Examining the Mid-Terms
November 11th, 2006After an election, if you’re a strategically-minded person, it’s good to look at the Whys of the Election, and the first question is, after the GOP failed its mid-term, why did the Democrats win? This morning I found a stupid answer to the question (proving that there are stupid answers and not just stupid questions), and that answer is, Republicans Forgot Reagan’s Message.
I’m sure that their refusal to heed the Reagan family on Stem-Cell Research had something to do with it, but this is ridiculous. Republicans lost the election because they have bumbled the War in Iraq, have spent their time as the governors of this nation doing nothing about energy or economics, have run up a deficit and focus on such matters as Terri Schiavo over other issues. But, frankly, I think the final blow in this election was Mark Foley. Without Mark Foley’s pedophilia, the Democrats might take the House and nothing else. With, the entire Republican Party is on the defensive and the Democratic Party has time to attack attack attack.
Nothing says “Please vote us out!” quite like “We covered-up a pedophile in our midst.” The other reason, as I stated on the day after the elections, is that the Democratic effort this year was headed up by competent, fiery men in Chuck Schumer, Rahm Emmanuel and Howard Dean. If Terry McAuliffe or Bob Shrum were in charge, there’s no way that the Republicans get thumped this bad. I believe that this piece gets it fairly right, except that I think it misrepresents Democrats.
See, Democrats ran moderates and even a few Conservatives, and the piece says that this is because the Powers-That-Be understand Liberalism’s lack of appeal, and that’s not quite true. Democrats did run Conservatives and Moderates, however, but it was because there were damn good candidates that deserved to run. Dean, Emmanuel and Schumer aren’t concerned with ideological purity and they shouldn’t be, as it results in Rick Santorum’s defeat and a shift in both houses of Congress.