Posted on 12/09/2014 5:39:31 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Rush Limbaugh is a savvy guy who thinks Republican leaders are wrong to shun the idea of another government shutdown. Appearing on Fox News Sunday, he argued that the only important poll is the one held on Election Day. “[The GOP] won a landslide election ten months after that so-called shutdown . . . The essence of a poll is an election, and I’ve got two of them. And we would have won in 2012 if 4 million Republicans hadn’t stayed home.”
The belief that Romney would have won in 2012 if millions of Republicans hadn’t sat out the election is widely shared on the right, but it’s probably not true. Sean Trende, one of the country’s most careful election analysts, examined turnout data for Real Clear Politics. Counties that voted for Ross Perot tended to show a drop off in 2012, suggesting that a possible 6.5 million white voters were “missing” in 2012. But, as Trende observes, Romney would have had to win those voters by 90 percent to alter the outcome of the election, and considering that he won an average of 60 percent of white votes, that seems far-fetched.
Democrats plan for decades to achieve their goals. They aim to “fundamentally transform” the United States into a social-democratic nation like France, Germany, and well, Greece. When they gain majorities, they push their agenda to the breaking point, as they did in 2009 with Obamacare — a vote that cost them dearly in electoral defeats (and is now lamented by Senators Schumer and Harkin). Half of the senators who voted for Obamacare are no longer in office, and Democrats have lost control of both houses.
Republicans want to shrink government, revive the mediating institutions of society like family, community groups, and churches, improve national defense, and restore economic vitality by removing government-imposed burdens on small business. A key ambition, universally endorsed by Republicans, is repealing and replacing Obamacare.
Unlike Democrats though, Republicans are hampered by distrust of one another. Rush Limbaugh feeds this atmosphere of suspicion by suggesting that the reason Republican leaders are avoiding another shutdown is that they secretly support what Obama has done on immigration. “The Republicans want what Obama wants on immigration and they are using the government shutdown as an excuse to not stop [him].”
There is little doubt that the shutdown damaged the party’s standing. Polls showed that approval of the Republican party hit an all time low of 32 percent during the shutdown. Fifty-three percent of Americans blamed the GOP for the impasse, versus only 29 percent who blamed the president. Approval of Congress registered at 12 percent, with 85 percent disapproving and 70 percent strongly disapproving.
And for what? After three and a half weeks of predictable and predicted bad press, Republicans were forced to reopen the government having achieved nothing. The shutdown was a triumph of politics as tantrum. There could be no path to repealing Obamacare while Democrats controlled the Senate and Obama sat in the Oval Office.
There are two reasons that Republicans will always get blamed for government shutdowns. (1) The press will, without fail, report the shutdown as the Republicans’ doing and highlight the suffering of those whose checks fail to arrive, or whose businesses are harmed, or whatever; and (2) Democrats are the government party. Even low-information voters know that Democrats are for government, and Republicans more or less against it. Government shutdowns permit Republicans to be caricatured as irresponsible anarchists who cannot be trusted with power.
While it’s true that Republicans won in 2014 despite their 2013 foolishness, we have the enduring stability of the American electorate to credit for that. When dissatisfied, American voters don’t take to the streets, they simply vote for the other party. Considering Obama’s blunders, it’s possible that Republicans would have done even better last month if the shutdown had never happened. New Hampshire and Virginia were close.
Rather than impugning one another’s motives, the chief job of Republicans over the next two years will be to send reform bills to the president’s desk that broad majorities of the American people support. When he vetoes them, the issues will be squarely presented to the voters in 2016. That’s the only path to repealing Obamacare, reversing the president’s unconstitutional executive order, and generally getting the ship of state righted.
— Mona Charen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center
There is little doubt that the shutdown damaged the party’s standing. ??
I guess the recent election really showed those Republicans what happens if they Shut Down the Government.
Just more dribble from the Ruling Class aimed at Electing Hillary in 2 years.
I reject the underlying premise of the article, which is that Republicans should do what is good for the Republican Party, not what is good for the country.
83% of the government remained open during the so-called shutdown.
The government shutdown last year was beneficial due to being the first of a one-two punch that worked in the GOP’s favor.
The second punch was the collapse on rollout of Healthcare.gov. Once that happened, the GOP looked validated for their reasons for the shutdown.
The government should never be shut down over anger or spite or any other emotional reason. It needs to be shut down as part of a larger plan that leveraged the shut down in some well thought-out way to achieve defined and realistic political goals.
