Posted on 07/20/2002 8:48:11 AM PDT by Pokey78
REPUBLICANS have been pretty sanguine about their prospects in this fall's midterm elections. They shouldn't be. It's true that President Bush's popularity ratings remain high and that, asked which party they would like to see control Congress next year, the voters are still evenly divided. But these numbers may be misleading. In the first place, the corporate scandals will serve to motivate Democratic voters. And in midterm elections, motivation trumps polling, because party loyalists have to be propelled to actually go out and vote. Second, a powerful wave of anxiety is now sweeping across the country as the markets tank. Americans don't connect this anxiety to politics, because it's July. But as November approaches and people begin to think electorally, there could be sharp swings. This has happened in past midterm elections. One party looks fine for months and then suddenly, 10 days before the election, its numbers collapse.
Third and most important, the landscape favors the Democrats. Any number of issues could break their way. The markets could continue their slide. More corporate scandals could come to light. Prescription drug benefits could return to the fore. The SEC could be critical of Dick Cheney's Halliburton stewardship. Democratic attacks on the alleged evils of Social Security privatization could decimate Republicans, as Democrats tie seniors' worries about their pensions to the collapsing markets.
Liberal blogger Joshua Micah Marshall (www.talkingpointsmemo.com) recently published the leaked results of a Tarrance Group study commissioned by the National Republican Campaign Committee. The Tarrance recommendations make for disconcerting reading for Republicans. "Democrat attempt to label GOP position on Social Security as favoring 'privatization' presents serious threat. GOP, Members, and candidates must fight back against this label," the study reported. "AARP is a dangerous adversary in this debate. They have greater credibility than any entity on this issue and are not viewed as partisan," the consultants continued. They recommended that Republicans respond to the issue by declaring, "Social Security is a sacred trust. It must be saved." They suggested that Republicans not try simply to change the subject or laud themselves for having the courage to tackle the entitlements issue.
The Tarrance Group offers effective recommendations on how Republicans can portray themselves as fervent anti-privatizers and so neutralize the issue. And Republicans may be able to neutralize other Democratic issues. But that's cold comfort, because there are few issues that offer significant Republican upside. The political benefits from the war on terror have been reaped. Domestically, the Republican party is as bereft of plausible policy ideas as at any time in the past quarter century. How exactly do Republicans respond to the current moment? With cuts in the capital gains tax rate? With the flat tax? With deregulation? With a crusade to shrink the size of government? With entitlement reform? These ideas, admirable on the merits, are as politically implausible now as any that can be imagined. Worse, many of them have the feel of a bygone era.
The public may not blame Republicans for the market's collapse, but sooner or later people will ask, What are you going to do to get us out of this mess? It won't be enough to repeat that the fundamentals are sound, or to mention the important work that was done to organize the Office of Homeland Security.
Part of the reason some Republicans have been lulled into a false sense of security is that the Democratic diagnosis of the coming election is wrong. Many Democrats--including Dick Gephardt, who last week predicted his party would pick up as many as 40 House seats--seem to think they can win by linking Republicans to dishonest corporate fat cats, by keeping the issue of CEO scandals alive and in the public eye straight through the fall.
That's unlikely. The Enron scandal broke months ago. That was the scandal that presented maximum peril to Republicans. (How many times in U.S. history has such a huge scandal revolved around one of the closest supporters of the president of the United States?) But Enron produced no political fallout.
Still, the Democrats seem to think that there is this organized entity called Corporate America, made up of senior executives, Republicans, white country clubbers, and people who were cheerleaders and prom kings in high school. If they can get the rest of the country to hate these people as much as they do, then they will win elections. Because they have this category in their heads, Democrats see the corporate scandals as tainting the whole Republican party.
But Americans who have not been suckled on the "Marx-Engels Reader" do not carry these categories around in their heads. They perceive no one organized entity, Corporate America, that ruthlessly exploits another, Ordinary Americans. Most people believe, rather, that there are some dishonest people who have done horrible things in corporate America. But also that George W. Bush is an admirable man who is doing his best for the country, even though he once worked for a corporation, and has friends who are in business. In other words, they see the scandals as a crisis of character, not a crisis of capitalism.
