Bush Supporters' Aftermath Thread III

To Israel's supporters, everyone who criticizes Israel is an anti-semite.

It seems to me the conservatives were pretty well unified in their opinion that:

a) The Republicans lost their conservative vision that put them into power in 1994 and were behaving more like liberal Democrats. Conservatives want conservatives to behave like conservatives.

b) The Republicans missed too many chances to make a difference when they had the chance on issues of immigration, making the tax cuts permanent, social security reform, the will to win the war, and several other matters. Conservatives are not impressed by gutless wonders.

Last month, the American people went to the polls .. and DEMANDED conservative government! And unfortunately in the process, the GOP lost its majority and a few good men like Rick Santorum, Jim Talent and George Allen.

The only positive I see in any of this is that political power is moving away from the extremism which you guys reflect and towards something less angry, hateful and divisive.

Cyclo, I doubt that very much. nimh has established himself well enough on a2k to express his opinion on any subject without denying his credibility. Most of us understand where he's coming from.

blatham wrote:

The only positive I see in any of this is that political power is moving away from the extremism which you guys reflect and towards something less angry, hateful and divisive.

Echo that.

Foxfyre wrote:

It seems to me the conservatives were pretty well unified in their opinion that:

a) The Republicans lost their conservative vision that put them into power in 1994 and were behaving more like liberal Democrats. Conservatives want conservatives to behave like conservatives.

b) The Republicans missed too many chances to make a difference when they had the chance on issues of immigration, making the tax cuts permanent, social security reform, the will to win the war, and several other matters. Conservatives are not impressed by gutless wonders.

I noticed that those were two of the rare conclusions that were reached after a rather perfunctory reflection on the results. That was the reason why I made a vain attempt at rekindling the discussion. There is, after all, one thing wrong with both these conclusions: as possible explanations for the Republican defeat and Democratic victory in the elections, they appear to be directly refuted by the data.

I have no doubt that conservatives want conservatives to behave like conservatives, but when you have:

• voters in the northeast exchanging liberal Republicans for even more liberal Democrats
  
  
• voters in the west and midwest voting out conservative Republicans in favour of Democrats
  
  
• the Republican Party losing most heavily among moderates and independents, crucial electorates that lurched toward the Democrats
  
  
• the Republican Party losing all the ground it had gained two years ago among Hispanics, an increasingly crucial electorate
  
  
• voters who changed parties mentioning Iraq as one of the two main reasons for their switch
  
  
• the politicians who played the anti-illegal immigration card most fiercely suffering upset losses

Then how can you say you lost the elections because your side wasnt conservative enough, and wasnt assertive enough on Iraq and immigration?

I can see why, as point of principle and personal political vision, you would like the Republican Party to be more conservative, more assertive on staying the course in Iraq and more willing to focus on immigration. What I can't see how those points can credibly be raised as reasons that the Republicans lost these elections. That certainly is not born out by any data I've seen.

It would be one thing to say: I dont care about the election results, staying true to principles overrides playing to popular preference. That would actually be admirable, in a sense. But to earnestly say that the Democrats' election victory, due greatly to these sweeping shifts of moderates, independents and hispanics, is because the Republicans werent conservative, pro-war and anti-immigrant enough, defies belief.

This is why I've been thinking that many of you simply still appear to be in denial. Basically, your position here appears to be the one that the Exec. Pres. of the American Conservative Union so succinctly summarised in what was nothing short of an unintentional parody:

The Executive Vice President of the American Conservative Union wrote:

Last month, the American people went to the polls .. and DEMANDED conservative government! And unfortunately in the process, the GOP lost its majority and a few good men like Rick Santorum, Jim Talent and George Allen.

(link)

Again, I can appreciate saying, my principles override any change of heart the voters have, I will stick by them. But seriously offering a variety of this as explanation for the election results?

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Look, rallying the base, as a strategy, has brought you a long way, I wont deny that. It helped you win the 2002 and 2004 elections. And its hard to kick a habit (or world view) that so obviously held true for a few formative years. But even in 2004, Bush won just by a 3% margin, which means that you cannot afford to lose significant chunks of the groups that got Bush that 51% that year. You've lost them now. How are you going to get them back? How are you going to persuade the swathes of independents and moderates who've deserted the Republicans this year, to return? By steering closer to conservative ideology?

