Posted on 05/14/2008 6:43:50 PM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
Special election races for Congress have arguable value as bellwethers for upcoming general elections. Mostly these races get decided on local issues rather than national themes, as in Louisiana, where the Republicans ran a lousy candidate, considered the only person who could have lost the seat. They do demonstrate the strength of national party efforts, though, and when one party loses three special elections in districts previously thought safe, that sends a message — and rightly has Republicans worried about their chances in November:
A Democrat won the race for a GOP-held congressional seat in northern Mississippi yesterday, leaving the once-dominant House Republicans reeling from their third special-election defeat of the spring.
Travis Childers, a conservative Democrat who serves as Prentiss County chancery clerk, defeated Southaven Mayor Greg Davis by 54 percent to 46 percent in the race to represent Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District, which both parties considered a potential bellwether for the fall elections.
Democrats said the results prove that they are poised for another round of big gains in the November general elections, and they attacked the Republican strategy of tying Democrats to Sen. Barack Obama, the front-runner for the party’s presidential nomination, saying it had failed for a second time in 10 days in the Deep South. Democrat Don Cazayoux won the special election for a GOP-held House seat in Louisiana on May 3. …
The Childers victory was the latest setback suffered by Republicans, who began the string of defeats in special elections when Democrat Bill Foster claimed the seat of former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) in March.
President Bush won Mississippi’s 1st District by 25 percentage points four years ago, and Roger Wicker (R) won reelection with 66 percent of the vote in 2006. Wicker was appointed earlier this year to the Senate seat vacated by Trent Lott, who quit just one year into his six-year term to become a corporate lobbyist.
Why the panic? Even heavily Republican districts have given the GOP a slap in the face. Not even attempts to tie Democratic candidates to Barack Obama — unconvincing attempts at that — brought Republicans to the polls for the special elections. Democrats out-motivated, out-organized, and out-performed Republicans. And with a huge gap in fundraising between the DCCC and the NRCC, that appears to presage the general election in many more districts.
The lack of motivation comes from a disgust with a Republican Party that still hasn’t learned why it lost the majority in 2006. They lost those mid-term elections not because voters stopped supporting conservative principles, but because the House GOP stopped supporting conservative principles. Look at who won these special elections; they’re all Blue Dog Democrats, running in support of conservative themes such as gun rights. Now look at the Republicans who last held those seats, such as Hastert and Wicker — Republicans who spent other people’s money on waste and personal ambition.
Did the House GOP caucus take a hard line on pork-barrel spending or adopt policies to cut federal spending? No. Republican voters and conservative pundits begged the House and Senate caucuses to make dramatic breaks with the previous six years and adopt real conservative policies of fiscal responsibility and federalism. What did they do? They offered to stop earmarking only if Democrats followed suit, a deal everyone knew would never take place. Instead of appointing one single anti-pork activist to the House Appropriations Committee in Jeff Flake, they appointed Joe Bonner, a good Congressman but a well-known earmarker, and mostly because Flake’s anti-pork crusade irritates his colleagues.
John Boehner, the House Minority Leader, issued this warning:
The results in MS-01 should serve as a wake-up call to Republican candidates nationwide. As I’ve said before, this is a change election, and if we want Americans to vote for us we have to convince them that we can fix Washington. Our presidential nominee, Senator McCain, is an agent of change; candidates who hope to succeed must show that they’re willing and able to join McCain in a leading movement for reform. We need to stop wasteful Washington spending, fight and win the war on terror, and stop the largest tax increase in history. That is truly the change the American people deserve — and that is a message on which we can succeed.
Unfortunately, the Republicans have to take action to build credibility as reformers. Every step of the way between 2006 and now, they have chosen as a group to go in the opposite direction. The failure to appoint one single reformer to the lion’s den of wasteful spending shows that the GOP never learned its lesson from 2006, and now will suffer even greater consequences in 2008.
Get ready for the deluge. The next Republican leadership group had better learn the lesson of 2008 a lot more quickly than two years after the fact.
Update: It was Joe Bonner who got appointed to Appropriations and is an earmarker. Jack Kingston was pushing Flake for the job. My apologies to Rep. Kingston.
Ok. I’m eager to see it. Show me an example of anyone crawling out of the woodwork to extoll conservative principles....
Oh that’s right. Bob Barr just hopped up to save the day. Oops. No. He’s talking through Ron Pauls’ stinky socks claiming that isolationist cut-n-run libertarianism is what we need.
We couldn’t win in 1964 when the Young Conservative club was a big power on the Berkley campus.
You show me the upsurge of conservative values in kids that are going to bring us the next Reagan revolution! I’m eager to see them burn their Che Guevera shirts, revolt against Al Gore, etc.
You're right, there will be other elections and until then we are working on local and state level elections.