The core threat for Republicans is not the scandals. It's the institutions and the economy. Over the past months the country has been hit by a barrage of stories about Wall Street, the Catholic church, the FBI, and CIA--all of which suggests that many fundamental institutions of American life are in disrepair. Anxiety over this is reflected in a sharp rise in the percentage of people who say the country is on the wrong track. In a survey conducted July 11-14, 49 percent of voters told Ipsos-Reid pollsters that the country is headed south, a rise of 10 percentage points over the previous three weeks. When that happens, incumbents, and the party perceived to be in power, suffer.
What's more, the rise of a large investor class makes it more likely that market declines will have political effects. Republicans have been comfortably assuming that the rise of this investor class would help them, because as people put money in the market, studies show, they are more likely to vote Republican (even controlling for income). But those studies were conducted in the 1990s, as markets rose. It could be that the axe swings both ways. As the market drops, investors may take revenge on the people they think lured them there. Anglo-American journalist John O'Sullivan has pointed out that British homeowners who were encouraged to buy homes in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher took it out on Thatcher in 1990 when home values dropped.
American exit polls in 2000 revealed that voters who were bearish on the markets tended to vote for Gore, while the bulls backed Bush. What if the bulls of 2000 blame Republicans for the market of 2002? That's a lot of angry voters. According to a Gallup Poll conducted July 9-11, 43 percent of Americans think the markets will go down over the next year, while only 29 percent think they will rise. This is the first time in a year that bears have been in the majority. Meanwhile, the number of people who believe the overall economy is in excellent or good shape has dropped to 35 percent from 69 percent when George Bush took office.
The Republicans control the debate on the war on terror and domestic security, but while they have admirably spent their days keeping the country safe from attack, Democrats have been seizing control of the domestic agenda. They are now the most aggressive champions of domestic reform, and will be until Republicans come up with their own (rather than just a me-too) agenda on domestic reform, a platform that is as startling and brave as their international effort to combat the axis of evil.
What if my aunt had wheels?
She'de be a trolley car.
That says in two succinct sentences what I've been fearing all week.
I don't get what you're saying? Do you really think it's ridiculous to speculate that a crashing stock market just might hurt the party in power? If that's what you believe, you've apparently never heard of a gent named Herbert Hoover.
True.
The contract with america was a popular idea. Of course, we ditched most of it and have been losing ground ever since.
But if - after the dust settles - many, many Americans are out of jobs and have no pensions while the crooks are safely enjoying life in their mansions, you can bet they'll blame Bush and the Republican party.
Only fools wouldn't.
The article seemed fairly reasonable, until he stuck the above in. There is nothing implausible now in some of those ideas. And as for "the feel of a bygone era," that is where we come in. We need to make certain that the American heritage is not a relic of a bygone era.
In deteriorating times economically, there is more, not less, appeal to getting Government to lessen its burden on the backs of the productive. The people to whom less Government and shrinking entitlements have no appeal, are those who are going to vote for "Liberal" Democrats, anyway. We need to do three things--and I mean now, before the end of July:
1. We need to get back on track with the Reagan Counter-Revolution, and shrink not expand Government.
2. We need to make it clear that we will deal with immigration, both legal and illegal, to protect American jobs as well as our cultural heritage. (No one allowed in without assurance of a job; but a policy which encourages social pressure to induce employers to give preference to Americans.)
3. We need to assert the high ground on issues like the Boy Scouts; the attack on expressions of Faith in public places; and on coddling anti-social behavior. That high ground means expressing support for the Boy Scouts sensible exclusions; expressing support for local school districts which express the religious values of the Founding Fathers; and continuing the path to ending the Federal role in Welfare payments to those who flaunt total personal irresponsibility.
The right combination of these concepts, with the right explanation of how they relate to the interests of mainstream America is a winning formula. Offering a rehash of past Republican mistakes, when the party was more "liberal," is certainly not the answer.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Come November 8, the GOP is going to awaken to a loss of the House and Senate. The press will say it was a stunning defeat for Bush and a repudiation of the conservative Republican agenda (there is no longer a conservative agenda, but no matter.)
And while the still-clueless Republicans will ask what happened (Simple,of course. Enough of the conservatives who "have no place to go" won't go to the polls rather than support a party in full retreat from its principles, a party which increasingly treats its conservatives like bothersome children and tells them to be quiet when they speak out)the dems will be laughing their collective asses off.
The NEW!GOP plan of giving away tax dollars in exchange for votes, the way perverts give candy away to little girls for sex, will fail miserably for the GOP. Why vote for Democrat Lite Republicrats when you can have the real deal?
How long before Kruschev and Kennedy are both proved right?
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