Posted on 11/09/2002 4:37:04 PM PST by knighthawk
WASHINGTON - Five times as many registered Democrats as Republicans live in Maryland, yet the latest -- please God, let it be the last -- champion of the Kennedy clan went down to crushing defeat in the race for governor on Tuesday. In Massachusetts, another supposed liberal stronghold, the Republicans enjoyed a similarly comfortable gubernatorial upset. The picture was replicated across the U.S. political landscape.
The Globe and Mail's columnist, Marcus Gee, would have you believe that Tuesday's Republican roll-up constituted a modest victory, but he must be the only observer of the American political scene who does.
The truth is that all across the U.S. electoral map, the right-of-centre party won seats where on paper -- except the most important paper, which is the ballot -- they were outnumbered.
Republicans took 52.8% of the aggregate two party vote in governors' races, 52.2% in Senate races and 53.4% in races for the House of Representatives.
How did they manage it? How come hordes of thitherto inactive and unobserved conservatives emerge on Election Day to cast votes for the right-of-center party?
It is not that they were in hiding, deliberately concealing their politics; rather, it is that conservatives as a class do not define themselves in political terms.
The old liberal saw that everything is political means left-wingers think politics is what life is for. Conservatives don't. Most mildly conservative Americans -- by whom I mean the majority of its citizens -- do not wear their political opinions on their sleeves. They do not need to be politically active to feel authenticated or alive.
There are, of course, conservative ideologues and political junkies, but they are exceptions who prove the rule that conservatives generally think life and politics overlap only at the margins. The desire to be free of government intrusion is a conservative one, and with it comes a desire to be free of politicians and politics.
Small c conservatives generally prefer to dwell on the rest of their lives -- on family, sport, home, finances etc. Election Day is the only time when the faint trace of ideological conviction detectable in the pattern and preoccupations of their daily existence actually resolves itself into an expressed political opinion.
And it is therefore also the day on which they subscribe, literally, to the wonderful maxim of Chris Patten, the old Tory party chairman in Britain and now a commissioner in Brussels, who once said: "The facts of life are conservative."
What are the facts of life in modern America? They are that the country is at war with a remorseless and evil enemy that must be crushed without equivocation or delay. People driving children to school, shopping for groceries, traveling to the office, attending a football game, do not want leaders who futz about the protection of the country and its citizens -- as the Democrats did.
They want to feel safe and they demand leadership with the clarity to see what is needed and the gumption to attempt it.
It's nearly 20 years since Irving Kristol defined a neo-conservative as "a liberal who has been mugged by reality." Well, 14 months ago, the liberal daydream that U.S. security could be bought at a discount was mugged by the reality of Islamofacism. On that day, the country became neo-conservative or, to put it less ideologically and more accurately, it became newly conservative.
And Mr. Bush is seen as the right man for new circumstances. In the aftermath of 9-11, the scales fell from the eyes of ordinary Americans. In the unaccustomed light left by the fallen twin towers they saw Bill Clinton's security policy in all its reckless superficiality. The advent of terrorist war against democratic civilization has destroyed the facile delusion that bouncing desert rubble in acts of military petulance amounts to genuine defence. Tuesday's majority were citizens who know the country needs a leader willing to put the matter plainly, as in: "I'm not going to fire a two million dollar missile at a ten dollar empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. I'm going to be decisive."
Mr. Bush is a conservative in the same way that the Republican majority across America is. Sure, he's the scion of a political family, but he only became a politician in his mid-40s. It was not his life. His political actions, similarly, are guided by circumstance and are taken because necessary, not because political action per se is the oxygen he breathes.
Because he is not an ideologue, Mr. Bush is unlikely overreach, so he won't flame out in the heat of his own success, as Newt Gingrich did. He has political convictions, but that is different. He came to his deep conservatism the way Ronald Reagan, a one-time Democrat, did, and the way the U.S. electorate did this week -- because the facts of life pointed them that way.
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And these are the most pathetic people I know. |
Sitting for hours on end in front of a computer screen, Irish whiskey and fine cigar in hand, posting comments to political websites, uploading unflattering pictures of tofu-munching Democrats and making smartass observations about self-centered, dimwitted and laughable leftists and liberals is hardly a productive way to spend one's down time.
I'm just grateful I'm not one of these pathetic slobs.
A major typo on this portion of the article, but you get the message. On the other hand, lib/dems don't get this message and want everyone to fear Bush, think he is a right-wing freak, and one who is always overreaching in his bloodthirst. They'll just never get it that there never really was a 'man from Hope'....but there is a real 'man from Midland'......
I wished I knew how to thank you, but words fail me...
His dad isn't an ideologue and he sure didn't overreach, but he flamed out nonetheless.
When will conservatives learn not to count their burgers before they're built? There's no guarantee we'll be in charge of anything in two years.
Feel the same way, brother.
Got another one of those stogies? Pass the decanter this way, please.
I love this publication. Too bad about their military, though...
Actually, Democrats outnumber Republicans in Maryland by a little less than 2 to 1 (according to the Maryland Board of Elections web site.)
Even 2 to 1 makes Ehrlich's victory impressive, but why is it that the press can't get even the most basic facts right?
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