Posted on 11/18/2006 7:45:59 PM PST by Reagan Man
Seems like just yesterday Republicans were warning Democrats not to count their hicks before they were catched.
Democrats said they had a plan to get the guys with the Confederate flags, but Republicans said you can’t con those folks into loving federal overreach. Democrats said they could draw pro-life votes, but Republicans scoffed: “We’re the pros. Get a life!” Democrats said they could attract budget-balancers and Republicans countered: “That is our constituency and you can’t budge it.”
Well, bite your tongues, all you RNC guys and gals with the starched collars. Them there rubes done drug you out the door. Bob Casey Jr. challenged Sen. Rick Santorum as a pro-life Democrat, and when the votes were counted, he was, as Barbara Walters put it, “The happiest man in the womb.” All over the country people told exit pollsters they sent their spendthrift reps over the Bridge to Nowhere.
How did that happen? Are voters so dense they could not spot the fangs under the sheep’s clothing? Can they not divine that electing Democrats will, in the long term, endanger the values they most prize? The optimistic answer is: With a Republican President, a Democrat Congress cannot do much damage, so it’s a good way to send a message. This happy-face analysis assumes that in two years all this is easily reversible.
I also prefer to see the cup as 49/100 full, and if I wasn’t a big believer in the future, I would not be spending half my income on tuition. But I suspect the Reagan Revolution is over … unless the Republicans understand what happened this Election Day. It was simple: The Revenge of the Nuts.
Yep. If asked to identify the exact moment the Republicans lost the Congress, I would not cite the day Jack Abramoff got arrested. Or when Tom DeLay got indicted. When Duke Cunningham and Bob Ney got convicted. When Mark Foley was unmasked. When Bush said neither troops nor Donald Rumsfeld would leave before he did. When Katrina stumped the feds for a week. When 100 soldiers died In Iraq in October. Nope, none of the above.
That moment came in mid-October on the Laura Ingraham Show. David Kuo had just been on, claiming that his co-workers at the Bush White House referred to values voters as “nuts.” Laura flattened him like a pancake, then welcomed her next guest, Robert Novak, who casually let drop that Kuo was right. He, too, had been present many times when administration staffers called their voters-of-faith “nuts.”
Now nuts, foodwise, are very nutritive and are unfairly maligned by being made synonymous with kooks. But that thought offers scant solace to a serious and earnest citizen who has just been consigned to the snack dish alongside the raisins. There are many fine people who vote Republican from a vision of limited government, restrained taxation and fiscal responsibility: they are certifiably normal.
Those of us whose hearts echo with the aborted cry of the unborn, and who think to offer our votes as their proxies, can apparently only participate when on furlough from the asylum. If the eldritch cry of lives snipped before birth or snuffed before death keeps you awake at night, you be hearin’ some strange voices, son; might want to have the nerve doctor check that out. And if you are attuned to a vision of a healthy society being built around a traditional structure of marriage and families, then you are a screaming loon of the most offensive variety.
You think you can snicker at people behind their backs, write them off as a lunatic fringe, and then come around smiling every two years for a vote? No, sirree, Bob. That makes you a huckster and a slickster, and folks down here in the Bible Belt don’t take none too kindly to that kind of moonshine. We have kicked more Bible salesmen and carpetbaggers, phony revivalists and gold-stock peddlers, out of these parts than you city slickers ever seen. Why, look at you boys right now, gettin’ taken by Al Gore for billions with the old Armageddon end-of-the-world grift. Next thing you’ll be sending millions to some e-mail scam artist from Nigeria.
If Republicans ever want to have a party again, the kind with streamers and funny hats and spiked punch, they had better learn some respect. Life does not go around handing out gifts you don’t appreciate, at least not for long. The cultural issues formed an integral part of the Republican rises to power in both 1980 and 1994. They are the product of bleeding-heart conservatism, people who really care for every life and who really care for the soul of our society. Love them—or they will leave you.
