DOUBLE THUMP
By JOHN PODHORETZ
November 24, 2006 -- PRESIDENT Bush contributed a new word to the political lexicon when he called the GOP defeat on Election Day a "thumpin'." Now, two weeks after the election, the full nature of the "thumpin' " is coming through pretty clearly - and it's devastating news for Republicans and conservatives and even more disastrous for Bush.
According to vote-cruncher Jay Cost of Realclearpolitics.com, 54 percent of the ballots in open races were cast for Democrats and 46 percent for Republicans. Between 2004 and '06, the GOP's share of the vote fell an astonishing 10 percentage points.
Cost puts it like this: "Republicans should thus count themselves very lucky. With this kind of vote share prior to 1994, the Democrats would have an 81-member majority, as opposed to the 29-member majority they now enjoy." Only certain structural changes in U.S. politics since 1990 prevented that mega-thumpin'. That is, Republicans in the House were spared a decimation of their ranks by forces beyond their control.
But those forces aren't beyond Democratic control - which should panic Republican politicians. Many of the structural changes that saved them this time can be undone, especially after the census of 2010 leads to new congressional maps - which it appears will be supervised in a majority of the states by legislatures controlled by Dems.
Happy-talkers on the Right initially tried to explain away this enormous gap by pointing to lopsided vote tallies like Hillary Clinton's victory here in New York. That line of thought lasted only as long as it took others to point out that other lopsided vote tallies elsewhere in the country benefited GOP candidates, balancing out any "excessive" Democratic totals.
There's no good news whatever for Republicans in the exit polls or anywhere else. The talk that they suffered at the polls this time because GOP voters were disenchanted by the party? Nonsense: By all accounts, more than 90 percent of Republican voters cast their ballot for GOP candidates, and turnout was high. GOP voters didn't revolt against the Republican Party. Independent and conservative Democrats did.
This is a very big deal, because it discredits or revises the governing voting theory of the Bush years. Karl Rove argued that the number of genuinely independent voters whose ballot choice is up for grabs every year has shrunk almost to nothing - 6 percent to 8 percent. Thus, the best way to win wasn't to appeal to the independents but to wring every last vote out of GOP-aligned folks who might be too busy or too distracted to go to the polls on Election Day.
To make sure the GOP could do that, Rove and the Republican National Committee built an extraordinary national database and a community-outreach system to fire people up in the 72 hours before the election. It worked brilliantly in 2002 and '04, and was pretty effective in '06.
Partly due to Rove's brilliance, participation in the electoral process has been revitalized - and not only on the Right. Democrats figured out how to do the 72-hour thing too this year, neutralizing the GOP advantage.
Even more important, independents are back in force in American politics. The one thing you can say about independents is this: They're independent in large measure because they're repelled by ideological passion. They also tend to know less about politics and to follow it less closely - and are susceptible to hollow pseudo-guarantees to get in there and fix what's broken.
Conservatives will be arguing over the meaning of the defeat and how to change things for the better. But we need to understand a key aspect of the defeat - a cultural aspect.
For decades, Americans whose lives did not revolve around politics believed that Democrats were trying to use politics to revise the rules of society - to force America to "evolve" in a Left-liberal direction.
They didn't like the bossiness implied by this attitude and they were appalled by the unintended consequences of the changes instituted by left-liberals, mainly when it came to confiscatory tax policy and the refusal to maintain social order and safe streets. These consequences were marks of profound incompetence in the management of the country, and the Democrats were punished for it.
But over in the past few years, Americans began to get the sense that Republicans had become the party of social revision - that it had allowed its own ideological predilections to run riot and that a new form of political correctness had overtaken the party that had seemed more sensible and more in line with their way of thinking.
And, of course, there was and is Iraq. On all sides, partisans are trying to make the case that the election didn't revolve around Iraq. But it did, at least in this sense: Can anyone doubt that if we had won in Iraq in 2005, Republicans would have strengthened their hold on Congress in 2006 rather than losing both Houses? That voters would have rewarded the party of George W. Bush rather than delivering the "thumpin'" of a lifetime?
COMMENT: Just between you & me…
I believe the GOP as we knew it --from Reaganism to Bush the Lesser--is finished. (& just in time too…) The only thing that can possibly artificially extend its lifespan is the Dems focking up again. Therefore? Don’t fock up, Speaker Pelosi. (& Uncle Bernie? Please keep a low profile. Taking the Congress by stealth, for starters, would be a job well-done in the best Trotskyite tradition…”Better they shouldn’t know we‘re here…” After the bloodless Revolution, free potato knishes & lean corned beef on rye for everybody…& don‘t forget the Dr. Brown‘s Cream Soda…)
November 24, 2006 -- PRESIDENT Bush contributed a new word to the political lexicon when he called the GOP defeat on Election Day a "thumpin'." Now, two weeks after the election, the full nature of the "thumpin' " is coming through pretty clearly - and it's devastating news for Republicans and conservatives and even more disastrous for Bush.