In a way, of course, you are in a more luxurious position than the Democrats were after '04. You can rely, to some extent, on personality. The '08 elections will be dominated by the Presidential race, and if you are smart enough to choose McCain or Giuliani (though I believe you favour neither), you are going to be hard to stop in the WH race; there's certainly noone on the current Democratic shortlist, barring perhaps Obama, who seems able to do so. So you can, of course, gamble that enough Republican Congressmen will return to DC in '08 purely on the coattails of a popular Presidential candidate. But dont you at least want to take account of who exactly deserted your side, why, and what would make them come back?

Considering that those who deserted you were largely moderates, how is more conservatism the answer? Considering they are voters who disapprove of the Iraq war and want the troops home sooner rather than later, how is "the will to win the war" an answer to convince them to return? Considering many were Hispanics, and that some of the politicians who most fiercely ran on an anti-illegal immigration platform failed spectacularly, how is a stronger focus on immigration the answer to win them back?

Surrender by any other name...
By Ann Coulter
Wednesday, December 13, 2006

How did we go from winning the war in Iraq to losing overnight? Was this decided by the same committee that changed "Peking" to "Beijing"?

These word changes are a fortiori evidence that liberals are part of a conspiracy. On what date did "horrible" and "actress" vanish from the English language to be replaced with "horrific" and "actor"? Who decided that? (Meanwhile, I'm still writing "Puff Daddy" in my nightly dream journal when everybody else has started calling him "Diddy.")

When did "B.C." (before Christ) and "A.D." (anno Domini, "in the year of the Lord") get replaced with "BCE" (before the common era) and "CE" (common era)? "Withdrawal" is "redeployment," "liberal" is "progressive," and "traitorous" is "patriotic."

These new linguistic conventions -- like going from "winning" to "losing" in Iraq -- simply spread like an invisible bacterial invasion.

To be sure, last month the Democrats did win a narrow majority in Congress for the first time in more than a decade. And it cannot be denied that for the past 50 years, Democrats have orchestrated humiliating foreign policy defeats for America. So it is understandable that some might interpret their midterm gains as a mandate for another humiliating defeat.

But that's not what the Democrats told Americans when they were running for office. To the contrary, they claimed to be gun-totin' hawks. A shockingly high number of Democratic candidates this year actually fought in wars. And not just the war on poverty, either -- real wars, against men with guns.

It was a specific plan of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Rahm Emanuel to fake out the voters by recruiting anti-war veterans to run against Republicans. (And when did "chairman" become "chair"?)

To the credit of the voters -- especially the American Legion and VFW -- the Democrats didn't fool enough Americans to even match the average midterm gains for the party out of power.

But the point is: You can't run as a phony patriot and then claim your victory is a mandate for surrender. That would be like awarding yourself undeserved Purple Hearts and then pretending to throw them over the White House wall in protest. No, that's not fair -- nothing could be as contemptible as throwing someone else's medals on the ground in protest.

Is it the report of the "Iraq Surrender Group" that suddenly caused everyone to say we're losing?

The ISG report was about what you'd expect if the ladies from "The View" were asked to come up with a victory plan for Iraq. We need to ask Syria to tell Hamas to stop calling for the destruction of Israel. Duh! "Dear Hamas, Do you like killing Jews, or do you LIKE killing Jews? Check yes or no."

Most of the esteemed members of the ISG were last seen on the "Dead or Alive?" Web site. Vernon Jordan's most recent claim to fame was getting Monica Lewinsky a job at Revlon when she was threatening Bill Clinton with the truth. He's going to figure out an honorable way to get out of Iraq?

We're still trying to figure out a six-part test from some decision Sandra Day O'Connor wrote back in 1984, but now she's going to tell us what to do in Iraq.

Have things changed on the ground in Iraq? Are our troops being routed? Hardly. The number of U.S. fatalities has gone from a high of 860 deaths in 2004 to 845 in 2005, to 695 through November of this year. If the Islamic fascists double their rate of killing Americans in the next month, there will still be fewer American fatalities in Iraq this year than in the previous two years.

Admittedly, it would be a little easier to track our progress in Iraq if the Pentagon would tell us how many of them we're killing, but apparently our Pentagon is too spooked by the insurgents posing as civilians to mention the deaths of our enemies.

Moreover, it might seem churlish to mention the number of Islamic lunatics we've killed during the holy month of Ramadan. Half the time we do anything to them, it's "the holy month of Ramadan." It's always Ramadan. When on Earth is Ramadan over?

It's true that no one anticipated that al-Qaida sympathizers would stream into Iraq to fight the Great Satan after Saddam fled to a spider hole, but that's because everyone expected al-Qaida to be fighting us here.

