Since McConnell & Co. are dying to know my ideas for what the GOP should do next, I will share some of them in my upcoming post, and at some point after that I will wrap up last month's "Loquacious Latina" series.
Today's post, however, takes a look back at some lessons that can be gleaned from the Republican wave that rolled ashore last week. Such as...
Take nothing for granted
The obvious takeaway is that American voters rejected Obama's brand of big-government socialist liberalism for the pure and simple reason than it has been failing at an escalating pace for six years running, both in economic and national security matters, and the pace of its failure is now so fast as to feel supersonic.
Perhaps I should focus on that takeaway, but I'm not going to because I know the voters' rejection of Obamaism does not necessarily mean they have accepted the vision of Milton Friedman.
If you doubt me, consider that in an Edison Research exit poll of 18,000 voters, 52 percent said they believe Hillary Clinton would not make a good president, and by a 16-point margin they said they would vote for "the Republican candidate" over her (a good sign!) -- yet in the very same poll, 60 percent said they believe Rand Paul would not make a good president and 64 percent said the same of Chris Christie (a not so good sign).
Basically, all the voters have done is reject Obama's worldview; ask Republicans to stop his ideas from continuing to become reality; and invite them to articulate a vision of their own and prove they have the nerve to implement it.
Demography is not destiny
In my mind, the biggest takeaway from the midterms is the rapid erosion of Democrats' ability to convince minorities that the Democratic Party is their salvation. And by "minorities" I guess I mean any demographic group that pandering liberals claim to love.
Women: Liberals have long accused Republicans of wanting women barred from lucrative jobs and forced to give birth to ten children by the age of 35. Though the accusations were never true, they became even more egregious when Democrats kept making them in spite of the fact that red states like South Carolina and Alaska elected women as governors. Then came last Tuesday, when Republican women won U.S. Senate seats in two non-red states.
Up in Iowa (which voted twice for Obama and has gone Republican only once in the last seven presidential elections) Jodi Ernst handily defeated Bruce Braley by a margin of 52-44. And in West Virginia, Shelley Moore Capito clobbered Natalie Tennant 62-34, becoming the first Republican to win a Senatorial election in that state since 1956 (and the first woman from either party to ever win one there).
Making things even better is that Democrat Wendy Davis -- the media's pinup, intellectually shallow, abortion-on-demand candidate for Texas governor -- lost the female vote to Republican Greg Abbott by six points.
Dems have long condescended to women by acting like the only things they care about are 1) forcing someone else to pay for their contraception and 2) being allowed tokill their children terminate their pregnancies without any restrictions whatsoever, for any reason they desire, at any time they desire right up to the due date and beyond, so long as some portion of the baby's body has yet to slip outside the vagina. Fortunately, it looks like more and more women are seeing that condescension for what it really is.
The "black vote": For the last half-century or so, no voting bloc has been as one-sided as that of black Americans. In race after race, state after state, the percentage of blacks who vote Republican has been stuck in single digits -- until last Tuesday brought some surprising results.
In Obama's home state of Illinois, which is bluer than the sky, Republican Bruce Gauner did what everyone thought impossible by beating incumbent Democrat Pat Quinn in the governor's race. And not only did he win, he did so while receiving an astonishing 20 percent of the black vote. It might sound pathetic to celebrate winning only 20 percent of something, but when you think about the math, it seems that if the GOP could get that much of the black vote nationwide, it would almost never lose an election. The fact that Gauner got 20 percent in Illinois, of all places, shows that that number can be attained and even exceeded.
Then there is Maryland, which has the fourth-largest black population in America, at 29.44 percent of its total. On top of that, Maryland is a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than two to one. In short, it sounds like a place where Republicans could never win, and for much of its history that has been the case. However, when last Tuesday came, white Republican Larry Hogan defeated black Democrat Anthony Brown in the governor's race. (Keep in mind that in addition to having the advantage of being a Democrat and being black, Brown also had the advantage of being Maryland's incumbent lieutenant governor).
Maybe this video is having an effect.
Black Americans as Republicans: Related to the Left's assertion that black people in this country should never vote for Republicans is its belief that black people could never run as Republicans. Because, you know, Republicans are racists and would never allow a black candidate to get through a primary. But in South Carolina, Republican Tim Scott just became the first black person since the 1800's to win a U.S. Senate seat in one of the former Confederate states (though as recently as 2010, there was a Democrat serving in the U.S. Senate who actually was a Ku Klux Klansman).
Plus, out in Utah -- where the black population is almost invisible -- black, female, Brooklyn-born Republican Mia Love was elected to the U.S. Senate after winning more than half the vote against white, male, Utah-born Democrat Doug Owens and white, male Libertarian Jim Vein.
