Post Mortem Why Republicans got shellacked in the midterms

the weekly standard ^ | 11/08/2006 9:00:00 AM | Fred Barnes

[flixxx]

THIS ONE IS PRETTY EASY TO EXPLAIN. Republicans lost the House and probably the Senate because of Iraq, corruption, and a record of taking up big issues and then doing nothing on them. Of these, the war was by far the biggest factor. Unpopular wars trump good economies and everything else. President Truman learned this in 1952, as did President Johnson in 1968. Now, it was President Bush's turn, and since his name wasn't on the ballot, his party took the hit.

[Gen-X-Dad]

Here is my take, the MSM successfully worked with the DNC to take multiple scalps. I believe there is a long list of Republicans that bit the dust from non-stop MSM focus on a variety of behaviors from saying 'macaca' to marital infidelity. You have to give them credit, they were able to convince the Republican base to stay home, and get the swing voters to whack-a-mole the key races. Delay and Foley were both rolled. I am quite impressed that they essentially pulled every one of their stunts off this time.

The Republican's are essentially handicapped every race thanks to the MSM cheerleading and sniping for the Dems. Will this be the case 2 years from now? Will the alternative media be capable of reaching as many people as the MSM in 2 years? If not, it will be a long slog to overcome this highly efficient machine.

My predictions are that Bush will be boxed in and starved out by the Dem congress and MSM. He will eventually capitulate to them on Iraq, and he will gladly hand them amnesty on illegals. The next supreme will be his appointment but they will bless it (think O'conner). The only X-factor on impeachment proceedings (or endless sniping of the President in congress) is if the new conservative Dems refuse to toe the party line. If they got in by saying they wouldn't impeach and flip-flop, will it matter to their voters with the MSM covering for them? The Dems are salivating for a Watergate pay-back-for-Clinton moment. We could certainly see a repeat of the early 70's with Bush / Iraq replacing Nixon / Vietnam. And unlike Clinton, the MSM dogs of war will be running full bore on taking out Bush.

I will also predict that electronic voting irregularities and the accompanying lawyers will vanish like mist now that the Dems won. On a positive note we won't have to go through the repeat of seeing them flip Lincoln Chafee (won't miss him) like they did Jeffords. It is definitely going to be an entertaining 2 years. The Republicans better come up with something fast or we may all be seeing Hillary crowned in 2008.

[kabar]

Sad to say, Bush is really a lightweight. He's performed much better than any Demonrat, but he is no Churchill, which is what we need.

I don't buy the Bush is a lightweight business, but I agree that he has been unable to articulate his vision. If Bush had the eloquence of a Tony Blair, he could have brought the American public along. Interestingly, even Blair had problems convincing the British public and the Parliament that this was the correct course of action. Bush had 9/11, which should have been enough.

The MSM/Dems and the late night comics like to portray Bush as a dunce. Nevermind that he has degrees from Yale and Harvard and flew high performance combat aircraft. Of course, Reagan was portrayed the same way, an affable dunce.

[jocon307]

Well, without reading the whole thing (at work, no time) let me just say that there is a big difference between the Korean War, the Vietnam War and now. The difference being neither the Koreans nor the Vietnamese were about to come over here and kill us. That's just not true of the Islamofacists.

But hey, to borrow a line from Micheal Moore, the next time NYC gets hit, at least they'll deserve it. And I was born and raised there.

[spinestein]

Unless I actually become a politician (and my background and temperament makes it unlikely that will happen) the only route I have available to me to change government for the better as I see it is to continue to do what I've been doing ever since the late eighties. Try to convince as many people as possible to vote for the candidates I think will implement the ideas I believe in. I typically spend more than ten hours a week engaged in some aspect of political activism, and that's tough to do for a person who has a full time and a part time job, family, and other activities I find important, but I think it's worth the continuous effort to try to effect real political change by influencing as many people as possible week after week, and year after year, and I'm not going to stop anytime soon. On the other hand, if I thought that it was pointless because it was foreordained that a bunch of socialist Democrats were going to control the government for the next ten or twenty years then I'd probably take up gardening instead, but I don't. :^)

[kabar]

Hayworth lost because of Iraq, like every other Republican. I'm so tired of these Weekly Standard bums.