[Mr. Homnick, a regular contributor to Human Events, is a well-known commentator and humorist. He also writes for The American Spectator.]
Sad to hear his staffers have such a low opinion of us.
Love it!
I have no idea what this writer is talking about...I vaguely remember the Kuo guy...and I pay attention to the news.
If he seriesly thinks what Kuo said had any impact on the election...he needs to find a shrink himself.
It is amazing that how losing one election is driving some conservative NUTS.
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It is not so much that we lost it, the issue is really WHY WE LOST IT. Therein lies the serious problems within the party, and an ignorant voting public.
First I ever heard of this and I know just about everything.
I think he should have quit after he cited the other reasons.
I will tell you who really considers you nuts: it's not the Republicans.
Think Pelosi, think Kennedy, think Kerry.
again=against
You're right, in part.. but I think many are rightfully paranoid that the newly elected Dems will entrench themselves into incumbency and go for another 40 year run.
I think that's unlikely. Dems won too many fluke elections off scandals. Those seats should flip right back in 2008.
Brilliantly written stuff!
And before the election all the a**holes who worship President Bush were telling us why we were going to win, or at least not lose so badly.
No gloom and doom from me. I have found the silver lining to this gray cloud of an election: GRIDLOCK. I would rather nothing gets done than have more out of control republican sponsered government bloat.
Kuo was all over Christian radio for the two or three weeks prior to the election and what he was saying was devastating to Republicans. He told a story where Condi Rice was in the WH when a bunch of Christians were being given a tour and she smiled and shook their hands and then she and ROve laughed at them and mocked them behind their backs...and this was supposed to be a common occurance. Supposedly Rove is an atheist who hates conservative Christians and on and on...
I heard all this becaue I was travelling and kept losing the station I'd be listening too and in western NC and VA there's plenty of Cristian radio...I must have found this guy on these stations 5 or 6 times in a day period. He was also on FNS and CNN and his book came out 2 or 3 weeks prior to the elcetion and has heavily promoted on Christian radio. I think he had an effect.
From this article:
The White House denied Kuo's account with help Thursday from two former officials popular among evangelicals — former speechwriter Michael Gerson and former faith-based initiative director Jim Towey. Gerson called Kuo's account "laughable," while Towey cited a December 2002 e-mail from Kuo expressing positive feelings about the program's progress in promoting "compassionate conservatism." "He doesn't seem to have been working at the same White House where I worked," Towey said. "I had marching orders from the president to keep the faith-based initiative nonpolitical, and I did."
***Note: Kuo never said "values voters." He said "evangelicals," which the White House denied.
Any honest Freeper would have told the truth about what was said and indicated this article is a flat out lie meant to harm the GOP further.
More:
In the book, Kuo, who quit the White House in 2003, accuses Karl Rove's political staff of cynically hijacking the faith-based initiatives idea for electoral gain. It assails Bush for failing to live up to his promises of boosting the role of religious organizations in delivering social services.
I have read post after post and article after article on why we lost Nov. 7th. The only conclusion I can come to is that the Dims got more votes than we did.
It upset me that we lost both the House and the Senate. It really upset me that a fine Representative was defeated in my district (IN 9th). Put a lot of hard work in the election and for several days seriously thought about resigning my position in the County Republican Party. I haven't and will not.
Will be 70 years old by the 2008 election but there is plenty of fight left in this ole boy.
Does that mean that nobody is telling the truth? Fact is, we lost. And there are definitely reasons for that loss.
bump!
The best article I have read here in a LONG time.
I definitely would not count Robert Novak as a Bush fan, either.
He is more of a gossip and troublemaker than anything, IMHO.
Oh, how I wish they'd read this at the Weekly Standard and the National Review.
re: You think you can snicker at people behind their backs, write them off as a lunatic fringe, and then come around smiling every two years for a vote?
Just, wow.
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