The "Hispanic vote": Historically, up through the near-history that is the 2012 election, the nationwide Hispanic vote has gone overwhelmingly for the Democrats. Not as overwhelmingly Democrat as the black vote, but still Democrat by an extremely wide margin. Then, last week, there were signs of change when Greg Abbott received 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in Texas, Nathan Deal received 47 percent in Georgia, and Sam Brownback received 47 percent in Kansas. (Comparatively speaking, Mitt Romney received only 27 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2012, though admittedly, that 27 percent is a national figure rather than a state-specific one.)
Considering the above...
...don't you think some of the honchos at Democrat Headquarters are getting worried that their electoral foundation is starting to crack?
Two Transcendent Issues
During this election season, for whatever the reason was (and it was probably to avoid having its words mischaracterized), the Republican Party itself chose not to say anything at all about its platform. The party, kind of like a football team playing prevent defense or trying to milk the clock late in a game, decided that its safest bet for achieving victory was simply to point out that the other team sucks.
Fortunately, it did not impose that game plane on its individual candidates, and those candidates who made the biggest splash did so by focusing on two specific issues over which the public is truly energized: fighting Obamacare and turning back the tide of illegal immigration.
With regard to the former:
David Harsanyi made this observation: "Another myth we heard for weeks leading up to the elections was that Republicans had abandoned Obamacare as an issue. Turns out some of the biggest winners in the most competitive states -- Cory Gardner in Colorado, Jodi Ernst in Iowa -- were full-throated critics of the Affordable Care Act and never shied away. According to Kantar Media's Compaign Analysis Group, Obamacare ads dominated TV and radio. The GOP ran about 13,000 Obamacare ads in Senate races in one week leading up to Election Day. When was the last time a single piece of legislation dominated a midterm that way?"
Actually, I would submit that the answer to Harsanyi's question is the midterm immediately preceding this one; and I would add that the galvanizing issue then was the very same one, since the GOP's 2010 landslide was driven largely by Americans' bipartisan dislike of Obamacare and outrage over the way it was passed against their will. You may go here to read Harsanyi's entire column (which was about several election-related matters, not merely about Obamacare).
With regard to the latter: Well, well, well. The Exalted One and his minions used the first half of his first term to shove his brand of "health care reform" down the public's throat without the public's approval, and the public responded by poleaxing his party at the midterm. And now that the the first half of The Exalted One's second term has resulted in another midterm poleaxing, he is seeking a bookend kind of symmetry by plotting to shove amnesty for illegal aliens down the public's throat without the public's approval.
Make no mistake about it: The public loathes the idea of amnesty. From coast to coast, in states blue and purple as well as red, Republicans who vowed to combat illegal immigration defeated Democrats who did not.
Oregon is far from the southern border and arguably the most liberal state in our blessed Union, and even its voters voiced an unambiguous "Hell no!" to illegal immigration when they voted against Measure 88 by a margin of 67-33 (the measure would have allowed illegal aliens to obtain driver's licenses, and Oregonians cast more votes over than particular issue than they did over any other item on the ballot).
New Hampshire has been predominantly blue for 20 years and is about as far from the southern border as you can get without crossing into Canada. In addition to facing the disadvantage of being a Republican candidate in that state, Scott Brown faced the obstacle of being called a carpetbagger because he moved there less than a year ago. He was thought to have no chance against incumbent Jeanne Shaheen when he decided to run against her for one of the state's U.S. Senate seats, and indeed, for most of the election season he was far behind her in the polls... However, in the weeks before Election Day the large gap between them rapidly closed after Brown made illegal immigration a central issue in the race. Yes, he wound up losing by a hair, but if not for the issue of illegal immigration, he would have gotten blown out.
So make no mistake about this: Barack Hussein Obama knows very well that the public loathes the idea of amnesty, just as he knew we loathed the idea of nationalized medicine when he forced it upon us in 2010. If he was unconstrained by public opinion then, when a midterm was visible through his windshield and he himself faced reelection in two years, just imagine how unconstrained he is feeling now, with his final midterm in the rearview mirror and he himself not facing reelection for the rest of his life.
And finally, make no mistake about this: When Barack Hussein Obama quickly makes millions of illegals legal with the stroke of a pen -- giving them all access to a smorgasbord of taxpayer-funded benefits; giving them a pathway to citizenship that ignores the rules millions of people from other countries have followed by coming here legally; screwing millions of blue collar Americans who will suddenly have to compete for jobs against once-illegals who work for less -- he will do so not in spite of public opinion but because of it. He loathes the American public for disagreeing with him, and this act will be his most cathartic way of saying "fuck you" to the nation that made him its first black president and even gave him a second chance after his first term proved a disaster.