According to vote-cruncher Jay Cost of Realclearpolitics.com, 54 percent of the ballots in open races were cast for Democrats and 46 percent for Republicans. Between 2004 and '06, the GOP's share of the vote fell an astonishing 10 percentage points.
Cost puts it like this: "Republicans should thus count themselves very lucky. With this kind of vote share prior to 1994, the Democrats would have an 81-member majority, as opposed to the 29-member majority they now enjoy." Only certain structural changes in U.S. politics since 1990 prevented that mega-thumpin'. That is, Republicans in the House were spared a decimation of their ranks by forces beyond their control.
But those forces aren't beyond Democratic control - which should panic Republican politicians. Many of the structural changes that saved them this time can be undone, especially after the census of 2010 leads to new congressional maps - which it appears will be supervised in a majority of the states by legislatures controlled by Dems.
Happy-talkers on the Right initially tried to explain away this enormous gap by pointing to lopsided vote tallies like Hillary Clinton's victory here in New York. That line of thought lasted only as long as it took others to point out that other lopsided vote tallies elsewhere in the country benefited GOP candidates, balancing out any "excessive" Democratic totals.
There's no good news whatever for Republicans in the exit polls or anywhere else. The talk that they suffered at the polls this time because GOP voters were disenchanted by the party? Nonsense: By all accounts, more than 90 percent of Republican voters cast their ballot for GOP candidates, and turnout was high. GOP voters didn't revolt against the Republican Party. Independent and conservative Democrats did.
This is a very big deal, because it discredits or revises the governing voting theory of the Bush years. Karl Rove argued that the number of genuinely independent voters whose ballot choice is up for grabs every year has shrunk almost to nothing - 6 percent to 8 percent. Thus, the best way to win wasn't to appeal to the independents but to wring every last vote out of GOP-aligned folks who might be too busy or too distracted to go to the polls on Election Day.
To make sure the GOP could do that, Rove and the Republican National Committee built an extraordinary national database and a community-outreach system to fire people up in the 72 hours before the election. It worked brilliantly in 2002 and '04, and was pretty effective in '06.
Partly due to Rove's brilliance, participation in the electoral process has been revitalized - and not only on the Right. Democrats figured out how to do the 72-hour thing too this year, neutralizing the GOP advantage.
Even more important, independents are back in force in American politics. The one thing you can say about independents is this: They're independent in large measure because they're repelled by ideological passion. They also tend to know less about politics and to follow it less closely - and are susceptible to hollow pseudo-guarantees to get in there and fix what's broken.
Conservatives will be arguing over the meaning of the defeat and how to change things for the better. But we need to understand a key aspect of the defeat - a cultural aspect.
For decades, Americans whose lives did not revolve around politics believed that Democrats were trying to use politics to revise the rules of society - to force America to "evolve" in a Left-liberal direction.
They didn't like the bossiness implied by this attitude and they were appalled by the unintended consequences of the changes instituted by left-liberals, mainly when it came to confiscatory tax policy and the refusal to maintain social order and safe streets. These consequences were marks of profound incompetence in the management of the country, and the Democrats were punished for it.
But over in the past few years, Americans began to get the sense that Republicans had become the party of social revision - that it had allowed its own ideological predilections to run riot and that a new form of political correctness had overtaken the party that had seemed more sensible and more in line with their way of thinking.
And, of course, there was and is Iraq. On all sides, partisans are trying to make the case that the election didn't revolve around Iraq. But it did, at least in this sense: Can anyone doubt that if we had won in Iraq in 2005, Republicans would have strengthened their hold on Congress in 2006 rather than losing both Houses? That voters would have rewarded the party of George W. Bush rather than delivering the "thumpin'" of a lifetime?
COMMENT: Just between you & me…
I believe the GOP as we knew it --from Reaganism to Bush the Lesser--is finished. (& just in time too…) The only thing that can possibly artificially extend its lifespan is the Dems focking up again. Therefore? Don’t fock up, Speaker Pelosi. (& Uncle Bernie? Please keep a low profile. Taking the Congress by stealth, for starters, would be a job well-done in the best Trotskyite tradition…”Better they shouldn’t know we‘re here…” After the bloodless Revolution, free potato knishes & lean corned beef on rye for everybody…& don‘t forget the Dr. Brown‘s Cream Soda…)
posted by greenpagan at 9:35 PM
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