Best time to buy an umbrella is BEFORE the deluge begins.
Horses, barn doors, all that! =)
Having to listen to Republicans spew about stupid RINO cr#p will drive me crazy.
I just don't care anymore. Either way I'm paying more taxes, paying more for gas and put up with the talking heads telling me how we're in a "global" "mortage crisis/global warming/recession/depression/poisoned medicine/illegal alien invasion/black-brown-gay-transgender oppression due to racism/pandemic (insert virus)........ and of course the ever present israel against (insert 3rd world islamic sh#t hole country).
Screw it. I'm just going to hunker down and see how far the country goes down the toilet. I'll vote for conservatives in congress and locally.... as for President, who frickin cares? All three of the candidates are assh#les.
In fact I'd like it to be a tie and have the vote determined by the illegal alien voters that McCain/Clinton/Obamalamadingdong all want to import.
They don't believe that conservatives as we know them are the base.
That's the disconnect.
They won't continue to lose. They'll just run left faster and faster. Bill Clinton 1992 is the Rockefeller RINO model they think will work. And that's where they're heaaded.
Ronald Reagan made himself the one choice for conservatives in 1980 by running against President Ford in 1976 - luckily, since Pres. Ford was an unelected incumbent, there was no stigma of disloyalty held against him.
That combination won't happen again in a generation - or maybe ever; conservatives had better start getting used to living in the wilderness, because there's no sign of any white knights showing up for the 2012 election, either.
Agreed.
Not to mention his being bought and paid for, and stooging on behalf of...the worst foreign scum...the ethically-challenged French firm EADs. He went way, way, way out of his way to make sure that the DOD re-wrote those defense contract specs to favor outsourcing our defense production to EADs.
So complete is the incestuous relationship, that no fewer than three of their top lobbyists are on his campaign staff...taking "sabbaticals" from their day jobs. And they admit to spending $850,000 on lobbying...in just this last Fiscal Quarter. How much before? They also don't seem to count the millions they have put into their deal with Northrup Grumman to "front" for them on the deal. McCain appears to have sold out for cheap.
Meanwhile we get a plane which consumes 24% more fuel, flunked outright five of the eight critical survivability criteria...and oh yeah, costs $8 billion more to procure...before the bribed-off DOD started playing accounting games to conceal that fact.
I saw Ann Coulter on tv tonight, she said, lets start right here, "when juan mccain gets beat they will say it is because of the conservatives. They will never say it is because mccain is a liberal."
God bless you for fighting the good fight, and hard.
Life is just a long succession of damned unfair disasters punctuated by glimmers of hope.
Goldwater and Reagan were two of those...but the fact is, as Russell Kirk well described....the natural 'true' conservtive is a TERRIBLE politian, and is destined to be constantly on his heels from progressivism.
I devour books on Goldwater and that period like I relish reading Civil War accounts. Gosh as I read those things I find myself feeling abused like a Cubs fan. I can see where they almost win, but, of course, I know the tragedy happens over and over again every time.
Did we ever really have a good candidate? I didn’t care for any of them.
Maybe Hunter. However, anyone but Mclame.
When the crap boils up in the near future, I would just as soon have a candidate with a (D) to blame for all eternity and not a (R) following their name.
I understand what you’re saying just let me add this. If senator X is elected and he goes left, he’ll be voted out next term election and then senator Y can come in and clean up the mess X left in his wake. Eventually that barn door will get closed and hopefully the libs will be stopped from entering it adding more misery to our country.
It’s even worse than you say. Reagan was a big player in politics before 1960...and he was a star at Goldwater’s nomination I believe.
It takes a long time for a giant to grow.
And I don’t even see any beanstalks right now, much less budding giants.
The problem is we don't have anywhere to go.
The seeds are being planted with this election. Many conservatives are just now coming to terms with the fact that we are not important to the Republican party.
In hindsight, I think we made a mistake in tying our future to any political party.
You are not going to find and produce that talent in six months.
That’s kind of the whole point, we need to get cracking at developing conservative base politicians, because they aren’t going to come out of thin air.
We used to call them "Bob Michel" republicans, after a GOP senator who spent a whole long career as minority leader and never so much as caused a ripple while the 'rats did whatever they pleased. But he was a happy healthy and wealthy man, who obviously enjoyed his dhimmi status. No doubt he had many good friends among the 'rat delegation.
I'm afraid RINOs are the party. Big spending, self agrandizing, power hungry, socialists are the Republican party. They have become the true Republicans, and one of their kind will carry the Republican banner in the next presidential election. It has become silly to call liberal Republicans RINO's when they are, in fact, the heart of the Republican party.
A complete do-nothing with no agenda, no leadership value, no idea what the hell is going on out here. It's true, the bosses of the GOP like Boehner either don't get it, or get it but don't care.
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