Posted on 11/09/2006 9:38:57 PM PST by Logic Times
Rush Limbaugh has it wrong. He stated Wednesday that "[c]onservatism did not lose, Republicanism lost last night. Republicanism, being a political party first, rather than an ideological movement, is what lost last night." (here) This statement – a statement echoed by Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and other conservative pundits to whom a nation of shell-shocked conservatives turned for cathartic analysis – fails a simple test. If the electorate was demanding conservatism, then why did strong, principled conservatives lose? Incumbent conservatives such as Rick Santorum, George Allen, J.D. Hayworth and Curt Weldon to name a few. Superb conservative newcomers such as Ken Blackwell and Michael Steele.
The actions of the electorate last Tuesday was an indiscriminate firing of Republicans, not a thoughtful weeding out of RINOs. It is true that Republicanism lost on Tuesday, but it lost in all its forms – and that included the exact form of strong, clear conservatism that the movement desperately needs.
(Excerpt) Read more at logictimes.com ...
I don't agree.
Hayworth isn't out of the running yet. There is an article on FR about over 150,000 or more ballots still needing to be counted and Hayworth is only 5,000 behind.
Santorum's loss isn't about his conservative ideals. The Dem who won against him ran pro-gun/pro-life and on his dead Daddy's name who was once a very conservative Governor. This was also during our Governor race and the (R)'s ran a non-campaign. Philly, Gov Rendell's home turf, re-elected him and those votes carried over to Casey. PA voters didn't vote against a conservatism but against the (R).
The Allen race I don't know enough about.
The democrats who made the gains ran as conservatives.
We lost because the experts in selling stuff, the MSM lied about the war since the day it began.
I agree, also this should be posted in Blogs/Personal
Krauthammer has a different view. Check out his Washington Post piece.
yep, they tricked the voters in voting for them(the only way they can win)
I really don't think so. I think he was more of a casualty of the young skulls full of mush from out of state who are attending ASU and the metrosexual, light in the loafer, pixies at the Arizona People's Republic branding him a "bully." They did it, Mitchell's comrades in the "media" picked up on it and turned it into a campaign ad. The young skulls full of mush at ASU didn't like J.D.'s stand against the illegal aliens. They were all protesting outside McCain's office today and demanding that he do something about the proposition we passed that stated that the Arizona taxpayers were no longer going to pay for college diplomas for residents of Mexico.
Those two subjects are the only ones which interest me.
Regardless of which party holds a majority, I will live very peacefully the next two years with President Bush at the wheel.
This is a very good analysis of what went on in my view. I hope this view gets a hearing but however as written here history is being rewritten. My email and other sites I visted for the past year were basically attacks on Republicans. It was like the Democrats did not exist. Fighting for ideas in the party is needed but the way we went about it this year was wrong.
That being said I am not sure Mr Logic Times this will get a fair hearing. The MSM has already got the story line written. Its the conservatives versus the moderates. The Moderates versus the religious right. THe liberatarians versus the Zealots. I hate to say we might be just going along with that.
THere is some good things there. The "base" needs not only to examine others(which is needed) but themselves. I for one think there needs to be some time to examine what happened on election day. That means not taking as Gopsel every press release from the Club for Growth or on the other side listening to Moderates and Libertarians that say we must reject the social conservatives.
In the end social conservatives, libertarians, and business/fiscal hawks all need each other to win.
Simple...435 different House elections and 34 different Senate elections all with different issues and different demographics.
The NE Rino's did okay. By all standards Chris Shays should have lost.
The bottom line is this: the conservative base (one-third of evangical Christians voted Dem) was tired of being ignored and this was obvious for a year or more.
Instead there were jerks here in Freeper-land and in the media telling us we'd be stupid not to support these "moderates" blah, blah, blah.
Is it worse? We don't know yet. The Dems have the same small majority the GOP had for years. They can't raise taxes - it won't fly with the blue dogs (you really think they will repeal the GOP created 10% bracket on taxable income up to about $16K and raise taxes on the "working poor" by $800 a year??? No.).
IF (a big IF) the GOP has any balls left they'll use the same Senate rules the Dems used for the last six years to stop things and filibuster the crap out of changes.
But with wussy GOP with the likes of McShame and his butt-boy Graham will back the Dems under the umbrella of "partisanship" and get screwed again.
Face it...the GOP lost because they WON'T FIGHT!
AND MORTICIANS!!!