Like "Peking," that's something else we can't say anymore: the amazing absence of another 9/11-style terrorist attack in the past five years. The heart of the insurgency in Iraq is, by definition, composed of Islamic terrorists who hate the Great Satan, own an overnight bag and are willing to travel to kill Americans. But don't worry: The Iraq Surrender Group feels sure they won't come here if we pull out of Iraq.

If absolutely nothing changed in Iraq over the next few years -- if it didn't continue to get better and if the savages never lost heart (I'm assuming they subscribe to "TimesSelect") -- by 2010, 6,000 brave American troops will have died to prevent another 9/11 terrorist attack on American soil for a decade.

If that's a war Americans think we're "losing," Osama bin Laden was right: We are a paper tiger.

More Americans express doubts about a candidate who served in Bush's cabinet (59%) than one who is gay or lesbian (53%).

Interesting WSJ/NBC polling results

Quote:

More Americans express doubts about a candidate who served in Bush's cabinet (59%) than one who is gay or lesbian (53%).

In other words (re results in red) if Dick Cheney got serious plastic surgery so as to look like someone else, and pronounced that he was a homosexual, he'd have better electoral chances.

But what if he declared himself a gay Mormon? Hmmm?

You don't consider it angry, hateful, and devisive to post a personally directed statement accusing others of extremism that is angry, hateful, and devisive without a single reference or example to back it up?

We probably won't agree on this, Nimh. But I think if my summary of it was not true, then neither would the data you cite be true. I don't think conservative Republicans went out to elect moderates or liberals. I think conservative Republicans refused to re-elect people who weren't doing the job

Foxfyre wrote:

We probably won't agree on this, Nimh. But I think if my summary of it was not true, then neither would the data you cite be true. I don't think conservative Republicans went out to elect moderates or liberals. I think conservative Republicans refused to re-elect people who weren't doing the job

I dont understand this. The data I cited referred to the Republican Party losing swathes of moderates, independents, Hispanics and people who disapprove of the Iraq war in these past elections. People who did vote for Bush and the Republicans in 2000 and 2004, and now no longer do. Not conservatives - moderates and independents.

This is the thing you appear to refuse to grapple with: "conservative Republicans" alone can not bring you election victories, outside the reddest of states. There are just not enough of them. So even if the "conservatives Republicans" that you talk about here had voted to re-elect those Republican incumbents, most of them would still not have won. For your side to win the elections, you need to win many of those moderates, independents and Hispanics back.

How would you do that?

Enter Center

[..] Savvy use of their narrow House and Senate majorities was how, in a 50-50 nation, Republicans governed as if they had an overwhelming advantage--as if they were the American center rather than its right-most flank. Now that its congressional majority is gone, the GOP's "off-center" positions will be more exposed [..]. And, if Democrats play their cards right, voters will be reminded of this every day until election night 2008.

[..] The conventional view is that the Democrats are the ones who are in for a tough two years, as they try to reconcile their basic liberal instincts with their unexpected 2006 victories in relatively conservative regions. But this conclusion--reflective of some mysterious pundit geometry in which the electoral center is always halfway between the two parties--simply misses the extent to which middle-of-the-road voters support the main elements of the Democratic agenda.

Nearly every new Democrat in Congress ran not just against the war, but against privatization of Social Security and in support of raising the minimum wage, expanding health insurance, and protecting middle-class economic security--even in red states like Virginia and Montana. As long as Democrats stay focused on these issues, Republicans will remain in a difficult position.

After all, the GOP took its heaviest losses within its moderate ranks. In an even more conservative Republican caucus, there will be a powerful faction that blames defeat on insufficient clarity and urges a further pull to the right.

Democrats should give this faction the clarity it wants. In pursuing their own agenda, they need to put the GOP between the rock of its intense base and the hard place of swing voters on every key issue--from basic kitchen-table concerns (like health care and college tuition), to reform issues (like reestablishing pay-as-you-go budget rules and ensuring electoral fairness), to less controversial social issues (like stem-cell research). [..]

For a sense of how this might play out, look no further than Rick Santorum. In his voting record, Santorum was actually a run-of-the-mill GOP senator, only moderately to the right of his caucus' middle. His distinctiveness came from his willingness to run as who he was, rather than as a fake moderate. The result? Despite spending more than any senator not named Clinton, Santorum lost by a staggering 18 points. One has to go back 26 years to find a Senate incumbent thrown out by a similar margin.

Republicans say they lost because they abandoned their principles. Santorum's plight suggests that embracing those principles won't help, either. The GOP is off-center. If Democrats want to retain their edge, they need to make that clear over and over again.