On November 4 Barrack Obama won the Presidency with what looks like 52% of the vote, Democrats have picked at least 21 seats in the House defeating several incumbents, while only 4 Democratic incumbents were defeated, and one of them was involved in multiple sex scandals. The result in the Senate was just as bleak for the Republicans, they lost 6 seats so far with 3 more to close to call. If all those seats are called for the Democrats they will have 60 seats in the Senate, giving them a super-majority that can kill filibusters.
Long term realignment trends look bad as well, Obama won both Virginia and Colorado which have been trending Democrat for a while and seem to be slightly Democratic now. These 2 states alone push the electoral map below the needed 270 for the Republicans, to win the Presidency again Republicans will have to either win back these states, or turn other blue states red. In congress with the defeat of moderate Connecticut congressman Chris Shays Republicans in the House have been shut of New England Entirely.
On January 20 of next year the Presidency, House of Representatives, and the Senate will all be controlled by partisan, left-wing ideologues who will steer this country far to the left of what the public wants. Conservatives need to lay the ground work for a comeback today to retake congress in 2010, and the White House in 2012. Conservatives need to find a way to control the conversation of political dialogue, as the Democrats did this year, and get even blue states to take a second look at Conservatism.
Conservatives have the public on their side on many issues: taxes, drilling, nuclear power, a secret ballot for union members, and controlling spending to name a few. Republicans can't be pale imitations of the Democrats, but they also cannot be hard-core ideologues who shut out differing points of view. A balance must be struck and it must be struck soon. New strategy is badly needed, and we must be ready for 2010 today.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
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2 comments:
Pat Buchanan has written several times that the GOP is essentially finished. In some ways, I agree with his assessment, but not for the same reason. I think the GOP needs to get back to its roots, what made Reagan a landslide winner, and what made the Republican party strong. Small government, personal responsibility, lower taxes, a strong military, and so on. You've mentioned most of those here on this site. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening. If it did, I'd be overjoyed.
Still, I try to go through life seeing the glass as half-full rather than half-empty. That isn't easy to do sometimes. I just went to CNN's 2008 election web site (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/president/), and ran through the "battleground" states to see just how much of a margin the election really was decided by. Despite that Obama got something like 8 million more popular votes nationwide than McCain, McCain still could have pulled out the election by winning the close battleground states. The total margin of victory in the 10 close states of VA, NC, OH, IN, FL, IA, CO, NM, NV and MO was 16,779,092-15,514,284 in favor of Obama, for a total margin of only 1,264,808 votes. Those states combined are worth 123 electoral votes. By reversing just 1.3 million votes (or drawing out those 1.3 million of us who didn't want to hold our noses and vote for McCain, at least those in the 10 states listed), McCain would have won the election by a 296-242 Electoral College margin. And we would have riots in the streets of all the major cities with large black populations, just like after the Rodney King verdict. And calls from the dem's to do away with the Electoral College.
What this shows me is that yes, we can take back the White House, but not if we're (and I'm talking about us Republicans here) going to field candidates who support open borders or stifle free political speech (I'm thinking McCain on both counts), and we're not going to recruit numbers from the "hip-hop" crowd. Pat Buchanan said it best, the GOP used to be the party of the middle-class White family. And it's not racist to say that, just a fact.
Sorry, I miscalculated something here. MO went for McCain. But still, you can see just how relatively close it really was. So take away MO's 11 votes for McCain that I double-counted, and he still ends up a 285-252 winner.
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