Bayh is blowing his Presidential asperations by being obstructionistic against judges.
Posted on 04/27/2005 3:52:33 PM PDT by SDGOP
Bayh is blowing his Presidential asperations by being obstructionistic against judges.
In all honesty while obstructionism of judges bothers me, i dont think its the sole issue that gets people unelected. Just obstructing an agenda in general (ie Daschle) gets you ejected by the voters. But keep in mind Daschle is in a very red state. Granted Bayh is in a very red state too, but he wont be running against bush. With the nuclear option passing he might just vote for bush judges since he knows they'll pass anyway. However there is also the problem of appealing to his wacko base.
One thing to keep in mind is that there is a good chunk of this country who likes the idea of obstructing bush's judges as wrong as it is.
15% to 20% of any large population can usually be expected to be radical, but that isn't the group that wins elections (though it *can* be the group that makes the most noise).
I think its probably higher than that... most americans see the court as a political object and it has become one. Im betting that a good 30-40% of the voters want to see bush's judges go down in flames. Lets remember while our ideas do win and are better on their merits, people still vote against us. As scary as it is, about 58-59?(forget the actual number) people voted for kerry.
The 48% or so who voted for JFK weren't all radicals.
Most Americans fall in the middle of the political spectrum. Republicans go too far Right, the middle votes for Dems. Dems go to far Left, the middle votes for Pubbies.
But the hardcore Right and the hardcore Left vote the Party line, or at least have Party line sentiments, year in and year out. It's roughly even at about 15% to 20% for both sides. At most, that's a partisan 40% of the population, with the middle 60% being the elephant in the living room.
That's the 60% that Dems can't just admit that a Dem dream is to have abortion on demand, guns banned worldwide, and Kyoto implemented...just as Pubbies can't tell that 60% that we're going to end public schools, social security, and nuke Iran.
Because 60+ percent of American voters are non-radical (neither Left nor Right), both major political Parties have to behave, listen, and not cause a stampede.
Former Senator Daschle missed that above axiom, to the detriment of his political career. So did Next Gingrinch. Both of those two powerful politicians, one Left and the other Right, lost elections on their home turf because of the 60+ percent of the American middle.
What the 60% middle wants is general harmony...enough so that the headlines and the nightly news don't go scaring them. Put another way, they want to work, play, and live their lives without thinking about politics. They've got real lives to live, and once you start intruding on their lives by letting political problems encroach into the daily world of the middle 60%, you are going to see a voting stampede that can knock the most entrenched, powerful politicians out of office (e.g. Tower, Nixon, Gore).
So the more press coverage and air time that judicial obstructionists get, the sooner you'll have a stampede against those problem-making politicians.
This could be anything from a slow boil like what knocked Southern Democrat segregationists out of office, or a quick lightening strike such as what knocked Republican opponents of the New Deal out of office.
Both major Parties have gotten burned over time by awakening the slumbering 60% of the American middle. And if you look closely and carefully, you will notice that the losing Party in each case was doing strikingly similar things (i.e. think about what the Republicans were doing in the Senate to block the New Deal, as well as what the Southern Democrats were doing in the Senate to block civil rights legislation).
Those common denominators may very well serve as a road map for who will lose in the future, too. So look carefully.
Keep in mind as well that Karl Rove knows all of the above full well, too. It's no accident that we've been deliberately picking fights with Senate Democrats (e.g. Bolton, Rice, Judges), and it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what behavior we are deliberately provoking from the Dems, and why.
The beauty of it is that the Dems are so emotionally driven that we know that they'll take the bait.
While i do agree there is a good chunk that is the middle i dont think its 60%. In most polls the self identified conservatives are about 33% the self identified liberals are around 10-12% and most everyone else describes themselves as moderate. I dont really buy into the notion that the other 55% of this country is moderate because there are alot of people who won't admit there one way or another when a pollster calls. its probably more like 20% are moderate and the rest lean more to left or the right. I'd put party loyalists at about 38-40% each (since this seems to be about as low as either party has dropped in years, no matter how crappy the candidate). For us 37% with GWHB and for democrats Carter and Mondale at 41%.
While i do agree Karl rove is a great strategist, i think he messed up up until election time because he was trying to pick off democrat voters on liberal issues( Campaign Finance Reform, Medicare, Education Reform) issues that republican voters arent really fond of(well maybye education reform but not by increasing spending like bush has). There idea was that in hopes of pulling a few members of the democrat coalition you can destroy them for decades to come. If you could pull a few % from each of the democrat constituencies (i think medicare being the big one) it puts democrats at a very large disadvatnage. Problem is that no matter what bush did democrats just threw it back in his face and thats why we saw the shift to the right during campaign season.
Notice that our biggest victories have always been when there is a clear choice between conservatism vs liberalism, and that is because when you properly explain our values vs theirs we will win big(think the contract with america, most of those ideas.. core republican beliefs all polled in the 80% range). Look at the biggest landslides 1980, 1984 and 1988. Granted GHWB wasnt as conservative as could be but he was clearly running against a liberal opponent and did appear conservative and all three won. When we stray from this and appear moderate to try to get these swing voters we lose.
I think that the reason we are more likely to get landslides than democrats(i'm talking 400+ Ev's here) is because there are a good chunk of democrats who are socially liberal/economically conservative and economcially liberal/socially conservative who don't percieve their party to really be helping them on their issues. Like if both parties have the same economic polcies (or so it seems) the socially conservative democrats tend to vote for the republican because they like his values, or if a socially liberal voter but likes tax cuts/small government/etc. sees a sharp contrast in the economic policies of the two candidates they shift to the right. Hence the Reagan Democrats.
Repubs on the other hand arent the kind whod shift and vote for a democrat, but are more likely just to sit home(the hard core economic conservatives(GHWB '92) or social conservatives irked about something (Bob Dole and George w Bush in their first elections(and only in dole's case...).
I think this is why its disasterous to put up a RINO in '08 ala mccain or rudy. Putting them up will have enough of the repubs sitting at home come november '08 that it will let hillary or bayh or whoever it is slip in.
Here's my synopsis of Evan Bayh's political career, take a look at it in about 6 years and I bet it will mirror what will have happened to Bayh:
Evan Bayh 1955-, Indiana Governor and U.S. Senator who epitomized the clueless stupid stereotypical Middle-America Hoosier Democrat with his "aweshucks" attitude at home and his "people's republic" approach in Washington failed to be re-elected to his U.S. Senate seat after a closely contested campaign against (insert any Hoosier GOP official here with 10M$+). Pundits believe that the Indiana Populus finally figured out that Bayh was a de-facto Marxist and did not represent their views after he went way to the left in a very transparent fashion to get the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008. Senator Bayh plans to join his father's law practice in Washington D.C. and to spend more time preparing his boys to oust the Homer Capeharts of the 2030's.
20% hardcore Right + 60% Middle = 80%.
That other 20% is hardcore Left, and they'll *never* leave their home Party. Even after 9/11, the polls showed that 13% of Americans wouldn't support President Bush. That's the hardcore of the hardcore. You'll never reach them.
But you *can* reach all of the 60% Middle. Reagan did it. FDR did it. The Contract With America did it. Both the Left and the Right can reach them.
That 60% in the Middle can also stampede on its own, giving one side (i.e. Right or Left) the appearance of massive ideological victory at the expense of the other side. Some stampede's are fast (e.g. New Deal), while others are slow (e.g. Abolitionism).
But because of our American system of politics, and because of our 60+ percent Middle, the political fight is for the Center.
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