His defense of our Iraq policy played a part, but so did his visible stance [including his book] on illegal immigration. Reps who wanted security first were portrayed as racists. It depends on your district as to how the illegal immigration stance played. It worked for Bilbray but not Hayworth in Maricopa County or Graf near Tucson. Their opponents said they favored the McCain/WH approach, i.e., comprehensive immigration reform. JD and Graf were hung out to dry.

[TET1968]

My thoughts:
Reciprocity.
Iraqi special op teams should be sent to Baltimore and Washington DC for their training.

Taxes
Tax Payer dollars earmarked to fund abortion, pro choice groups and embryo stem cell research should be diverted to a National movement committed to replacing faulty bull shit meters in close to half of our country's U.S. Citizens.

Law Suits

Class action test case civil law suits should be filed against Time Warner and the New York Times for aiding and abetting the enemy in time of war. Damages sought for the families of the fallen and wounded would have no cap.
During a time of war, any U.S. media outlet that aids and abets the enemy will be fined an amount equal to their book value times three.

Desecrating an American flag should be considered what it is...a hate crime.

If you slug a Capital police officer, you should be forced to have your urine tested before they throw you in jail.

If the Fed's find bribe money in your freezer you should serve jail time in Alaska...immediately.

During a time of war, if you are an elected official and you aid and abet the enemy , you should be shot.

Oliver Stone, John Kerry, Bob Kerry, Murtha and their ilk should be tried for treason and or war crimes.

[hellbender]

I don't mean or think that Bush is stupid. His mentality is that of his father. Neither had any killer instinct, but relied on insider connections and personal loyalties to run things. Their mindset is inside-the-Beltway establishment thinking. They do not have strong conservative principles, and fail to realize that people are ruled by ideas and passions. The Republican Congressional leadership is no better. I've never been able to understand why Rove was considered a genius. Winning elections for a Republican in Texas doesn't take that much skill. These guys almost lost to treacherous fools like Gore and Kerry. Kerry should have been crushed and investigated for treason. Sandy Burglar should never have been given a wrist-slap and allowed back into public life. We are at war, and our survival is at stake. Open borders, free drugs for wealthy seniors, and free trade with our mortal enemy China are Bush's answers.

[kabar]

I have also participated in the political process as a volunteer, writing letters to the editor, etc. I am a retired bureaucrat who worked in the USG for 36 years as a naval officer [8 years] and a diplomat [28 years]. I am very concerned about the future of our country and the impact a Dem controlled government will have on me and my family. We are in for a long, hard struggle and I am under no illusions that we will get back the House any time soon. I will certainly not sit back and tend to my own garden while the country is going to hell in a handbasket.

[fortheDeclaration]

No Republican beat a sitting Democrat in the House.

That is what is the most disturbing fact.

It shows a very choice of candidates and leadership on the part of the RNC.

If anyone should have won it should have been her.

[kabar]

The biggest problem Reps have is learning how to exercise power. They just couldn't get used to being in the majority after being in the minority so long. It is like tethering a dog to a pole with a chain for a long time. You can take the chain off, but the dog won't stray from the pole any further than the length of the chain.

[stacytec]

"I've never been able to understand why Rove was considered a genius."

Carl took campaign data mining to a whole new level. If there was a hot button to be pushed in a locality, he could find it.

[GeorgefromGeorgia]

Don't forget that a large group of Republicans in the House (over 70 members) proposed a balanced budget with very specific programs to be cut or canceled. Also, in the Senate, people like Tom Coburn let the fight to cut pork barrel spending. We have a significant number of statesman like elected people in Congress, however, we need MORE like them.

[AndrewC]

THIS ONE IS PRETTY EASY TO EXPLAIN. Republicans lost the House and probably the Senate because of Iraq, corruption, and a record of taking up big issues and then doing nothing on them.

It's even easier than that. We looked too much like Democrats.

As for the war, Bush made the same mistake his father did. It irritated me(I would like to use stronger language, but...) in 1990, 1991, and again in 1993. When you go to war, you must declare war, so the weasels cannot easily stab you in the back. If we had declared war in 1990, it would have been much easier to have ignored Powell and destroyed the Republican Guard when they should have been destroyed. That would have prevented what we have now.

[hellbender]

Yes, there are some great people there...or were. But 70 is less than 1/3 of the Republican contingent before the election. The leadership consisted of that shambling, fat, do-nothing hack Hastert. In the Senate, we had the wimpy Frist, his thinking probably dominated by Presidential ambitions. The times demand greatness, and what we got was weakness and awe-inspiring mediocrity.

