Lessons Learned from the Midterms

self | donm61873

[donm61873]

I think it is time to dissect the reality behind yesterday's "change".

Lessons Learned by Republicans:

1. Discipline your own. If anyone knew about Foley's problems before, he should have been allowed to go like he wanted, instead of the leadership talking him into a reelection campaign. And Ney -- why did they let him linger, instead of demanding his walk off the plank. And next time someone pauses about dropping out like Delay did, have someone look at the calendar and push them off the plank before the deadline for filing. Where was Rove when the Ohio party imploded? If you have someone great like Ken Blackwell, instead of making him take the punishment for the sins of the party, hold him back to play fix it man for the base, and let someone else take the collapse. Or better, where was the national party when Gov. Taft was destroying Ohio?

Republicans can no longer tolerate misbehavior amongst ourselves -- one bad apple helps the dems argue that the barrel is rotten.

2. It's not enough to know you are right -- you have to keep your message out. How many conservatives kept yelling "Why isn't the White House talking about X?". The base was right, and Rove was wrong. No, the other party didn't have any ideas. But since all the public heard was how bad our ideas were, they didn't need any ideas. Bad news loses to no news every time.

If our candidates can't get ideas out because everyone drags them back to Iraq, perhaps we should have been better on Iraq. And Bush could have been more "big tent" in gathering a concensus on Iraq.

3. Maybe it is about ideology? For ages, we've had to swallow Lincoln Chafee's crap and letting moderates win lame campaigns. Tonight, the Dems found people who at least sound very conservative to run. Brad Ellsworth in Indiana sounds like a Reagan Democrat (remember them?). So Dems win with a conservative message and Republicans lose with no message. We lost the ideology war -- because they borrowed OUR ideology.

Lieberman won yesterday because he stayed true to his ideals -- perhaps in a way better than any of our candidates did, except for Santorum. In Santorum's case, sometimes you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

4. It is ok sometimes to tell the President no when he's your party. When he started sliding on conservative ideas (border security, etc), someone in Congress on the Republican side could have pushed back loudly.

We have to hold our own President to our ideals; we didn't in 2005-2006, and we paid for it.

Results:

Not much. The dems don't have numbers to pull out of Iraq, and last night was not a mandate to do so ("cut and run" actually does make most people uncomfortable as a slogan). They do have the numbers for investigations, and so a lot of administration personnel better get ready for a lot of meetings on the hill. And a few investigations (Foley, Foley, Foley) are probably deserved...

What should Bush do now?

Mr. President: if you want to be like Reagan, now is the time to show it. Invite the dem leaders down to the house for breakfast, and then invite the freshmen down for breakfast. The conservative dems and Lieberman represent opportunities, not failures. Guys like Brad Ellsworth start out more spiritually at home with our core beliefs than Pelosi or Reid's, and we should make them comfortable keeping their own leadership on their toes.

This will let the new dems earn a foundation as "bipartisan" without having to shill for their leadership, and in 2007, you MIGHT find yourself in a position to play Reagan to those democrats. Otherwise, just sit back and prepare the memoirs, because you won't accomplish anything for two years.

[dead]

One thing I took from it is that liberal milquetoast losers like Kean and Chafee can get shellacked just as thoroughly as conservatives in liberal states, so how about we act like a party that has some ideas and run bonafide conservatives next time.

[highball]

That's a sound reading of last night's debacle. I can't dispute your conclusions.

[Dems_R_Losers]

I think the whole notion of "compassionate conservatism" as a winning Republican agenda is dead too. To paraphrase Harry Trumen, if you give people a choice between a fake Democrat and a real Democrat, people will vote for the real one every time. It worked for Bush in 2000 only because it took away a line of attack from the Democrats. But they learned fast.

Republicans need to go back to what won two landslide elections in 1980 and 1984. Fiscal conservatism, use the veto pen, limit spending, nominate and fight for conservative judges, pursue a muscular foreign policy but also do not be afraid to negotiate with our enemies, just "trust but verify."

Hugh Hewitt said it best months ago when he laid out the winning agenda:

Cut the taxes. Confirm the judges. Close the borders. Win the war.

Republicans in Congress failed miserably on all these issues, while running a slimy shakedown operation with lobbyists and special interests, covering up for closet pedophiles, and trying to pork-barrel their way to victory. When you think about it this way, it's nearly a miracle that we only lost 30 House seats and not 50.

[The Electrician]

There are other lessons to be learned. For example, the Demo/Commies have treated political combat as if it were war (too bad they can't treat war as if it were war). For example, while DeLay certainly contributed to the loss of his seat, the heavy lifting was done by trumped-up charges brought by a corrupt prosecutor; Foley was tripped up by his own actions years in the past (I don't buy the blame-Hastert crowd), but the heavy lifting was done by the duo of a Demo/Commie activist and his fellow-travelers in the press; Weldon was sabotaged by a "leak" and possibly also by false charges orchestrated by Demo/Commie activists; Allen's inept campaigning did not help, but he was mainly sandbagged by inflammatory and false charges trumpeted by a "neutral political analyst" and a willingly hostile press, and so on. Not that Republicans didn't try - but the Demo/Commies tried harder, and their corrupt tactics seem to have (mostly) carried the day.

Demo/Commies claimed that the Republicans were the epitome of the culture of corruption, yet the Demo/Commies themselves are the most ugly and corrupt of the corrupt, and Republicans somehow couldn't capitalize on that. Maybe part of that is because a corrupt, liberal Demo/Commie electorate has no trouble sending thugs to Washington and keeping corrupt pols in power, while the Republican and/or conservative electorate instinctively recoils from filth. After all, Menendez is a thug, and he will be going back to Washington. Jefferson may be in trouble, but even if he's booted out, there's bound to be another thug waiting in the wings to replace him.. Ney's problems were basically due to self-inflicted wounds, but surely there are Demo/Commie dominoes who are poised to fall because of similar problems, in districts that can be competitive, but strangely none of that dirt seems to have leaked yet.

If the Senate falls, then, veto or not, it will be a pretty frightening couple of years until '08. But maybe that gives enough time for at least some Republicans to come to terms with the Demo/Commie take-no-prisoners approach and find a way to make it blow up in the Demo/Commies' own faces. Admittedly, some of the Demo/Commie success in this election came from running faux conservatives under the Demo/Commie party label, and unfortunately the take-home message for some Republicans will be to run RINOs next time, rather than learning from the emminently-more-successful heavy-handed Demo/Commie tactics...