Yip Yap Times

2006 Mid-Term Elections: The People Have Spoken

So now you have it. The Democratic Party has taken not the 15 seats it needed for control of the House, but at least 26 in the midterm elections of 2006. Technically, the Senate is still up for grabs but the Democrats need only two more seats to win control of the Senate. The last two holdouts are Montana and Virginia with a Democratic win projected for Montana. The race between Senator George Allen (R-VA) and James Webb is terribly tight and could end up in a recount. If so, we won’t know if the Democrats control the Senate until after the recount which will happen November 27. Regardless, I strongly suspect I will be sending my petitions to Senator Webb.

The GOP expected to lose some seats in both Houses of Congress but it did not expect such wholesale rejection. Superficial punditry, such as that expressed in today’s New York Times editorial page, explains the turnover as “an angry shout of repudiation of the Bush White House and the abysmal way the Republican majority has run Congress. The Republicans,” the editorial rants, “created their defeat by focusing obsessively on the right-wing ‘base,’ ostracizing not only the Democrats but their own party’s more moderate legislators.” The dissatisfaction of many Americans with the Administration’s handling of the war in Iraq and the Congressional handling of high-stakes issues such as illegal immigration, social security and health care was the impetus for the decision of many voters to give the other side a chance. But the ways,or non-ways that the Republican Congress handled these issues is reflective of a deeper problem in the GOP. I believe the GOP got the boot not because of its “obsession with the right-wing base,” but because it disappointed this huge conservative constituency.

The conservative Republican juggernaut that squashed the forty-year Democratic control of Congress back in 1994 succeeded because of its promise to govern on Reagan’s conservative principles. Limited government, tax reduction, deregulation, protection of the unborn, heading off activist judges, family values, property rights and national defense, that led to two landslide victories for President Reagan, are still part of the political psyche of a majority of Americans. But now, twelve years on, the people that the Newt Gingrich crowd tossed out have themselves become those people: straining to hold power for power’s sake, corruption, and frivolous spending. There are too many scandals for the Party of Values. There is too much pork for the Party of Fiscal Responsibility. There has been too much compromising of its own principles in order to hang on to power. It's not that the Republican Party in general has been more corrupt than its Democratic counterpart--it hasn't by far--but there is not much room for error if, having run on a platform against the excesses of past Democratic Congresses and administrations, you screw up. In short, the Republican Party has “lost its Reaganite soul” explained conservative leader Brent Bozell at a news conference that aired on CSPAN this morning.

It's too bad the Republican Party has lost the Congress because it has mainly been the GOP that has stood for conservative prinicples, even if it failed these last few years. I am for conservative governance and for whichever party wants to take it on, but I have no confidence in the party of San Francisco values. And conservatism is becoming a sour taste in the mouths of moderate citizens of all political persuasions because the GOP has strayed so far from the Reagan foundation.

So what are the conservatives to do? First, they should distance themselves from the Republican Party until the Party is willing to get back to the basics. Conservatives need to work with Democrats and Independents who share the same values in order to effect real and lasting change—to achieve a new “morning in America.” This is going to be hard for the next two years but when the voters see the mess the left is going to create for them, they will be eager to come back to the truely repentent Republican fold in 2008, if indeed the GOP has gotton it together by then.

Reagan was the eternal optimist and had all confidence that the American people, when faced with a choice, would always pick the right one. And in a convoluted sense, the American people have made the right choice in this election. If the Republican Party does not change its ways it deserves to fade into the sunset of a bygone era. If the GOP “returns to its Reagan roots, embraces the common sense principles and values” that most of America still believes in, then the party of “San Francisco Values” will be a blip on the radar screen of American governance.

keywords: midterm, mid-term, mid term, elections, Republicans, house, senate, majority

posted by Lisa @ 4:00 PM