Naturally, there’s been a lot of what-ifs going around FR in the last two days.
I’ve seen many threads where this or that factor was blamed for the loss of a Senate seat, for example, that Karl Rove single-handedly ruined the sure victory of Christine O’Donnell and that if only Buck hadn’t said . . . whatever.
The fact is that when you look at the losing candidates, they represented the full political spectrum — all the way from straight Tea Party picks (Angle) to straight establishment GOP picks (Rossi). Some lost big, some lost in squeakers.
But what this says to me is that these losses really were more about the dynamics of winning Senate races than they were about whether the candidates were sourced from the Tea Party or the Establishment GOP.
Senate races are just a lot harder to win than House races. One reason is that Senate races are a lot less representative of the voters; rather they represent (at best) something more of an amalgamation of the voters’ views or (at worst) the views of a segment of the voters that vote basically as a bloc and are easily turned out to the polls.
This is the way the Founders designed it. The House was meant to be more of bellweather, to be able to change quickly to adapt to events and so on. The Senate was to be slow and steady and not so subject to political winds.
Because the Rats have taken bloc voting to extreme levels and become expert in machine politics, it is much easier for them to affect a Senate race than a House race in most cases. They don’t have to fight the Senate battle in the entire state; in most cases, they just have to get out “their” voters in one major city to win.
My point is that I’m thinking it didn’t matter so much how our candidate came to run (TP or GOP, etc.), both types of candidates lost and both types won.
That leads me to believe the real issue is just how hard it is to win Senate races when the state has entrenched Rat machines with bloc voters.
“This is the way the founders designed it.”
Actually, the founding fathers never intended for the people to vote for, or to choose, senators. The senators were supposed to be appointed by the state legislatures, and the purpose of each senator was to represent the interests of his state in Washington, D.C. This changed around 1914 when the direct election of senators began.
That’s a great post.
Funny how the founders didn’t contemplate the direct election of Senators.
I fear that the Seattle/Tacoma/Everett urban area is on the road to becoming another Detroit. I’ve heard the libs around here complain bitterly about jobs and the economy...they even had enough sense to soundly reject a state income tax this go around.
But vote for a Republican? They’d rather watch the place fall apart than do that.
It’s a beautiful area, but the wife and I are seriously talking about moving away before the decay really sets in.
We’re in the suburbs, and I had to drive past a bunch of “Impeach Bush” signs before Obozo got elected. Now, you don’t see as many Obozo bumper stickers as before, like even the latte slurping libs know that’s kind of silly looking in this sick economy, but the minute a Republican gets elected, they’ll howl for blood and “justice”.
What is going to be really interesting to watch is how well the Tea Party team and the old GOP team are going to cooperate relative to dealing with the dems. I wonder how either group plans to reconcile more jobs with less spending and less government.