything you stand for other than letting in ilegal immigrants and spending money you are probably gone.
Are you saying that's the total margin in all the races Republican incumbents lost ... or what?
The media lied and many will die.
No argument there. One of our biggest problems in this country is the MSM, and the people who still believe them.
You are exactly right on. Bring back the sedition act.
Pick a senate race where losses were less than 5000 votes. All we've heard from skerry is how 60,000 votes in Ohio kept him from the Presidency. This constitutes a "razor thin" majority as the MSM would be saying were things reversed.
Now, even those on our side seem to be buying that this is a "massive rejection" of conservatism, or evangelicals, or the war, or (pick the bogeyman the left wants to neutralize).
We should, rather than drinking their kool aid and tearing at each other, be uniting in cold anger to call these traitors for what they are and demand an end to the unholy alliance between our enemies and our so-called free press.
Very interesting points, requiring thought!
When a nation moves from apathy to tyranny the tyrant is usually government and media controlled by them.
We're moving to tyranny with the MSM controlling a complicit government. Where lies are the curreny of power truth has no value.
The lamestream mess hammered over and over and over again that there would be problems the Diebolds voting Republican instead of the chosen Dim.
Election's over. The dims win their mandate by 5,040 votes.
Not a solitary peep out of the lamestream mess about Diebolds screwing up votes.
Republicans have been scammed and are too stupid to figure how this mid-term election was stolen away from them. Dims snookered Republican, the term "sap" comes to mind.
Another thing that irritated me was in late 04 and early 05...when the assault weapons bill sunseted and attempts by the donks were made to reimpliment it, he kept saying, 'if they send me the bill, I will sign it" knowing full well that it would never get out of congress.
If he were a true conservative, he would have no problem in saying "HELL no I won't sign it. It's UNCONSTITUTIONAL."
And who was one of the ones who worked hardest..in vain thank God..to get it reinstated?
John Warner..a so-called pubbie.
re: We had a Republican President, House and Senate, along with the provocation of 9-11 and we still didn't get secure borders
Did you ever think you would live to see the day when over 3,000 people would die in America's biggest city and then a Republican controlled President and Congress just roll over and play dead?
Why did they lose? Not enough votes.
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