Posted on 11/05/2004 5:41:14 PM PST by writer33
George Bush trusted Carl Rove to have the right campaign strategy. Using Rove's strategy, Bush/Cheney and the Republicans won what will prove to be an epic victory. The American people have elected a professed conservative President and gave him a Republican House with a functional Republican majority in the Senate. Voters had a clear choice in this election between conservatism and liberalism. More than fifty-eight million Americans made a loud clear choice. The awakening has begun. America has turned the corner.
John Kerry told Democrats that this would be the most important election in their lifetimes. What was the issue or new initiative to which Kerry and the Democrats attached such importance? What change did the Democrats want to make that made this such an important election in their eyes? Payback to Bush for the 2000 election motivated some Democrats, but revenge was not what made this the most important election to Democrats in their lifetimes. What made this a defining election of such importance to Democrats is what Democrats hoped could not possibly be true. Democrats were hoping that Americans still had not recognized the truth that government doesn't have all the answers. Democrats' worst nightmares have materialized. Not only have most Americans recognized that government doesn't have all answers, an ever growing number of Americans are realizing that none of the government's answers are nearly as good as those that any American can provide for themselves. Democrats know that if Americans don't need government to make decisions to run their lives, then Americans don't need Democrats at all.
Democrats called it a pivotal election. Some Democrats were only wondering how long it would take them to get their power back, but the angst shown by most Democrats suggests that they recognized that America was reaching the turning point. "Men, it has been well said, think in herds. It will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." – Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1841.
The concession speeches of Kerry and Edwards indicate that it is going to take some time before Democrats recognize and begin to deal with the fact that Americans have not only passed that turning point, but that Americans are conservative and ready to move on. My guess is that Democrats are going to have trouble adjusting to the fact that a majority of Americans have for the first time convincingly rejected the Democratic Party's point of view. This will be a completely different perspective for them from what they believed to be a temporary period as a minority party in Congress.
The acceptance speeches of Bush and Cheney were equally telling. Before Democrats understand that Vice President Cheney is correct about having not just a Republican, but more correctly a conservative mandate, the Democrats are going to need to understand what Carl Rove came to understand about the 2000 election and the pattern portrayed by every election since 1980. Give the American people a clear choice between a principled conservative candidate and a liberal Democrat and they elect the conservative. When the Democrat or the media can successfully confuse the voters about which candidate is the conservative, the outcome is unpredictable. Conversely, when the Republican tries to appeal to "moderate" or Democratic voters, the outcome becomes uncertain. As the "compassionate" conservative reaching across the aisle to Democratic voters in 2000, Bush lost the popular vote and barely won the electoral vote in Florida. With the outcome for re-election uncertain in 2004, Rove convinced Bush to target the campaign to his conservative base. Rove learned the message of Ronald Reagan's two landslide victories and the message of the Contract with America on the 1994 Congressional elections. Between the first Bush's 1992 loss, Dole's defeat and the dribbling erosion of the congressional majorities in the absence of a conservative platform, the Republican Party has finally gotten the message that conservative voters have been sending in every election since 1960.
Now that Bush has retained the White House and a comfortable majority in the Senate, Rehnquist will probably retire almost immediately. It will be interesting to see if Bush tests Senate Democrats by first elevating Scalia to Chief Justice to see how quickly they confirm Scalia as chief Justice before actually filling the vacancy on the Court. Elevating Scalia would be something to establish a bipartisanship on something that Democrats should not be gracefully able to refuse or want to spend any remaining political capital they may have left when bigger battles could be ahead shortly.
President Bush can be expected to use the second inaugural address and the State of the Union to more clearly define his agenda for the next four years. Republicans can almost certainly be expected to make an effort to end the Estate Tax quickly and permanently. The first government institution to die should be the IRS with either the Flat Tax, the Fair Tax or a combination of both. President Bush has also stated his desire to partially privatize Social Security. Incrementalism, privatizing by taking baby steps (bs), is not the conservative or the right approach. When something is unconstitutional, irrational, and inevitably headed for bankruptcy, it should be ended as quickly and as painlessly as possible. Bush and the Republicans should appoint a private commission, privately chaired, but with bipartisan Congressional representation to study the Cato plans for voluntary complete privatization using the Chilean model and zero coupon bonds. This group should hold open meetings posted to a public website and return a recommendation to Congress. The models the commission uses should be based on Social Security alone without any other consideration regarding the federal budget or any other federal program. The economic models should be based on Social Security as a completely independent stand alone program. The goal should be that every American adult (age to be commission defined) gets to decide for themselves with a once in a lifetime choice of whether they want to opt in or opt out and every American should receive whatever benefit to which they are entitled by current law. All Americans that are not adults will be forever barred from being eligible to opt into Social Security. On passage, the end of Social Security would be established, but there will be Americans drawing the payments that they have already been promised for fifty years or more. No one will lose anything. More importantly all living Americans and every future American will be better off. Pro-choice is the debate the Democrats cannot win nor can they effectively politically demagogue the issue.