His spiritual mentor, the Right Reverend Jeremiah Wright, will be smiling.
The obvious takeaway is that American voters rejected Obama's brand of big-government socialist liberalism for the pure and simple reason than it has been failing at an escalating pace for six years running, both in economic and national security matters, and the pace of its failure is now so fast as to feel supersonic.
Perhaps I should focus on that takeaway, but I'm not going to because I know the voters' rejection of Obamaism does not necessarily mean they have accepted the vision of Milton Friedman.
If you doubt me, consider that in an Edison Research exit poll of 18,000 voters, 52 percent said they believe Hillary Clinton would not make a good president, and by a 16-point margin they said they would vote for "the Republican candidate" over her (a good sign!) -- yet in the very same poll, 60 percent said they believe Rand Paul would not make a good president and 64 percent said the same of Chris Christie (a not so good sign).
Basically, all the voters have done is reject Obama's worldview; ask Republicans to stop his ideas from continuing to become reality; and invite them to articulate a vision of their own and prove they have the nerve to implement it.
Demography is not destiny
In my mind, the biggest takeaway from the midterms is the rapid erosion of Democrats' ability to convince minorities that the Democratic Party is their salvation. And by "minorities" I guess I mean any demographic group that pandering liberals claim to love.
Women: Liberals have long accused Republicans of wanting women barred from lucrative jobs and forced to give birth to ten children by the age of 35. Though the accusations were never true, they became even more egregious when Democrats kept making them in spite of the fact that red states like South Carolina and Alaska elected women as governors. Then came last Tuesday, when Republican women won U.S. Senate seats in two non-red states.
Up in Iowa (which voted twice for Obama and has gone Republican only once in the last seven presidential elections) Jodi Ernst handily defeated Bruce Braley by a margin of 52-44. And in West Virginia, Shelley Moore Capito clobbered Natalie Tennant 62-34, becoming the first Republican to win a Senatorial election in that state since 1956 (and the first woman from either party to ever win one there).
Making things even better is that Democrat Wendy Davis -- the media's pinup, intellectually shallow, abortion-on-demand candidate for Texas governor -- lost the female vote to Republican Greg Abbott by six points.
Dems have long condescended to women by acting like the only things they care about are 1) forcing someone else to pay for their contraception and 2) being allowed to
The "black vote": For the last half-century or so, no voting bloc has been as one-sided as that of black Americans. In race after race, state after state, the percentage of blacks who vote Republican has been stuck in single digits -- until last Tuesday brought some surprising results.
In Obama's home state of Illinois, which is bluer than the sky, Republican Bruce Gauner did what everyone thought impossible by beating incumbent Democrat Pat Quinn in the governor's race. And not only did he win, he did so while receiving an astonishing 20 percent of the black vote. It might sound pathetic to celebrate winning only 20 percent of something, but when you think about the math, it seems that if the GOP could get that much of the black vote nationwide, it would almost never lose an election. The fact that Gauner got 20 percent in Illinois, of all places, shows that that number can be attained and even exceeded.
Then there is Maryland, which has the fourth-largest black population in America, at 29.44 percent of its total. On top of that, Maryland is a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than two to one. In short, it sounds like a place where Republicans could never win, and for much of its history that has been the case. However, when last Tuesday came, white Republican Larry Hogan defeated black Democrat Anthony Brown in the governor's race. (Keep in mind that in addition to having the advantage of being a Democrat and being black, Brown also had the advantage of being Maryland's incumbent lieutenant governor).
Maybe this video is having an effect.
Black Americans as Republicans: Related to the Left's assertion that black people in this country should never vote for Republicans is its belief that black people could never run as Republicans. Because, you know, Republicans are racists and would never allow a black candidate to get through a primary. But in South Carolina, Republican Tim Scott just became the first black person since the 1800's to win a U.S. Senate seat in one of the former Confederate states (though as recently as 2010, there was a Democrat serving in the U.S. Senate who actually was a Ku Klux Klansman).
Plus, out in Utah -- where the black population is almost invisible -- black, female, Brooklyn-born Republican Mia Love was elected to the U.S. Senate after winning more than half the vote against white, male, Utah-born Democrat Doug Owens and white, male Libertarian Jim Vein.