Rush is not alone in this thinking. From Charles Krauthammer:
WASHINGTON -- How serious is the "thumpin'" the Republicans took on Tuesday? Losing one house is significant but hardly historic. Losing both houses, however, is defeat of a different order of magnitude, the equivalent in a parliamentary system of a vote of no confidence.
On Tuesday, Democrats took control of the House and the Senate. As of this writing, they won 29 House seats (with a handful still in the balance), slightly below the post-1930 average for the six-year itch in a two-term presidency. They took the Senate by the thinnest of margins -- a one-vote majority, delivered to them by a margin of 7,188 votes in Virginia and 2,847 in Montana.
Because both houses have gone Democratic, the election is correctly seen as an expression of no confidence in the central issue of the campaign: Iraq. It was not so much the war itself as the perceived administration policy of "stay the course,'' which implied endless intervention with no victory in sight. The president got the message. Hence the summary resignation of the designated fall guy, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Nonetheless, the difference between taking one house versus both -- and thus between normal six-year incumbent party losses and a major earthquake that shakes the presidency -- was razor thin in this election. A switch of just 1,424 votes in Montana would have kept the Senate Republican.
A margin this close should no longer surprise us. For this entire decade the country has been evenly divided politically. The Republicans had control but by very small majorities. In 2000, the presidential election was settled by a ridiculously small margin. And the Senate ended up deadlocked 50-50. All the changes since then have been minor. Until now.
But the great Democratic wave of 2006 is nothing remotely like the great structural change some are trumpeting. It was an event-driven election that produced the shift of power one would expect when a finely balanced electorate swings mildly one way or the other.
This is not realignment. As has been the case for decades, American politics continues to be fought between the 40-yard lines. The Europeans fight goal line to goal line, from socialist left to the ultranationalist right. On the American political spectrum, these extremes are negligible. American elections are fought on much narrower ideological grounds. In this election, the Democrats carried the ball from their own 45-yard line to the Republican 45-yard line.
The fact that the Democrats crossed midfield does not make this election a great anti-conservative swing. Republican losses included a massacre of moderate Republicans in the Northeast and Midwest. And Democratic gains included the addition of many conservative Democrats, brilliantly recruited by Rep. Rahm Emanuel with classic Clintonian triangulation. Hence Heath Shuler of North Carolina, anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-tax -- and now a Democratic congressman.
The result is that both parties have moved to the right. The Republicans have shed the last vestiges of their centrist past, the Rockefeller Republican. And the Democrats have widened their tent to bring in a new crop of blue-dog conservatives.
Moreover, ballot initiatives make the claim of a major anti-conservative swing quite problematic. In Michigan, liberal Democrats swept the gubernatorial and senatorial races, yet a ballot initiative to abolish affirmative action passed 58-42. Seven out of eight anti-gay marriage amendments to state constitutions passed. And nine states passed referendums asserting individual property rights against the government's power of eminent domain.
To muddy even more the supposed ideological significance of this election, consider who is the biggest winner of the night: Joe Lieberman. Just a few months ago, he was scorned by his party and left for dead. Now he returns to the Senate as the Democrats' 51st seat -- and holder of the balance of power. From casualty to kingmaker in three months. Not bad. His Democratic colleagues who abandoned him this summer will now treat him very well.
Lieberman won with a platform that did not trim or hedge about seeking victory in Iraq. And he did it despite having a Republican in the race who siphoned off 10 percent of the pro-war vote. All this in Connecticut, a very blue state.
The public's views on what we ought to do with the war remain mixed, as do its general ideological inclinations. What happened on Tuesday? The electorate threw the bums out in disgust with corruption and in deep dissatisfaction with current Iraq policy. Reading much more into this election is a symptom of either Republican depression or Democratic wishful thinking.
The MSM won the election and they are thanking the Dems for it! If you don't believe it watch CNN.
Did you hear about all the anti-illegal alien laws that were passed by the voters in AZ...from English Only to Illegals cannot sue?
Hayworth stood behind Bush. That's why he lost.
I see it somewhat differently. The nationwide vote on Tuesday was not anti-conservative or anti-Republican. The vote was not pro-liberal or pro-Democrat. Instead, the average Joe and Jane voted pro-change and anti-war. Republicans were in power and held responsible. The sooner Republican politicians get their hands around that reality, the sooner they can work constructively on regaining the Congress.
Sort of like trying to court blue collar workers while moving in so much labor as to stagnate their wage scale. They are blue collar, not stupid.
I agree, Im sure because Hayworth is a republican he was a target by the young skulls full of mush at ASU
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