Wrong. Exit polling showed GOP corruption was a larger concern than Iraq - 42 percent said corruption, 37 Iraq.
Posted on 11/13/2006 6:46:36 AM PST by Small-L
Two months after Germany's surrender in World War II, British voters dumped the Conservative prime minister who had led the nation to victory -- Winston Churchill -- and replaced him with Clement Attlee, whose Labor Party had won the election in a landslide. Embittered by his defeat, Churchill spurned King George's offer of a knighthood. "I could not accept the Order of the Garter from my sovereign," he said, "when I have received the order of the boot from his people."
Last week, American voters gave Republicans the order of the boot, stripping them of at least 29 seats in the House of Representatives and six in the Senate, and once again making Democrats the kings of Capitol Hill. It was the GOP's worst showing in decades, and since Tuesday analysts galore have been reading the entrails. It is easy to be wise after the event. But consider the judgment rendered by one of the keenest minds in American politics, who explained nearly a week *before* the election why Republican candidates were about to take a beating: "The reason we are at this moment," former president Bill Clinton told a group of Democratic donors on Nov. 1, "is that they do not represent faithfully the Republicans and the more conservative independents in the country. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here tonight. This is a sweeping, deep, big thing." According to the nation's most popular Democrat, in other words, Republicans were about to be punished for having abandoned their Republican principles. Voters were going to demote the GOP not because its agenda had grown too conservative -- but because it hadn't been conservative enough.
Exactly.
Nov. 7 was a debacle for Republicans, not conservatives. Democrats gained power in Washington, but around the country there was no shortage of evidence that the nation's tectonic shift to the right is still ongoing. For example, another seven states approved constitutional amendments barring same-sex marriage; only in Arizona was a marriage amendment narrowly defeated. The backlash against the Supreme Court's disgraceful 2005 Kelo v. New London decision continued as well, with voters in 10 states adopting new laws to protect property owners from eminent domain abuse.
The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative was at once a brilliant conservative victory and a humiliating Republican defeat. By an impressive 16-point margin, Michigan voters said no to racial and gender preferences in state employment, education, and public contracting. But the Republican Party, which had joined with Democrats, big business, and the activist left in opposing the initiative, reaped no political benefit. The GOP had jettisoned its party's colorblind creed in the hope of dampening Democratic turnout. In the end, Democrats swept the Senate and governor's races anyway, while the civil-rights initiative that Republicans should have endorsed sailed to a 58-42 win.
The next speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is a San Francisco liberal of the first water, but many of her party's incoming freshmen campaigned as avowed conservatives. Indiana Democrat Brad Ellsworth, for example, described himself as anti abortion, pro-traditional marriage, "a hunter who supports the Second Amendment," and a "local sheriff" who would fight "to protect our kids from violence and filth on TV and the Internet." He and other "blue-dog" conservatives will be tugging the new Democratic majority to the right, while the defeat of liberal Republicans like Connecticut's Nancy Johnson and Iowa's Jim Leach means that the Republican minority in the 110th Congress will move to the right as well.
Voters were fed up with Republicans, and they had every reason to be. In 1994, the GOP swept to power on its "Contract with America" -- a principled platform of fiscal restraint, smaller government, individual responsibility, and cleaner politics. A dozen years later, the contract forgotten, the GOP had become an embarrassment -- a party of soaring federal budgets, gluttonous farm and highway bills, and earmarks from here to eternity. Instead of permanent tax relief and Social Security reform, the Republicans delivered a vast new drug entitlement and the McCain-Feingold crackdown on political expression. Worst of all, the party that had held itself out as the antidote to Democratic corruption now reeked of its own scandals. Week by week, the parade of sleazy Republicans seemed to lengthen -- Jack Abramoff, Bob Ney, Mark Foley, Duke Cunningham. Voters finally had enough. Exit polls nationwide found that it was corruption and scandal, far more than the unpopular war in Iraq, that voters had in mind on election day.
Churchill's political career didn't end in 1945. He came back from his defeat, and Republicans can come back, too. "We did not just lose our majority," one GOP representative said the other day. "We lost our way." When they're ready to find it again, re-reading the Contract with America would make a good start. As Bill Clinton could tell them, the electorate likes Republicans best when they live up to their Republican ideals.
Well, God forbid that we try. That would be senseless. Why give the people a real choice?
Of course none of this "analysis" makes a nickels worth of difference unless we rid ourselves of the voter fraud.