The "Hispanic vote": Historically, up through the near-history that is the 2012 election, the nationwide Hispanic vote has gone overwhelmingly for the Democrats. Not as overwhelmingly Democrat as the black vote, but still Democrat by an extremely wide margin. Then, last week, there were signs of change when Greg Abbott received 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in Texas, Nathan Deal received 47 percent in Georgia, and Sam Brownback received 47 percent in Kansas. (Comparatively speaking, Mitt Romney received only 27 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2012, though admittedly, that 27 percent is a national figure rather than a state-specific one.)
Considering the above...
...don't you think some of the honchos at Democrat Headquarters are getting worried that their electoral foundation is starting to crack?
Two Transcendent Issues
During this election season, for whatever the reason was (and it was probably to avoid having its words mischaracterized), the Republican Party itself chose not to say anything at all about its platform. The party, kind of like a football team playing prevent defense or trying to milk the clock late in a game, decided that its safest bet for achieving victory was simply to point out that the other team sucks.
Fortunately, it did not impose that game plane on its individual candidates, and those candidates who made the biggest splash did so by focusing on two specific issues over which the public is truly energized: fighting Obamacare and turning back the tide of illegal immigration.
With regard to the former:
David Harsanyi made this observation: "Another myth we heard for weeks leading up to the elections was that Republicans had abandoned Obamacare as an issue. Turns out some of the biggest winners in the most competitive states -- Cory Gardner in Colorado, Jodi Ernst in Iowa -- were full-throated critics of the Affordable Care Act and never shied away. According to Kantar Media's Compaign Analysis Group, Obamacare ads dominated TV and radio. The GOP ran about 13,000 Obamacare ads in Senate races in one week leading up to Election Day. When was the last time a single piece of legislation dominated a midterm that way?"
Actually, I would submit that the answer to Harsanyi's question is the midterm immediately preceding this one; and I would add that the galvanizing issue then was the very same one, since the GOP's 2010 landslide was driven largely by Americans' bipartisan dislike of Obamacare and outrage over the way it was passed against their will. You may go here to read Harsanyi's entire column (which was about several election-related matters, not merely about Obamacare).
With regard to the latter: Well, well, well. The Exalted One and his minions used the first half of his first term to shove his brand of "health care reform" down the public's throat without the public's approval, and the public responded by poleaxing his party at the midterm. And now that the the first half of The Exalted One's second term has resulted in another midterm poleaxing, he is seeking a bookend kind of symmetry by plotting to shove amnesty for illegal aliens down the public's throat without the public's approval.
Make no mistake about it: The public loathes the idea of amnesty. From coast to coast, in states blue and purple as well as red, Republicans who vowed to combat illegal immigration defeated Democrats who did not.
Oregon is far from the southern border and arguably the most liberal state in our blessed Union, and even its voters voiced an unambiguous "Hell no!" to illegal immigration when they voted against Measure 88 by a margin of 67-33 (the measure would have allowed illegal aliens to obtain driver's licenses, and Oregonians cast more votes over than particular issue than they did over any other item on the ballot).
New Hampshire has been predominantly blue for 20 years and is about as far from the southern border as you can get without crossing into Canada. In addition to facing the disadvantage of being a Republican candidate in that state, Scott Brown faced the obstacle of being called a carpetbagger because he moved there less than a year ago. He was thought to have no chance against incumbent Jeanne Shaheen when he decided to run against her for one of the state's U.S. Senate seats, and indeed, for most of the election season he was far behind her in the polls... However, in the weeks before Election Day the large gap between them rapidly closed after Brown made illegal immigration a central issue in the race. Yes, he wound up losing by a hair, but if not for the issue of illegal immigration, he would have gotten blown out.
So make no mistake about this: Barack Hussein Obama knows very well that the public loathes the idea of amnesty, just as he knew we loathed the idea of nationalized medicine when he forced it upon us in 2010. If he was unconstrained by public opinion then, when a midterm was visible through his windshield and he himself faced reelection in two years, just imagine how unconstrained he is feeling now, with his final midterm in the rearview mirror and he himself not facing reelection for the rest of his life.
And finally, make no mistake about this: When Barack Hussein Obama quickly makes millions of illegals legal with the stroke of a pen -- giving them all access to a smorgasbord of taxpayer-funded benefits; giving them a pathway to citizenship that ignores the rules millions of people from other countries have followed by coming here legally; screwing millions of blue collar Americans who will suddenly have to compete for jobs against once-illegals who work for less -- he will do so not in spite of public opinion but because of it. He loathes the American public for disagreeing with him, and this act will be his most cathartic way of saying "fuck you" to the nation that made him its first black president and even gave him a second chance after his first term proved a disaster.
His spiritual mentor, the Right Reverend Jeremiah Wright, will be smiling.
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