[AndrewC]

1991=2001
1993=2003


I guess I can't see straight because of the irritation.

[John Lenin]

Bush let us down. If he would have treated the last two months of the election like he treated the last 10 days we would have won this election. He couldn't sell the war and he couldn't sell the great economy and the fact that we have not been attacked since 2001. Also Bill Frist was a total disaster as Majority leader, we deserved to lose.

[spinestein]

I assumed as much about your devotion, and that describes a good many people here. My first post to you was sort of sarcastic and perhaps a little rude, but I genuinely noticed a huge amount of discouragement and pessimism in your statements and I'm horrified at the thought of people giving up in disgust and leaving the Democrats to perpetrate their version of socialism on America relatively unopposed.

We "conservatives" didn't really have much to vote FOR yesterday in too many races and had to resort to voting AGAINST the democrats something the left is comfortable doing, but which we aren't very good at. I hope a similar choice is not presented to us again in 08.

[Wombat101]

Since I have now been formally nominated as Chief Republican Strategist (/sarc), let me lay out a fundamental truth seems to have eluded the current crop of Republican politicians:

* The FIRST rule of trial lawyers, 'community activists', stockbrokers and, alas, politicians, it that the truth does not always matter. What matters is PERCEPTION. Perhaps truth only matters, at normal times, to about 1 in 4 people (arguably 1 in 6).

However, when you couple a negative truth with a negative perception, you have signed your own death warrant.

What did the republican majority, truthfully, accomplish in the last six years? Not much, unless you count a midnight resolution to save a brain dead woman from mercy killing (trampling all over the 'conservative value' of marital rights and responsibilities in the process), and instituting tax cuts that had an expiration date attached to them. The rest of the time they spent spending our tax money like drunken sailors on shore leave.The perception: Republicans only care about taxes and kow-towing to the right-to-life wing of the party. Fiscal responsibility and common sense are not to be found int he Republican party. Negative truth coupled with a negative perception -- Strike one.

Where the republicans HAD the opportunity to put forward a positive perception (immigration, disaster relief, entitlement reform are the three most visible incidents), they waffled or collapsed. Perception; they were not serious (for a variety of reasons) about doing anything about these issues. The Republican party is, in effect, fiddling while Rome burns. Negative truth coupled with a negative perception --- Strike two.

Then we come to the war. The truth is that 'victory' in this war will not be measured by body bags, nor with statistics indicating a lessing of terrorist attacks in Baghdad. It was not going to be magically won with elections which don't amount to a hill of beans when the necessary preconditions for democracy do not exist. The truth is that 'stay the course' was not an adequate explanation of what the war goals are. Perception; there are no war goals, there is no way of measuring success, the people in charge don't have anything in their bag of tricks to 'fix' Iraq and bring our people home.

The truth is that the other side doesn't have any ideas on how to fix it either, but this is one of those instances where truth doesn't matter.

The truth is that Donald Rumsfeld, whatever the official explanation, has been fired, as punishment for the lost election, in large part because he helped set the stage for it. The perception; Bush knew Rumsfeld should have gone a year ago, but needed an electoral loss to face the reality. He is not living on the same planet the rest of us are, and his loyalty is to a select group of his father's cronies, and not the rest of us. The Republicans have no plan to finish up in Iraq, no leadership and no answers. Negative truth coupled with a negative perception --- Strike three.

It a;; well and good to have truth on your side, just remember it only has a limited application. In those rare occasions when it does matter to the greater mass of the cattle out there in TV-land, you had better be able to couple positive truths with positive perceptions, or you're dead.

[Boiling point]

My concern is , after amnesty for the parasitic infiltrators is passed and signed by the president, will it be possible for a President Tancrado to repeal it in 08? You can't take amnesty back!

[The Worthless Miracle]

Started down? Take a close look at what the liberals support... it's ALL socialist. Weaken the military so other nations can achieve parity... control the educational process... take from the wealthy to support the working class... abandon the notion of property rights... abandon Constitutional rights by loading the courts with activist judges... and on and on and on."

Yeah - that is true, I just mean that people in America seem to be accepting it more than in the past... I honestly don't understand how people could put pelosi in power unless they just don't know her or what she really stands for.