Now that the dust has settled on the 2010 midterm elections, it’s slowly becoming clear just how monumental the results really are. We saw an extreme left-wing agenda suffer a crushing defeat. At the ballot box, voters took Obamacare and the stimulus and wrapped them right around the necks of those same House members and senators who had arrogantly dismissed the concerns voiced in countless town halls and Tea Party rallies up and down the country. Voters sent commonsense conservatives a clear mandate to hold the line against the Obama agenda.
Does that mean Republican candidates can look forward with greater confidence to the 2012 elections? Yes and no. Yes, objectively speaking the next electoral cycle should be even more favorable than the one that just ended. A large number of red-state Democratic senators will have to defend their seats; and since Obama will be at the top of the ballot that year, they won’t be able to hide from the fact that their party leader is a detached liberal with a destructive tax-and-spend agenda. Whether Republicans will do as well as they did in this cycle depends on whether they learn the lessons from the 2010 election.
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The first lesson is simple: Set the narrative. This year it wasn’t too difficult to tell the story of the election: It was about stopping an out-of-control Congress and an out-of-touch White House. In races across the country, Republican candidates ran on the message that the Left was bankrupting America with budget-busting spending bills that mortgage our children’s future, burden the private sector with uncertainty, and cripple our much-needed job growth.
The story of the next cycle, though, remains to be written. Its content depends on what Republicans do next. Just as in the 1980s, there are today millions of conservative-leaning Democrats and independents who are ready to join our cause. They gave us their votes, now we must earn their trust. And we do that by showing them that a vote for us will not be a vote for the big-spending, over-regulating status quo. The 2012 story should be about conservatives in Congress cutting government down to size and rolling back the spending, and the Left doing everything in its power to prevent these necessary reforms from happening. In the next two years, if all we end up doing is adopting some tax hikes here, some Obama-agenda compromises there, and a thousand little measures that do nothing to get us out of the economic mess we’re in, the same voters that put the GOP in office will vote them out in the next election. If that happens, the story of 2012 may well be that of the GOP going the way of the Whigs. No, the American people are expecting us to be bold and big in our economic reform to allow the private sector to create jobs and soar!
In the coming weeks, there will be those who lament that some of us endorsed conservative Republicans over liberal ones in blue-state races. It’s a good debate, and one I’m willing to have. First, we must keep in mind that there is no guarantee that any Republican will win in a deep-blue state (as evidenced by the exit polls in Delaware showing that the liberal Republican would have lost too). But even more to the point, we saw in the last decade what happens when conservatives hold their noses and elect liberals who have an “R” after their names. Our party’s message of freedom and fiscal responsibility became diluted. In 2008, it was difficult to claim on the one hand that we were the party of fiscal responsibility and on the other hand that our fiscal policies work. It was clear to the electorate that the GOP had not adhered to fiscally conservative positions, and that the liberal positions they did adhere to didn’t work. If we go on in that direction again, we won’t have a base, let alone a majority. Certainly we can and should back sensible center-right candidates in bluer states, but I see no point in backing someone who supports cap-and-tax, Obamacare, bailouts, taxes, and more useless stimulus packages. If you think such a candidate will be with us when it comes time to vote down an Obama Supreme Court nominee, you’re living on a unicorn ranch in fantasy land.
This from a woman who can only do this effectively when she's hiding behind a Facebook page, a teleprompter or the printed page.
Ms. Palin, let whoever wrote that first brilliant V.P. nomination speech, and/or all the rest of "your" written material, come out from the shadows and run for office.
For those who have an argument against what she is saying, please make one. We all await breathlessly the moment when we will be given something to work with.
I try to be an agnostic about Palin but I just can't help but like her. Her comments all worth thinking about and discussing; her spirit of reasoned optimism is infectious.
Frankly, I hope someone better runs in 2012 but I suspect for more than one reason that person will not be forthcoming.
Because you're a lemming who lets the lying media define what you think.
Do your own homework, look at Palin's past campaigns in Alaska, watch her AK debates, check out her record as mayor, oil and gas commissioner, and governor, and you'll find a VERY different person than what the lying media has brainwashed you into believing.
I truly am sick and tired of reading negative comments about Ms. Palin . . . ie - Cher's recent "rant". Like Cher is a "rocket scientist" with logical, intelligent political or personal-life decisions/opinions.
Give me a break. And the author(s) below wanting to know who the ghost-writer is for Sarah ? Is that like the "ghosts" who taught O-Teleprompter how to read and preach "moderate" then SPRINT, full-speed, to the extreme left?
The whining of the left has begun but they better get used to it. Because, thankfully, most of my neighbors to the south aren't listening !
So Palin has a ghostwriter. And Ted Sorensen DIDN'T write JFK's speeches and "Profiles in Courage"? And Barry Goldwater wrote "The Conscience of a Conservative"? Just about all politicians who write essays and books have ghostwriters doing it for them. You can bash Palin all you want, I have my doubts about her too, but do your bashing with some substance behind it.
Last comment (I promise). I'd rather hear a politician speak with a few words written on their hand than one who "always" uses a teleprompter. (note to "rstarke" below - U haven't figured this out yet, huh?)
In closing, how often has BHO given actual give-and-take interviews . . . especially with media with discenting opinion? Where as Sarah's taken on ALL the MSM who are consistently in "attack mode"!
