The 2011 off-year elections are a warning to Republicans. The 2010 party is over. 2012 will be a struggle.
To be sure, Tuesday was not exactly the Democrats’ night. They did enjoy one big victory, repeal of government-worker reform in Ohio. But elsewhere, they barely held their own. The bigger news was the absence of any major Republican trend. The great Republican resurgence of 2009–10 has slowed to a crawl.
On Tuesday, Ohio was the bellwether. Voters decisively voted down the Republicans’ newly enacted, Wisconsin-like rollback of public-sector workers’ benefits and bargaining rights. True, it took a $30 million union campaign that outspent the other side three to one. True, repeal only returns labor relations to the status quo ante. And true, Ohio Republicans, unlike Wisconsin’s, made a huge tactical error by including police and firefighters in the rollback, opening themselves to a devastating they-saved-my-grandchild ad campaign. Nevertheless, the unions won. And they won big.
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And yet, in another referendum, that same Ohio electorate rejected the central plank of Obamacare — the individual mandate — by an overwhelming two-to-one margin. Never mind that this ballot measure has no practical effect, federal law being supreme. Its political effect is unmistakable. Finally given the chance to vote against Obamacare, swing-state Ohio did so by a 31-point landslide.
Interesting split: Ohio protects traditional union rights, while telling an overreaching Washington to lay off its health-care arrangements. Indeed, there were splits everywhere. In this year’s gubernatorial elections, both parties held serve: Democrats retained West Virginia and Kentucky; Republicans retained Louisiana and Mississippi.
This kind of status quo ticket-splitting firmly refutes the lazy conventional narrative of an angry electorate seething with anti-incumbency fervor. In New Jersey, for example, all but one of the 65 assembly incumbents seeking reelection were returned to office.
Even Virginia, which moved to near-complete Republican control, is a cautionary tale. Republicans won six House of Delegates seats, giving them an unprecedented two-thirds majority. However, they had hoped to win outright control of the senate. They needed three seats. They won only two and will have to rely on the tie-breaking lieutenant governor’s vote.
Not a good night for Virginia Democrats. But compared to the great 2009–10 pendulum swing that obliterated them (in a state Barack Obama carried in 2008), 2011 was more rebuke than rejection.
The larger narrative is clear: American politics are, as always, inherently cyclical. Despite the occasional euphoria, nothing lasts. First comes the great Democratic comeback of 2006 and 2008, leading an imprudent James Carville to declare the beginning of a 40-year liberal ascendancy.
He was off by only 38. The fall began almost immediately. Within a year, Democrats were defeated in the off-year elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and, most shockingly, Massachusetts, where they lost the sacred “Kennedy seat.”
Thoughtful? In any rational electorate, with 9% unemployment, multiple-trillion dollar deficits, Solyndra, fast and furious, etc, Obama would have no chance.
Unfortunately, we don't appear to have a particularly thoughtful electorate. It elected a man President of United States with a long history of Marxist connections (including familial connections) based on "Hope and Change" happy talk, a man who in an unguarded moment told them he wanted to fundamentally transform the U.S., and who lacked any demonstrably experience for the job. Doesn't bode well.
The electorate is only part of the problem. The dems caused that problem by infiltrating the colleges of law, journalism, and education. Liberal lawyers appointed to lifetime appointments to shred the Constitution and unalienable rights. Liberal journalism to assault our TVs with liberal propaganda. Liberal teachers to undermine moral values and turn out an undereducated public who rely on the media and actors and entertainers to tell them what to do.
Liberal Hollywood assaults our values with their movies and television, making us passive or accepting to things we once would not tolerate. Liberal Unions stealing our money and using it in a RICO-esque scheme to constantly funnel money into the party that in return gives them power, the Dems. Politicians and lawyers who sue over redistricting schemes that keep liberals in power (I forget who it was, Feinstein or Pelosi, but one of them was so hated in their home district that she could only get elected after they redistricted in her favor).
The electorate is part of the problem, but they are waking up and they are angry to have been duped. It is up to us though, we have to talk to our friends and family and co-workers. We have to provide the evidence to open their eyes. The Dems have been doing this for about 100 years or more and we're only now really working to reverse this.
To my ears and eyes, it's the tea partiers that want to fundamentally transform the U.S.
We've had a central banking apparatus in the U.S. since 1791. Entitlement spending is approaching 80 years of history, and it is widely viewed as a good use of government funds.
I'm not saying you can't be for reform, but it's always entertaining to hear people present things in this light. If anything, it's Obama who wants the status quo, building on the legacy of progressivism, and it's the tea party who wants to make this country unrecognizable to anyone who didnt live in the 18th-19th century.
Charles, for someone supposedly so smart you sure write some superficial analysis.
Of course the 'Republicans' did not do as well in this off year. Why? One of the big reasons is that they have watered down their image - they are far less conservative.
What fired up American's last year was the spending of the Obama administration and the abuses of power that everyone but the willfully blind Statis partisians could see. What have we had since then? We have had the republican 'leadership' going out of their way to hand the ball game to the Progressives on the other side of the field. No fight, no contrast, just same old same old.
Want to fire up the base, the average American who is sick and tired of watching you 'people' in DC screw up our country? Then start fighting, start acting like conservatives (you know, people who have principles, who want limited gov't and who will tell the American people they can't have everything they want).
