Jun 12 2009
GOP Ice Age?
Despairing Republican friends have been asking me what I think we should do to rebuild the GOP and begin our certain and inevitable comeback. My answer disappoints them: “Build an ark.”
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It was a huge shock to the GOP when Barack Obama won Republican Indiana last year. The bigger news was how he did it. Latino voters delivered the state. Exit polls showed that they provided Obama with a margin of more than 58,000 votes in a state he carried by a slim 26,000 votes. That’s right, GOP, you’ve entered a brave new world ruled by Latino Hoosiers, and you’re losing.
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Rather than face up to all this, too many in the GOP are stuck in a swoon of nostalgia. Most of our party leaders come from bloodred GOP states or safe districts, so they are far more at home in the tribal politics of Republican primaries than in those of the country as a whole. You could say their radio dials are stuck on AM.Â
Is that like being stuck on stupid?
This truly sucks. One party is governing like the Mafia, and the other is utterly ineffectual and can’t even rouse themselves to so much as talk about what Obama and the Democrats are doing.
Sarah Palin is about the only politician in America I’d make it a point to vote for right now.
No, AJ. It’s stuck on Smart.
Obama won because he had a Perfect Political Storm at his back. The Republicans were carrying the millstones of a drawn-out campaign in Iraq, a weak Presidential candidate, a stock market meltdown, a reputation for reckless spending, and an odor of general incompetence. Obama had a massive advantage in funds, a fawning press, and the race card. The marvel is that McCain got 47% of the vote.
But I’m old enough to have seen this before. 1976, when Carter got elected. 1992, when Clinton got in. And I remember what happened…the Dems overplayed their hand and got crushed.
Obama’s policies are deeply unpopular, unemployment is heading for Carter-esque levels, and inflation threatens to follow suit. Add to that a growing foreign policy crisis in North Korea and elsewhere, and accumulating evidence of wholesale criminal acts by Democrat officials. It’s a recipe for a crushing defeat for the Democrats in 2010, and a thrashing for Obama in 2012.
It only remains for the Republicans to pick a standard-bearer. And they will have no shortage of good candidates.
Actually AJ, the GOP is doing better lately. According to Rasmussen they are in a dead heat as far as generic balloting is concerned, and even RCP has them close. By all indications the electorate is actually liking them better than they did a few months ago. Even Gallup is showing some gains on economic issues.
As far as Indiana goes, the Governor here is Mitch Daniels. He won a second term by 18 points, destroying the Democratic opposition.
His administration has also brought criminal charges against ACORN for registering non existent people in cities like Indianapolis. Many Republicans are convinced that Obama stole the election here.
I don’t know if that is true, but Obama won by less than 1% and if Barr had not been on the ticket and split the conservative vote he would not have won at all.
I think it was a combination of the economic meltdown, gas prices, and weariness with the war that helped Obama here as much as anything.
But this is still a mostly conservative state. If it were not Mitch Daniels would not have won that election.
Aitch:
I like Sarah Palin too. She did a good job of standing up to Matt Lauer on the Today show today. I saw the video at Hot Air.
But to be honest, I am so disgusted with some of the crazy stuff Obama is doing I would vote for just about anyone the GOP put up against him. They could not do worse.
I am with Mike. I do not believe I am deluding myself in thinking that Obama will not be “historic” next time, that turnout will be much lower, and the Democrats will now have to take “credit” for governing.
Rick
“Rather than face up to all this, too many in the GOP are stuck in a swoon of nostalgia.”
Thank you to the four previous commenters for proving AJ’s point.
But hey, feel free to insist on even more tests of purity, and keep on kicking those RINOs out of your party. I’m sure if you become small and “pure” enough, eventually you’ll start winning national and congressional elections again.
Let’s see…???? Should we follow Guy’s and James Carville’s advice on how to improve our chances for the next election?
Seems that every left-wing analyst, and every Republican who either trashed Sarah Palin or outright endorsed Obama is telling us that we need to “moderate”.
It’s like that old game show I guess. “Who Do You Trust?”
“Rather than face up to all this, too many in the GOP are stuck in a swoon of nostalgia. ”
I somewhat disagree with that. What the GOP “base” has is some kind of cognitive dissonance. I can’t count how many times I have heard people say that if the GOP would just run a “real” conservative, the GOP would win. Funny thing is, when someone wins, they hang the “real conservative” moniker on them, true or not. Reagan was actually quite liberal in many ways. He was strongly pro immigration. He olved what “illegal immigration” problem we had at the time with a sweeping amnesty. As governor of California he presided over the greatest “redistribution of wealth” in state history with Proposition 13 with which the state took control of the county property tax revenue, took a cut for itself, and redistributed it back out to the counties.
Reagan also did not believe in codifying “conservative values” in law. He was about freedom … for EVERYONE, liberal and conservative. Getting government OFF the backs of the people; not just changing the color of the shirt of the monkey from blue to red.
California “staunch conservatives” couldn’t stand Reagan because Reagan was never “conservative enough”. But once Reagan became wildly popular, everyone is falling all over themselves to re-cast him as some kind of “staunch” conservative.
You put a “real conservative” up for election and I guarantee you that candidate would get plastered in a landslide loss. Overall, most of America doesn’t want government shoving “intelligent design” into the schools,
I could vote for Palin as she has balance. I could vote for Meg Whitman but she is going to do a stint as California Governor first. I could vote for Romney. I could never vote for a Jindal or a Huckabee. Never going to happen.
I finally got myself properly registered so that I could comment after lurking here forever.
Mike Murphy is looking out for Mike Murphy, first and foremost. He needs to get that face time on Meet the Press in order to send out inflated bills to gullible clients for his super-genius.
Crosspatch,
“As governor of California he presided over the greatest “redistribution of wealth†in state history with Proposition 13 with which the state took control of the county property tax revenue, took a cut for itself, and redistributed it back out to the counties.”
Except, you know, he didn’t. Prop 13 passed in ’78 while Moonbeam was guv. I have no doubt that Reagan was a supporter of Prop 13, it’s just that lately everywhere I go I see that thing (prop 13) misrepresented. Usually it’s the left claiming that Prop 13 is the reason CA’s a basket case. Living in the “moderate” Ahnulld’s hell-hole, I’ve had to educate myself on the history of taxation, exploitation and gerrymandering that have led us to insolvency. And Prop 13 isn’t the problem.
And who’s kicking anyone out of the party? If you vote for Obama’s generational theft in the senate and get upset because you aren’t treated as a returning hero, who is really at fault?
AJ has documented with scientific precision the catastrophe that is the “stimulus”. The catastrophe would not have occurred without the acquiesence of the “moderates” (Specter, Snowe, Collins IIRC). At some point you have to draw a line. I’m not even suggesting that that vote was it. But if it’s not then it’s pretty darn close.