Democrats didn’t win, as much as Republicans lost. They lost by running away–from the conservatives who voted them in in the first place. They lost because their top leadership, who portrayed himself as a “compassionate conservative”, had a lot more compassion than conservative in his makeup, and people got tired of it.
I made some time to listen to Rush Limbaugh today. Despite his on-air demeanor, he often has some useful things to say. the best point he made was that Conservatism (as opposed to Liberalism) won. The only conservatives running were conservative Democrats. While not strictly true, his point is well taken. No Democrat supported by the far-left fringe of their party won a national race. But a number of conservative Democrats won theirs.
While a number of conservative commentators and media outlets are downcast, Rush was pretty much buoyant. He says that it’s because he no longer has to “carry the water” for those who don’t deserve it. Maybe if he had made a point of not doing it, things would have worked out a bit differently.
I’ve been plenty critical of the President and his party when they merited it–and they’ve merited it a lot. For the past 2 years, and you could argue that it has been more like the past 4 or 5 years, the Republican Party has failed to “dance wit’ the one who brung ’em”. I suspect that lead to a number of conservatives who stayed home to send a “message” to the Republican Party. Bad idea. What you’ve done is to put the fox in charge of the hen house.
I held my nose and did as I’ve counseled everyone to do–voted a straight Republican ticket. Not because I thought that was the “right” way to vote, but because the consequences of a Democrat takeover of Congress were too dark to contemplate. Let me throw out a few thoughts for you to wake up at 3 AM and consider:
- A fast exit from Iraq and a failure to finish hunting down terrorists
- Failure to renew the tax cuts
- Even more government spending and spiraling debt
- The passage of an illegal immigrant amnesty bill, cleverly disguised as “immigration reform”
- Son of Assault Weapons Ban (New and Improved! with Confiscation)
- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
- President of the Senate Harry Reid
- Boosting the chances of a Democrat President of the US in 2008
Those of us who are conservative (or at least, mostly conservative), can hope that the Republican Party, after they stop seeing stars, does a little soul-searching and realizes they lost because they strayed too far from what most of us saw as the ideals of the party. They have 2 years to get their act together, convince us that they have seen the error of their ways and get us some conservative candidates on the ballot. It’s either that, or they’ll loose again in 2008.