Posted on 10/30/2009 7:23:55 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Republican party has no national leaders. Its standing with voters is at an all-time low. It battens itself on an ideological purity that turns off the center and can’t appeal to an increasingly suburban and diverse electorate. If it is not fated to go the way of the Federalists or the Whigs, it is certainly a spent force.
This is the rote obituary for the GOP that the Left can’t resist. It is all the more alluring for its elements of truth. A party that holds neither the presidency, the House, nor the Senate won’t be stacked with national leaders. In polls, the GOP is still suffering from its Bush-DeLay hangover.
Yet, in Virginia this year, this death notice has been shown to be both dated and premature. It foolishly extrapolates from political conditions a year ago that have already drastically changed, and assumes that Republican candidates will never adjust to new circumstances. Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell has run a model campaign for the Obama era, energizing the Right and winning the center in a tour de force directly on Pres. Barack Obama’s doorstep.
The battle over how to interpret the imminent defeat of the Democrat in the race, Creigh Deeds, has already begun. Democrats want to shrug it off as not surprising in an essentially red state — home to the former capital of the Confederacy and all that.
Except Virginia has been trending blue. Obama won it 53-47. Since 1997, The Washington Post notes, a million more people live in the state, most of them minorities and many in the affluent suburbs of northern Virginia. Democrats hold both U.S. Senate seats; they won a majority in the state Senate in 2007; and they picked up three U.S. House seats in 2008. Virginia is a swing state, even if Democrats don’t like the way it’s now swinging.
McDonnell is benefiting from some factors outside his control. Since 1977, Virginia has always elected governors from the opposite party as the president. And the stumblebum Deeds campaign has often matched strategic purposelessness to tactical incompetence. McDonnell, however, has mostly made his own good fortune.
The White House contends Deeds fumbled badly by not basking enough in the reflected brilliance of Barack Obama. It fails to understand the reason he didn’t. The cataract of spending at the federal level has turned off independents and created a political opening for limited-government conservatism that hasn’t existed since Bill Clinton won the government-shutdown fights of the mid-1990s. McDonnell has effectively hit Deeds on Obama-Pelosi issues that are unpopular in Virginia — deficit spending, card-check, cap-and-trade, and the ban on offshore drilling.
While tough on Deeds, McDonnell has stayed upbeat, both substantively and in tone. He has unleashed a flurry of policy proposals. Focusing on the pocketbook issues of jobs, transportation, and education, his ideas emphasize regulatory reform, competition, and private-public partnerships. They are conservative but pragmatic, meant to appeal to non-ideological voters. According to polls, McDonnell is beating Deeds on taxes, economic development, education, transportation — and even “issues of special concern to women.”
A few weeks ago, that last datum would have been a shocker. When a 20-year-old graduate thesis McDonnell had written at Pat Robertson’s university came to light, Deeds fastened for weeks on its inflammatory language. He managed only to convince voters he was running an issueless, negative campaign. Deeds narrowly leads on the issue of abortion. But guess what? People care more about jobs.
McDonnell’s comportment has perfectly complimented his campaign — relentlessly cheerful and moderate in demeanor. He’s been gracious about Obama personally, even while excoriating him on issues. When a Republican candidate for the House of Delegates unleashed lunatic comments about resorting to “the bullet box” if Obama can’t be stopped at the ballot box, McDonnell instantly rebuked her.
In the aftermath of Obama’s national sweep last year, liberals have talked as if Republicans will never win elections again. They will, and Bob McDonnell shows how.
— Rich Lowry is editor of National Review.
After the 1964 election, the press was declaring conservatism dead.
Conservatism did not die in the hearts and minds of the people. The GOP and Democrats are trying to kill it.
The GOP is filled with spineless dolts in search of a meal ticket. Actually, that’s the description for most politicians.
Rush has said it hundreds of times, if a Republican is truely conservative, and sticks to those principles, he or she is successful.
Republicans can win elections when they run true to what used to be Republican principles: small government, lower taxes, law enforcement that protects people not criminals, exploitation of domestic energy resources, property rights, 2nd Amendment rights, etc. When they become “me, too” Republicans, that is, Democrats-lite, they run into trouble, and they deserve McCain was exhibit A.
Tea Party Conservatives are leading the way.
A giant movement has been been awakened & the people will decide who our leaders & our representatives will be.
The days of the GOP leading the base around by the nose is over!
Frankly, it is dorks like Flowery that are part of the GOP’s problem.
Just proves that McDonnell is a RINO. If he were a REAL conservative, he'd quit the GOP and go third party.
What? Quit the party and become a Ross Perot?
So long as liberalism exists, conservatism will reign supreme.
I see it as a cycle. The people turn to the pied-piper call of liberalism with its false promises of utopia. Liberlaism does what it always does, it brings disaster. The people turn to who, yep, conservatives to rebuild the ship. Liberals then wonder in the wilderness for twenty or so years. But a strange thing happens. People forget that the ship was once wrecked. They begin to listen to the pied-piper calls of the liberals who pretend to be conservatives, using phrases such as “fiscal responsibility.” Ultimately the liberals regain power, aided by the useful idiots such as McCain, ignore the “stupid people” to enact their agenda and before you know it, the ship has run aground again.
We find ourselves today at the end of the cycle, watching the ship crash into the rocks.
http://www.bobmcdonnell.com/ for Governor
http://www.billbolling.com/ for Lieutenant Governor
http://www.cuccinelli.com/ for Attorney General
It’s get out the vote time.
Go away.
No.
Let’s continue to work to take over and remake the GOP. Third parties are basically irrelevant with only an occasional influence.
Fine. Keep losing.
Perhaps, and only perhaps NY-23 will show us that a third party (although he’ll caucus with the GOP) can win. Right now, you’re merely losing.
But more to the point, calling Bob McDonnell a RINO is simply ignorant.
The lesson from this race is that all three on the top of the ticket have run as conservatives. Granted Ken Cuccinelli is the most conservative of the bunch. But they’re doing that, and they’re winning. Potentially by historic margins.
We have the choice of Republicans running (and winning) as conservatives or conservatives running (and losing) as independents.
Corin - I should have included the tag, but I thought my posts on here were well-known enough (or notorious, depending on your POV) that the sarcasm in my statement would have been apparent.
I’m repeatedly taken the stick to people suggesting the abandonment of the GOP and third partyism.
And I’ve blogged repeatedly in favour of both Bob McDonnell and Doug Hoffman. IIRC, I think it was Rush who pointed out that the Hoffman/Scozzafava split is really just the GOP primary that wasn’t allowed to take place by the out of touch powers that be. Despite his running on the Conservative Party ticket, Hoffman is a Republican - as he himself has said.
I think third partyism is as foolish and destructive to the conservative cause as you do.
Ooops. Sorry. Guess I should’ve realized that.
As I mentioned on another thread. I’m exhausted, tired and now just (almost) 48 hrs. past my last fever. And I’m a little trigger happy on people criticizing our Virginia candidates.
Sorry I misread your post.
Hey, it’s no problem! I should have included a tag, too, so it’s my bad.
Glad it worked out. Looks like two for two!
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