Every time I read about the prospect of a shutdown, I think of the Peanuts cartoon with Lucy, Charlie Brown, and the football. I’ll leave it to Rush to figure out which politician is Lucy and which is Charlie Brown.
Why do Republicans distrust each other? We see the back slapping between R and D elected officials and the results of their coming together. Always more to the left than to the right.Then we see the jovial Dems sticking a knife in the back of the Rep to win the argument. We see Rep that are not articulate and confident at explaining the conservative position which makes us wonder if they really understand and believe it themselves. We see articulate Rep like Cruz or even Palin castigated and made fun of even though they are right more than wrong, not by media only, by Republican operatives and other politicians. I probably could go on. So it seems that the Rep are more interested in moving the debate to the left while trying to appear they are pulling to the right exactly because they are fearful and unwilling to use all thier tactics, stand strong, and represent the truth to the public around the media. By the way, the media isn’t a conglomerate of brains, it wouldn’t be too hard to talk around them if you have someone with brains and conviction.
Yeah it’s just a great idea. The public hates shutdowns. They blame the Republicans..so when are poll ratings inevitably collapse.. we’ll run like scalded dogs and all we did was torch our support. Give Obama a big win. And gave some bureaucrats a nice, long paid vacation. Great idea...can we do it again?
Polls do NOT show anywhere near the blame for Rep the author states.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/government-shutdown-blame-poll_n_4045780.html
Huffpo is hardly a Conservative site and can be seen the spread is barley 10 points by those blaming Rep. And just a few months later the Dems got annihilated in the midterms.
You are the problem. Please go away.
Shut the government down. It has happened many times before. Mainly, about 25% of the government is “shut down”. Who cares? I say make it 50%. If only they also wouldn’t back-pay to the government “workers”...essentially giving them a paid vacation. Shut downs bare a political joke. Shutting down parts of the government leviathan forever would be a good thing. mona is wimpy and wrong here. The GOPe must be shown to be the quisling weaklings they are.
Whenever Republicans occasionally do the right thing, they get bad press for it because it infuriates the left.
That does not mean it was the wrong thing to do.
We cannot afford to compromise with things over which there is no compromise. Obamacare is one of them. Immigration “reform” is another.
Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et al, only accept “compromise” when they get EVERYTHING they want.
What good will it be to compromise on immigration when the President will selectively enforce only the provisions he wants?
Defund him. Quit worrying about future political repercussions of doing the right thing. You were elected to do the right thing NOW, not to shore up more power until some mythical day when you can finally do the right thing.
This "conservatives stayed home" narrative was trotted out literally within hours of the 2012 election being called for Obama, making me suspicious that it was pre-fabricated with the intent of further ostracizing evangelicals and conservatives from the Republican party. The overwhelming majority of conservative evangelicals who showed up in 2012 voted for Romney, but that's not the narrative we're hearing, even from Rush. Instead, the press has taken the one group that consistently, overwhelmingly votes for the more conservative candidate year after year, and tells the nation that this same group sat out the election and should be blamed for Obama's reelection. Does anybody else smell a set-up here?
According to the above article, Romney still couldn't win unless an unlikely 90% of this theoretical "missing white voter" base had voted for him.
Related threads:
Evangelicals plunge America into darkness – mislead polls and stay home on Election Day
Survey: Evangelical Voters for Romney Overshadowed by Youth, Minorities for Obama
The Church Re Elected President Obama
So don’t ever complain about cowardly Republicans since you are one.
Pray America is waking
Running a Picket’s charge isn’t brave...it’s stupid.
Only Obama can shut down the government. Only buffoons such as the entire GOP “leadership” could fail to explain to the American people the despotic reasons WHY Obama shut down the government. I don’t want Obamacare OR the treasonous executive action funded. Do you? What is YOUR strategy to stop Obama? Bob
There IS stupid here, right on this board. I think you are an Obama suck-up, someone who raises the white flag before a shot is fired.
And you know it is a Picket’s charge how? Most of us would consider running Romney, McCain and Doll a Picket’s charge and have the numbers to prove it.
Nine months after a shutdown we have the largest majority in the last hundred years, I will take all of those dumb moves as I could.
Can anyone name one representative or senator who was NOT elected due to the earlier shutdown? I think many voters were motivated because the government was shut down and finally someone took a stand in DC. If the Republicans become “potted plants” then they will loose the support they have from their base.
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.