Posted on 12/02/2004 11:12:58 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
I'm struck by the irony of the liberal punditry warning Republicans not to interpret their sweeping victories as a mandate because such "arrogance" could lead to a voter backlash.
In the very process of obsessing over what Republicans might do and become in the future, liberals are blinding themselves to what they have already done and become. They are lecturing Republicans about copping an arrogant attitude when they are so deeply steeped in one themselves they can't accurately interpret their own reflection in the election mirror.
A recent Chicago Tribune headline reads: "Beware perils of overreaching, GOP is warned. Analysts say agenda could backfire." The article quotes Illinois Democratic Congressman and former Clinton insider Rahm Emanuel as saying, "If you don't think you are going to be accountable and there are no consequences for what you do, it'll lead to overreaching."
And what do they mean by "overreaching"? Merely trying to implement their agenda. According to the article, "Political analysts warn that overly aggressive efforts to push a conservative agenda could leave Bush and his allies vulnerable to charges of political overreaching, and ultimately cause a voter backlash. … Already Democrats are saying that Republicans are emphasizing an ideological rather than a middle-of-the-road approach to governing."
Similarly, Los Angeles Times columnist Ronald Brownstein writes: "The larger issue in this dispute [over the intelligence restructuring bill] is whether Bush wants to reach out to all Americans, or just court those at the core of his political coalition."
The objective fact is that President Bush and Republicans won decisively. The lesson most reasonable people would take from such a victory is not that they were doing something wrong and they better back off from it. While I agree that winners shouldn't become highhanded, neither should they act like losers.
Why should President Bush voluntarily surrender his just-affirmed political capital by capitulating to the demands of Democrats? Wouldn't that be as much of a slap in the face to voters, who just endorsed his agenda, as becoming cocky?
According to this liberal logic, Republicans should act like losers when they lose and act like losers when they win. President Bush, having run on an agenda of staying the course in Iraq, making his tax cuts permanent, and injecting a measure of private ownership in the Social Security system, should abandon all three goals.
I'm not exaggerating. The Chicago Tribune article quotes a Rutgers political science professor as saying, "In pressing for partial Social Security privatization and overhauling the tax system, Bush is taking a major risk. These are controversial matters that might drive some Republicans to become Democrats."
Such brilliance. It's like saying Republicans should forfeit their agenda now or else they might have to in the future. They should give up a bird in the hand for none in the bush. Either way, no conservative agenda. How convenient for liberals.
For a while I thought some liberals were beginning to grasp that for now, at least, they are the ones who are out of step with the American people; they are the ones who ought to be engaging in self-evaluation rather than projecting their losses onto Republicans.
But they still don't get it. They can't get past the political gamesmanship of it all -- an indelible stain on their psyche from the Clinton years. In their mind's eye the election results were all about political strategy and packaging rather than the merits of the issues -- about form over substance.
Outgoing Senator John Breaux, for example, attributed the Republicans' victories to their superior strategy. "If you're on the wrong side of guns, gays and God, then you're not in the center."
Isn't it a rank form of patronizing to treat the voters as the programmed robots of Karl Rove rather than mostly intelligent creatures with independent views who presently align more closely with the Republican message?
But this concept doesn't compute with the liberal elites whose conceit prevents them from considering the possibility that voters, if exposed to their naked ideas, will flat out reject them.
Happily, the liberals' failure to come to terms with their own predicament is leading them to put all their future hopes on Republicans imploding rather than making the necessary adjustments to make their own message more palatable, in substance not just appearance, to the voters.
I'm not one who believes the election is definitive proof of a major voter realignment, but if liberals continue to delude themselves by diagnosing Republicans as the ones who are arrogant rather than themselves, who knows what the future holds?
Hard to argue with the profound statement " you didn't win we lost". Wonder how different thing would have been if the Republicans would have won.
Perhaps we need to change election's rule of the game: a candidate has to campaign for (and promise to implement) the other candidate's agenda...
The title of this thread motivated me to grab my last bottle of Jack Daniels, pull off the cap, and take a giant swig of booze.
President Bush did not get more votes, Kerry got less. He did not lose.
The "arrogance" comes from the rat party.
They STILL don't get it!
GOOD!
I want them DEEP in the tar-pits BEFORE they realize that it's too late!
Makes my life SOOOOO much easier!
60 million votes says the pubblies won. COnvincingly.
That margin is likely to expand once the voters wriggle free from the last tentacles of the dying democrat media.
B.S.!
Declaring the pledge of allegiance unconstitutional, banning the declaration of independence in certain schools, replacing "Christmas" with "holiday season," calling the president Hitler, taking the side of France and the corrupt U.N., etc. into infinity.
Those are just a few of the issues that have already driven many Democrats to the Republican side. I think these crazy newspaper nerds should have the tumor in their brains checked, maybe it has grown even larger since the last election.
democrats = solipsists
They Still Don't Get It. But they are About to!!
A note to the left:
Fine. We didn't win. You lost.
That means you have even less than a mandate than we do.
That means you are more out of line with the American people than we are.
That means that a change is needed in your future even more than would otherwise be the case.
Why not try to avoid spitting on the people you need the support of in the future? We don't need a mandate to continue advocating that which is already there. Republicans have not "created" new values that they decided to foist on an unsuspecting public - we've stood by what the people have believed all along.
Until the Democratic Party gets that, they will continue to lose.
"They can't get past the political gamesmanship of it all -- an indelible stain on their psyche from the Clinton years"
Is it just me, or is it getting more and more difficult to refer to Clinton without the word stain appearing?
I knew it! The Red Sox didn't win, the Yankees lost!
You didn't win, we lost.
Um, OK.
You can't fire me, I quit!
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.