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
/johnny
The only thing that saved the Republicans even more abject humiliation after the last clown show of a shutdown was the even worse roll out of Obamacare.
/johnny
Well, she is right in the short run, but not the long run. After all, the people voted Obama’s cronies out this time around and even at the time, the polling is ALWAYS questionable. These pollsters know exactly who and where to poll to get the results THEY want, the results OBAMA wants, etc. How many of YOU freepers have been polled? I’ve never ONCE been polled. I’m pretty certain that they track answers from the same groups mostly. Our voices don’t count, nor do they really WANT to hear from us. It’s my personal opinion that ‘these polls’, having to do with policy and related matters are rigged to give Obama the seeming support. It’s just like the CIA report that Obama is asking for. WHY? He needed another crisis that appears to be from GWB’s term so he can exult in what a great guy he is in comparison to Bush. The CIA was not doing this for nothing...it was requested from Obama.
Mona, dear, you are as much of the problem as anybody else. You live for the polls. I could not give a rip about them. The important thing is for Congress to do their jobs right, not that they get good coverage or ratings. Let the voters sort out the polls and their meaning. You can see that the poll regarding the so-called shutdown did NOT hurt the republicans. The public is a fickle bunch, anyway. One week, give them a new tax and you are the scum of the earth. Next week, give them a free ice cream and you are the best person on the face of the earth. That just about sums it up. When people don’t think, they can agree with you, take everything at face value. but to those of us who do think, we can wait out the polls and the media sound bites. We will NEVER get good media coverage, so just do the right thing anyway! It’s sort of like this: when no one is looking do you steal a cookie from the cookie jar when Momma has said not to? Whether you get good media coverage or not, you do the right thing. PERIOD! Stop giving the republicans an “out”.
I think the courts are a much better option at this time for the immigration issue and since the Congress can’t sue, I think the 19 states did the right thing by suing the federal government.
I agree that the government “partial” shut down was a big political problem for the republicans and if it kept going they would have been demolished in the elections. Fortunately, stopping the “partial” shut down, the Healthcare.gov issues, the slow economic growth and the other foreign policy blunders caused things to turnaround.
If the tactic is giving no shut down now and then in early next year they withhold part of the funding for homeland security with a majority in both house and senate, then I think they should try it and see if the majority of the public are with them.
“loose” = “lose”
I can;t believe it! After all these years, somebody finally said it!
Or, in other words, Operation Chaos to the Rescue!
>> Where is her proof the shutdowns hurt Repubs? <<
The loss of Ken Cucinelli is enough for me.
/johnny
Lordy! I wish I could disagree with you.
Second, even if it is true that the Republicans got blamed for the shutdown, what did it cost us? Maybe . . . and this isn't proven . . . MAYBE the VA governorship. Yet a year later, the lackluster GOP VA senate candidate was so strong that he almost overthrew the incumbent. Meanwhile the GOP crushed the Dems in election after election.
No, Congress has only two tools to stop Obama: impeachment and a budget with the possibility of a shutdown.
We should USE THEM BOTH.
Exactly. Why can’t it be done this way?
+1
B.S.
Show me anything other than simple words and campaign rhetoric that Republicans want to do any of these things.
They don't.
Political campaign contributions won't flow to the party of those who which to decrease the power of government and thus make themselves impotent.
Mona is wrong, wrong, wrong.
And it's not the GOP that creates the so-called government shutdown. It's Obama, it's Clinton, it's the Democrats who shut it down, all 12.5% of it. And Rush is right, they have no lasting political impact. And Rush is right, the GOP is using this as an excuse not to stop Obama.
I would not agree to that.
>> What about Cantor losing? That seemed to help conservatives. <
I didn’t realize that Cantor’s loss had anything to do with the shutdown. I thought he lost because he spent almost all his time the last few years in DC, pretty much taking for granted the support of the voters back in his district.
I guess you could say that if his constituents wanted the shutdown to continue, his voting against the shutdown hurt him back home. But if so, I think that vote would have been a minor factor. I have the impression that much bigger issues, like immigration, were really the critical matters that did him in.
Anyway, I’m definitely a big Dave Brat fan. I look forward to his having an influence in DC that’s disproportionate to his freshman status. And if he announces for the U.S. Senate in 2016, to challenge Tim Kaine, he’ll get a good donation from me!
We demonstrated to the American people lengths we were prepared to go to save them from the ravages of Obamacare. As implementation of the devastating law proceeded, more and more people recognized and appreciated our efforts and actions.
We were richly rewarded with a landslide victory in 2014 because we fought the good fight.
Now the American people are asking us to fight again against an unlawful and devastating executive action on amnesty and the GOP is running scared, not from Obama but from the Chamber. Rush is right.
Perot was proabortion and antigun, so he probably did OK with Romney supporters.
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