With respect, I'm a fiscal moderate and a social conservative. I've been following Sarah Palin since *before* her V.P. nomination. Her speech at the RNC gave me my own Chris Matthews Thrill Up My Leg (TM) moment and made me want to leave my husband and kids and go work for her. But off-script and on her own, her attempts to articulate an argument are, at best, awkward strings of folksy phrases tiresomely repeated, and at worst, bordering on logorrheaic. The average undecided/Independent voter isn't going to spend hours looking at her debates in Alaska from 1998. They're going to, at best, steel themselves to watch her on a major network or YouTube.
Extemporaneous speech is one of the clearest indicators of a person's compass, whether external or internal. (The other, of course, is his or her actual *actions*, compared against that speech.) President Obama gets regularly, and utterly deservedly, lambasted for his (necessary) addiction to a teleprompter. We lose credibility when we don't look at our own leaders with that same critical eye.
I'm still a fan of what Sarah Palin represents - strong, happy, ordinary conservative women who are sick and tired of their families being enslaved by tyrannical government and are finally mad enough to do something about it. But I'm not a fan, at the moment, of how Sarah Palin is representing herself. She needs to take some time studying guys like Marco Rubio and Chris Christie (who I could listen to all day long).
Does it really matter if this article was written by a ghost writer? If, in fact it was, then that person has obviously decided to use these words to support the person that they believe best represents them.
I myself choose to believe that Ms. Palin is writing these articles, and see no reason to doubt that she is. I believe that anyone who feels that they have to doubt what has been put in front of them has allowed a liberal minded media to cloud their thinking with conspiracy theories about conservative leaders. I have felt inspired by Ms. Palin's speeches and articles ever since her first V.P. speech. I believe she is writing these articles, because it seems to me that they all cohesively fit together; something that I haven't seen from many liberal leaders, whose position seems to change from every speech they give.
Usually people are really good writers or really good extemporaneous speakers, but not both. Obama is a speaker, not a writer. Sarah is more a writer than a speaker. Some people think while talking, others think while writing. It's just the way we are made. So, if someone is not the best at speaking, it's even more likely that they are good at writing.
I like Sarah Palin a lot and try to stick up for her, but I think she may want to get advisors to help her if she wants to continue to have a national role in politics. Or, she may want to lay low for a while since the media just loves to destroy her. Her unfavorables would probably go down if she took a break for awhile. There's just too much negative press on her all the time. I think she should take a long break and then have a new start.
"In races across the country, Republican candidates ran on the message that the Left was bankrupting America with budget-busting spending bills that mortgage our children’s future, burden the private sector with uncertainty, and cripple our much-needed job growth."
Starting with the previous administration, America was already bankrupt - already mortgaging our children's future and crippling America. How convenient that no one screamed about all this prior to Obama. Had Obama taken a surplus and caused everything claimed above - then okay. But he inherited a horrible situation and made tough decisions for the country. We didn't get there overnight and it wasn't going to be corrected overnight. Do your research (not just at FOX news. Find a non partisan fact checking site and read.) You'll find how much Obama inherited - all those things you're screaming about now, but said word zero about previously. Funny that. It was the previous administration that took a surplus and ceded a deficit. Where were you then?
Avila, You said just what I was thinking - exactly! Just because Palin sounds less "folksy" in her writing does not mean she isn't the author of this piece. Many people are better writers than speakers, it is a very different set of skills to get your point across in the written word than in a verbal give and take.
Sarah Palin obviously is much more effective at getting her message across in writing. She ends up sounding too "folksy" in her verbal interactions, which unfortunately, is often interpreted by the media and liberal elites (who are actually one and the same) as a lack of intelligence.
I hope Sarah Palin does not run for president simply because of all of the ridiculous attacks from the left, they have so much ammunition from previous untruths that independents and conservative democrats already have a negative opinion of her. I think she can be a much greater help by staying on the sidelines and helping get the message across for other candidates - raising money and enthusiasm as she already has been.
Very well said keep up the good work Governor Palin! I hope that the leaders of the GOP are listening - otherwise they will just as quickly find themselves on the wrong side of the voters' wrath yet again.
I don't know how anyone can read this and think of her as an intellectual lightweight. I hope she runs energy policy in this country from 12-20 then the presidency from 20-28
I like Sarah Palin a lot. I love her ideas and philosophies about government, taxes and freedom. But: Chris Christie for President!! Rudy Giuliani for Vice President!!
Anyone who thinks this was a 100% ghost written polemic hasn't been paying attention. I watched Sarah on FOX the other night in a very civilized and reasonably substantive give and take with Geraldine Ferraro She won't have another Katie Couric moment any time soon.
Probably most of us doubted if she had (was?) Presidential timbre back in 2008, but she is proving once again to be a very quick study.
This is a woman who went from stay at home mom to mayor to governor to VP candidate to GOP kingmaker with lightning speed.
America, take note. The people who know Sarah Palin best--we Alaskans--neither trust nor respect her as a political figure. We have just sent her endorsed poster child Joe Miller, a resounding defeat. Our Quitter EX-Guv cost the Republicans the Senate by endorsing such loser kooks as Sharron Angle of Nevada and Christine O'Donnell of Delaware. Those states were considered prime pickup opportunities for the GOP, had Sarah Palin not stepped in and messed things up by endorsing wacko's instead of the rational GOP candidates. Sarah is a tweeting coo-coo bird... Plain and simple...
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