This is why, if the Rs nominate someone like Romney they will loose. There are too many like myself who simply will not vote for a liberal Republican. Romney or someone like him (can you say McCain??) would be doing most of what the great O has done economically (Hoover anyone?) - I can't believe otherwise because these people have shown no dedication to principle. Our Republic is teetering on the brink of fiscal ruin and if we are going to go over that cliff I do not want someone who claims to be a conservative at the helm. History will judge this generation very harshly and I would at least like for history to see that it was progressives and their ideology that was to blame.
Really, you would sit at home and let Obama win rather than vote for Romney? I'd rather not go off the cliff at all, thank you very much.
A Republican Presidential win would also likely sweep in control of the Senate and retain control of the House. All three are needed to undo the damage that has already occurred.
Besides, legislation passed by a conservative-run House and Senate, which would likely be signed by even a Romney, would certainly be vetoed by Obama.
In a year when the candidates on our side are more conservative than at any time since Reagan, this column seems rather ungrateful.
Even our leftmost candidate is touting conservative principles. We have a crop of candidates who mostly espouse cutting spending on a massive scale, simplifying the tax code and cutting taxes; they have a strong, clear foreign policy; they support allies like Israel, and name our enemies. The "baggage" that they carry is mostly media generated and obsessed over and is certainly "lighter" than the readily ignored baggage of Obama, from before he was president and even worse now with his failure on all fronts.
Columns like this with their "objectivity" irritate me.
It is not that I expect this to be an easy election for us to win. The msm and the rest of the left are organized and ready to be as corrupt as they can be. But we have all the chips. If our conservative pundits would accentuate the positive, it could go a long way in rallying our troops.
I disagree Charles is thoughtful and accurate in his assements. Rallying the troops won't win the election for the GOP. It's will be independants that don't even pay any attention to politics until a month or 2 before the November 2012 election that will decide who will be the next President.
Republican candidates in the Virginia Senate races received about 250,000 more votes than Democrats and the Democrats hung on only thanks to gerrymandered districts. That vote total bodes ill for them in the state no matter the outcome of the Senate races.
For Democrats, the lines of attack on the top Republican candidates are fairly clear. Romney is a tough one for them because he appears so squeaky clean. If it is Romney, my guess is Dems are going to do everything in their power to motivate Republicans to form a third "alternative" party dedicated to conservative principles. The "Perot Gambit" they might call it among themselves. And splitting the vote may be the only way the One can win next year. If it comes to pass, I ain't buyin'. Getting this guy out of the White House trumps everything. Everything.
Ohio is easily explained: union-organized turnout versus regular people knowing there was an election (I didn't in my state!), or what or who was on the ballot.
Also, I see the columnist's last paragraph as a not-so-veiled endorsement for Mitt Romney--with a negative allusion to Cain (slogans) and Gingrich (baggage)--although I could be wrong on this one. But if I'm not, there we go again with the establishment candidate being chosen for us by the Beltway elite.
I agree with Freedom's post below--the MSM dictates who has baggage and who doesn't. For someone with a resume' thinner than Calista Flockhart on Atkins, Obama was surely big on baggage. But the media made it all a non-issue. Our side needs to fight back, and fight back hard, because whoever is the nominee will have the whole pack of MSM dogs sicced on him.
Great post, but with a surprise ending. (I thought for a moment I had read an O. Henry story.) Whoever is the nominee will have the whole pack of dogs sicced on him, so why give them someone who indisputably has loads and loads of real baggage? The kind of baggage that bothers conservatives even more than liberals?
I argue against Gingrich not because I am afraid he might win the nomination -- I don't think he has a chance, especially with a certain 50% of the voters -- but because I would prefer to focus on real possibilities.
Exactly what 'baggage" does Newt have; does stating that an individual has "baggage" automatically make it so?
Newt Gingrich has baggage in much the same way that Steve Jobs had baggage. Where would Apple be today if the board of directors at Apple refused to hand over the reigns of power to the best individual for the job because he/she had "baggage?"
Seems to me the only elites decrying Newt's "baggage" are the same elites that forced him to resign as Speaker just so they can rape and pillage our national economy with impunity.
I see parallels with Steve Jobs and Newt Gingrich here…
Randy, except for one important little detail, you made an astute observation; Steve Jobs never ran for public office, let alone the presidency. Lest you forget, Ross Perot was once a revered business leader. We only knew what an eccentric he was after he ran for office.
Hardcastle, I must admit that my preference for Newt has an irrational side. Kind of like the friend you want to hang out with even though you know he leads a dissolute life.
But I guess my greater point is that, even in the absence of objective baggage, the MSM will find, magnify or outright fabricate it for us--so we may as well go with someone whose baggage is old news.
The greatest abuse of the pension system comes from police and fire services, particularly the latter. In Massachusetts, it is a business. Firefighters serve as captains on a temporary basis while the "real" captain is on vacation or leave. An unconscionable number of those substitute captains get "disabled" during their temporary duty and, viola, they get a massive increase in their pension for the next 40 years. Even better we have an example of a mayor who, while the fire captain was on vacation, appointed himself for the position and it made him eligible for a pension 3 times as much as his real job's pension provisions. It may have been a mistake to attack this kind of fraud, but it was not wrong to do so.
"This is no disoriented, easily led citizenry. On the contrary. It is thoughtful and discriminating."
- What fantasy land are you living in? The electorate is DECEIVED plain and simple. They beleive the lies of the media and the majority of people in this country take their lead from the media. They believe that if it's not in the NY Times, it didn't happen. Truth is harder to discern than lies. If one does not go out of one's way to actively seek the truth, one naturally ends up believing all the lies.
From my conservative pundits I want analysis, even when I disagree with them. For cheer leading,one should go to a football game, not to the National Review..
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