The Right Needs to Get Centered

Washington Post ^ | November 9, 2008 | Rich Lowry

[Natural Law]

Tuesday’s election was not a failure of the right, it was a validation of the right. The American people rejected the squishy middle.

[Twinkie]

I voted for Newt’s “Contract with America” crowd. They got up there and pretty quickly forgot who sent them; got “into” the beltway trance and got derailed. I’m pretty much cynical now after watching the media finagle to get McCain for the GOP nominee, then finagle shamelessly to destroy Governor Palin and brand her shamefully as an inbred Alaskan Ignorant Hick beneath them. We’ll soon get to see how “experienced” and “smart” Obama is, and also how “smart” and “savvy” Gaffer Joe is on foreign policy.

[Onelifetogive]

The president the public recoiled from has had the strong support of conservatives...

Thought, what the hey? I might learn something. Stopped at this point.

[truthguy]

I love all this Monday morning analysis that we have seen seeing in these blogs. Some of it is accurate to a degree. I don't think the American public is smart enough to punish a party for corruption because of some of the scandals. There will be scandals as long as there are politicians.
Here's my take on why McCain lost. I think it's a valid as any of the professionals.

1) Economy is bad. Yes most of the knuckle-draggers out there will blame the economy on the party in power. Or who is in the White House. It's strange that they never seem to take it out on Congress with the possible exception of 1994.
Most people are completely ignorant on economics. They have never studied economics in any manner. The rise in gas prices and the financial meltdown had specific causes that aren't the fault of Bush but the public or a large share of the public blamed it on him.

2) The War in Iraq- yes most of us know that things are much better in Iraq. The “Surge” advocated by McCain and fought against by Obama worked. The fact that Obama was completely wrong didn't impact the voting at all.

3 )McCain was a very weak candidate to begin with. McCain was a candidate because of the stupidity of the Republican Primaries. The way Republicans arranged their primaries allowed McCain to win despite the fact the 2/3 of the Republicans didn't want him. This was a recipe for disaster. NO MORE OPEN PRIMARIES.

4) AGE. McCain was foolish to run at his age. This worked against him with the much younger Obama. As for me I had no problem with his age but I a lot smarter than the average American.

5)MSM wanted Obama to win and did everything in their power to make him look good and McCain bad. We have got to figure out a way to deal with this. It has been a problem for a very long time but now it's so bad that they didn't even try to hide their bias. Oh how I hate the MSM.

6)Stupidity of American Public. Americans have been getting dumber for the past 40 years or more. A fraud and charlatan like Obama could never have been elected until very recently. Let's be honest. The average American is as dumb as a box of rocks. I've confirmed this myself by doing my own little nonscientific surveys.

7)Third World Immigration. The change in the immigration policies sine 1965 has resulted in a massive wave of poor people from around the world coming to the US. These people WILL vote Democratic because it is in their nature to want “goodies” from government. Just because you are fleeing tyranny and oppression or you are looking for a better life doesn't mean that you know what it takes to be a citizen of a democratic republic.

[right way right]

The biggest problem as far as Conservatism goes is that there is not much left to conserve.

Our Government is Niagara Falls and we are trying to paddle a canoe up it and shut off the spigot!

Massive opportunities have been blown!

Now there will be a period of suffering.

After suffering will come a need.

Question is how much and in what ways will we suffer? And, what will we need to do?

[cripplecreek]

We lost a good conservative congressman here in Michigan with Tim Walberg. The local paper said he wasn’t bad but he wasn’t bringing enough pork to the area so they endorsed the democrat.

[PhiKapMom]

I am for following Newt and his plan for the future for the GOP. We need to get back to the basics that we won the House and Senate in 1994. As soon as term limits took out some good office holders, they were replaced by the spend and spend some more crowd.

[ggekko60506]

If there is one bright spot in this debacle it is the fact that the remedies Obama has proposed will not work for him and the Democrats any better than they did for Jimmy Carter. Judging by his first missteps he may blunder us back into another energy crisis.

There is nothing in this worn out trick bag that will create another permanent majority for the Democrats. They are pushing warmed over Keynesian Demand-side solutions on an economy that is already on the verge of a much higher inflation rate.

The key to a comeback will be ideas, ideas, ideas. What is needed is a “A Contract for the American Middle Class”. Lowry is both right and wrong about tax cuts. Tax cuts have been the only policy triumph during the Bush Administration. The GOP needs to link Middle Class anxieties to major entitlement reform, tax reform, energy reform and trade policy.

[Ouderkirk]

That right turn requires the identification and expurgation of all Vichy Republicans. (i.e Susan Collins, Olympia Snow, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, et.al.)

If they cross the isle they should be told to stay there. They should be challenged in the primaries and party support for them should evaporate. I would rather lose more seats to the democRATS than have people who will sell us out, when, what is need is resolve to hold the line.

[chiller]

Put a real conservative on the ballot and WIN!

As long as that conservative can properly defend our common-sense principals. Mac didn't believe in half of them. A Maverick has no consistent idealogy.

We didn't have the right quarterback. imho, we beat the Dems on all the issues, and I think Palin could make the case.

I loved Tom Delay, but he lost it on the spending side, and that's a large part of our problem.

[chiller]

Dittos...if most people don’t know who are Reid and Pelosi, they sure as hell don’t know Boehner.

[aimhigh]

We just didn’t get our message out. Isn’t that the line that the Dems always use?

[annieokie]

This report is just BS, This election was about having the first black man in office, PERIOD. Very little of what this article states mattered to the masses for O, as they are simply too ignorant to fully understand currant events. Anyone think the Katrina victims can think for themselves????? Enough said.

[Blood of Tyrants]

The message from the Post is a call to join the dark side.

[DBCJR]

Reagan’s platofrm still works, but that is life relevancy. We are trying to reach an emerging culture that isn’t interested in facts or logic. They are PostModern. We need to reach them in culturally relevant ways. We need to be “cool”. Palin is cool because she breaks all the rules about women, both libs and conserves.

[scrabblehack]

If you have more unknowns than equations, the system is “underdetermined.” Your solution for the unknowns will be only in terms of other unknowns.

If you have more equations than unknowns, the system is “overdetermined.” You might get lucky, and all your equations go through the same point. Typically they do not, although they might be close and you get an approximate solution.

Do social scientists really call the causes for election defeats “overdetermined?” Because it seems opposite to the mathematical/statistical sense.

I recall George Will offering a completely wrong explanation of the Hawthorne effect many years ago.