The next 18 months promise to be extraordinary. Political junkies and economists are going to have a great deal to rivet their attention. During the next few weeks before the holidays, we are going to finish outlining the rest of the Reagan Renaissance in preparation for its launch. Gearing up the Reagan Renaissance for the 2006 election against the backdrop of Republicans exercising their mandate should be an exciting experience. My expectations are for the Democrats to be in a state of shock and disbelief that Republican are serious and mean to dismantle socialism in the United States. Democrats are going to have a lot of difficulty accepting the premise that We can actually make decisions for ourselves and that We prefer it that way. Democrats will eventually learn that freedom is serious business, not something to which they must pay lip service while imposing mandatory socialism on the people and countless thousands of pages of rules and regulations on business. Freedom means making your own choices without government limitations through edicts or regulations. Republicans have some learning ahead as well. Executive Orders may apply to government employees and bureaucracies, but anyone who believes Executive Orders apply to private property or individual Americans is delusional.
Watching Democrats learn that government actually is the problem and that individual Americans actually are the solutions should be fascinating. A great many government workers should start thinking about acquiring the skills and training for their next career. Change is coming to America and great changes create wonderful opportunities. Every American should be thinking about how they are going to serve their fellow man to provide for their own support. The entitlement days are not over yet, but at least now they are numbered. Those betting on a large number of days left should be prepared for a surprise. When a pendulum swings past its point of rest, it is moving at its highest rate of speed. Republicans and conservatives were brain-washed with the myth that incrementalism is needed because it took seventy years to get here. That is nothing but propaganda from the left. All it takes to move full speed ahead is leadership, the Great Debate and the Reagan Wing to hold the Republican Party's feet to the fire. America is on the move and the Reagan Renaissance is straight ahead.
To those of you just joining our series thanks to the efforts of readers, I invite you to please read the prior articles using the archive link below. Thanks to this election there is cause for celebration and great expectations. In some respects, Democrats had a greater appreciation of what this election could produce than the Republicans had. Remember that the primary need for the Reagan Wing is to defeat "professional" politicians because "professional" politicians in both parties constitute the greatest danger to freedom. Socialistic government programs are the tools by which they buy their own re-elections. America and our freedom will never be safe until we have a Term Limits Amendment for members of Congress and the federal judiciary.
This will be America's best Thanksgiving in seventy years. The Reagan Renaissance will be on track to becoming a reality when most Americans finally realize that the First Thanksgiving was not a celebration of bounty and good fortune, but was actually the celebration of the triumph of capitalism over socialism. Every American deserves a vote of thanks for this election. And this election offers testimony to the fact that the Divine Hand of Providence still guides the Last Best Hope of Man on Earth.
Another benefit of energizing a conservative base to vote in the elections is that they will elect Republican candidates in congress. A mushy swing voter might vote for Bush and then vote a dem senator in. The strategy is one-two punch.
I have been listening to the punditry since the election and the right leaning ones all tend to agree that it is a mandate for conservatism. I wonder.
There was never any doubt I was going to vote for GW. I respect "the man" and knew from the beginning he was the right man for the right job at the right time. However, I have long had great issue with his domestic policies. But when the Democrats nominated the likes of John Kerry, my loathe for him and what he did concerning the aftermath of his Viet Nam dis-service put me to the point that the GOP could have fielded a candidate like Lincoln Chaffey and I still would have voted AGAINST John Kerry.
I am not sure the mandate is so much "for" Bush but against Kerry.
At any rate, as my tagline now reads, however one wishes to look at the tea leaves, it was a very good election for the Republic!
Bush is not going to do everything he wants or that you would like in the next four years, but he may do some things that pleasantly surpise you. But be of good cheer, this election will prove to be the turning point. Keep your eye on the Reagan Wing and help support the Reagan Renaissance in its recruiting efforts. It is one of our better shots to role back socialism and to decimate the political strength of the Democratic Party.
What a great article and the web site is wonderful.
"There is no place in this world now, nor has there ever been, where things can change as they do in the United States. I'm never pessimistic about the ability of the American people to alter events for the better."
Now that is well said, sir. Bravo!
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