There were several reasons, but the main one was that the Dems ran a pro-lifer this time, which took away a lot of pro-life Dem votes that Santorum received in the past two elections. Throw in some other issues, such as Santorum going corporatist in a blue-collar lunch-pail state, and also having state taxpayers footing the bill for Santorum's kids going to cyberschool when Santorum's family clearly lived out of state, and Santorum was road kill.
But he's not a good yardstick by which to gauge the larger election.
What is missing from your discussion is what the consitutinon actually says. There is no provision of the constitution that permits the Federal Government to define when life begins for the states. That entire question was left, quite clearly, to the states in the constitution.
I understand your "perceptions" argument and maybe that played a role in the election. But the conservative position is that the federal government should butt out of the abortion debate as, under the constitution, it should. But until the Federal Judiciary butts out, the argument will necessarily be a federal one about the Federal Judiciary.
Kelo, I think falls in a similar category. Many view the Kelo decision as bad and allowing government to take without limit, but in fact, the Kelo decision told local/state governments that it was up to them to impose restrictions and not the federal government. Unfortunately, I don't think most voters saw it that way--they saw it as encouraging government taking. The good news is that many states (mine passed an amendment to the state constitution on the last election) have stepped up to that charge, and as states, we're better for it.
So you're saying republicans got blamed for a decision by five left-wing federal judges, a decision that was routinely excoriated by most republicans? Maybe. But you could only attribute that to massive voter ignorance.
In Kelo, unlike the abortion issue, there is a federal constitutional clause prohibiting "takings" by the states except for public purposes. So, unlike the abortion situation, the federal judiciary can define, for the states, what "public purposes" comprise. That the court defined it incorrectly was the problem in the decision.
If Santorum is not a good yardstick, add Burns, Webb, and DeWine, all of whom were far more "kick ass" than their "cut and run" opponents. The only exception was in Tennesse and, even there, Ford came far closer than he would in a normal year. I suppose I could add to the list all of the GOP House candidates who ran on pro-war platforms and were beaten soundly. Iraq was the central thread here. Both Bush and the Demos accurately called the election a referendum on that issue.
The MSM is in wishful thinking overdrive.
Now the Iraq Study Group is being spun as a alcholism intervention group for GWBush. (a reference to his drinking days)
There are also stories of the leadership already casting the conservatives their recruited off to the side.
Oops, I forgot Talent.
No, the debacle on November 7 was an America and Americans debacle.
They do not realize what a bunch of incompetent people they put in power. So sad, but so true.
I'm as angry and disappointed with the voters as anyone, but I have to assign most of the responsibility for the debacale to our leaders.
Nice to see you, Ksen, how is everything?
OOPS!
Wrong. Exit polling showed GOP corruption was a larger concern than Iraq - 42 percent said corruption, 37 Iraq.
I said Iraq was the central thread, not the only one e.g. such non-corrupt GOP candidates such as Santorum and DeWine (plus a plethora of non-corrupt) House candidates went down to defeat to antiwar opponents.
The public loves a winner.
The MSM knows this and that is why they spin it into a loss.
This is what the whole Democrat party premise is, the republicans are loosers because they did not stick to their own values. They lost the test of the mirror.
interesting how the graph on the right totals MORE than 100%!
People can express more than one issue that is important to them.
The GOP, commanding the house, senate, and the executive, failed to produce conservative measures. Rather, they pursued a socialist agenda.
IMPORTANCE OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION TOTAL
..................................Democrat Republican
Extremely Important (30%) 46% 52%
Very Important (32%) ...... 49% 50%
Sixty-two percent said illegal immigration was extremely important or very important - and almost as many Dems felt that way as Republicans.
You're obviously more of a Constitutional scholar than I. Personally, I believe that it is an issue that should be left entirely to the states, but I'm not sure the electorate sees it that way. I never underestimate the ignorance of the average voter. They don't understand liberal justices from conservative. Most can't even name a single justice, let alone which is conservative.
I think they see things like partial birth and Kelo as happening on Bush's and the Republican Congress' watch and therefore the GOP is to blame. Add to that the MSM penchant for failing to explain the complexities and various positions of such issues (I don't underestimate the ignorance of the MSM either) and we're left with voters who base their decisions on gut instinct rather than facts.
Hannity's Man On The Street is a prime example. If the average American doesn't know who Cheney, Roberts, Pelosi, and Hastert are, how can you expect them to understand what is and is not the role of the federal government vis-a-vis the US Constitution, State Constitutions, and the SCOTUS?
As my aunt in Florida said, she voted for Nelson because he "looked more honest" than Harris.
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