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.
We lost Congress for a VARIETY OF REASONS, not just because W was not conservative enough. The dims used a complex mix of tactics including deploying the MSM to make it look as if we were losing the war, selecting very attractive candidates who are much more conservative than the rest of the dim party, running to the right of Republicans on many issues, and of course, their old favorite, vote fraud. Yes, we need to attack the next election as Reagan conservatives, but our strategy to re-take Congress needs to be as complex as what the dims used. We need the big tent; even guys like the Governator can help. We also need to win back the Latino vote. Hell, W got over 65% of the Hispanic vote in Texas. The dims took back some of the Catholic vote that W had won by running guys like Casey. The Republicans need to peel off conservative Jews by supporting Israel and split the monolithic black vote by running on issues like school choice. Oh, and if we could put a dent in vote fraud, we would pick up 5% or so in many precincts.
.
The Man who knew too much,
The Man who predicted 9/11,
...9/11 Lifesaver RICK RESCORLA
http://www.RickRescorla.com
http://www.RickRescorla.com/The%20Statue.htm
.
.
There was always more at stake here than met the Eye.
Just ask the once Free South Vietnamese, whose Freedom we ABANDONED long ago, ...bringing for all to sadly see in the End:
Pictures of a vietnamese Re-Education Camp
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308949/posts
Now it's...
...Quo Vadis, Iraq?
...Quo Vadis, Afghanistan?
...Quo Vadis, The United States of America?
(Quo Vadis = "We go you" in Latin)
.
This is what happens when you have individual congress-critters going out on their own. You seldom see that with the opposition, and when someone does stray from the pack, as in the case of Mr. Lieberman, you see what happens to them. Who would have thought that a Senator who was his party's vice-presidential candidate in one election could be turned out of office, by his own party, in the next election?
re: We lost Congress for a VARIETY OF REASONS, not just because W was not conservative enough.
Oh how very true! This was certainly an equal opportunity loss of Congress.
Silly us! We voters thought that giving the party the presidency and both houses of Congress would send them the message of what we expected of them. Guess not.
As painful as the outcome of this election is, it is but the first step in getting the GOP back into the hands of conservatives who will not only run, but govern, as conservatives.
If we don't step up to the plate and go for the bleachers the next few years we have no one to blame but ourselves.
I agree.
I have no doubt we will fight back and win, but this is the question I have.
When we get someone we can trust back into the drivers seat, how do we make sure he LISTENS to conservatives??
W never really listened to us..and I don't believe he ever really GOT IT as to what it meant to be a conservative.
I like this reason better why we didn't win:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/HughHewitt/2006/11/08/the_road_not_taken__forfeiting_a_majority
There are not enough true conservatives to win a majority; there are not enough true liberals to win a majority. If we don't play to win the Center, conservative dims, independents, et al, then we will KEEP LOSING. I never get exactly what I want from politicians, but IF WE KEEP LOSING I'LL NEVER GET ANY POLICIES THAT I WANT!
I was quite happy with the results of the 1994 election. And the outcome of 2002 really cheered me up. It's not the elections that I think we're messing up, but rather what we do after we win the majority. These last few years have certainly been a major disappoint to me!
The only thing this election showed is that when Democrats nominate white moderates against scandal ridden Republicans who do nothing but babble on about abortion, the Dems win.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.