Don’t trust those predicting a GOP sweep. Here’s the thing, nobody knows anything. Just two years ago all the prognosticators foresaw a new era of progressivism with the GOP being banished to the hinterlands. Let’s walk down Memory Lane and check out all the doomsday predictions made in 2008 for the GOP. They did everything but carve the tombstone.
“This was not just a change election, but a sea-change election,” Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, said during remarks at the National Press Club. “This is the end of the conservative era.”
“What you’re seeing in the nation is the emergence of a center-left majority,” Borosage continued. “We are witnessing the creation of a permanent progressive majority.”
Dem Strategist John Del Cecato wrote for The Hill:
But for congressional Republicans today, reaching independent voters may not be the highest priority. Most congressional Republicans represent “safe” districts and states, with electorates far more conservative than the nation as a whole. The biggest political danger facing these GOP members is the prospect of a primary challenge from the right. They need to keep their base satisfied, so they pay homage to Rush, and push sitting and would-be national party leaders like Steele and Jindal further to the right. In the process, polls show, congressional Republicans are alienating the independent voters so crucial to winning national elections.
In this week’s Wall Street Journal poll, President Obama’s favorability rating is at an all-time high, while the GOP’s rating is near its all-time low. Private polling suggests that margin is even wider among independents.
If that trend continues, the Loyal Opposition won’t just be marginalized; it’ll be isolated.And from a political failure of that magnitude, Republicans won’t soon recover.
Ruy Teixeira of AmericanProgress.org wrote: “Twenty Years of Demographic, Geographic, and Attitudinal Changes Across the Country Herald a New Progressive Majority.”
UPI ColumnistMartin Seiff wrote this spectacularly unprescient piece:
What is next for the Republican Party after its historic whipping Tuesday? Try four years of denial.
Venerable conservative pundits and talk show hosts who have dominated the airwaves and op-ed pages of the Great Republic for the past three decades can continue to lament the departure of Ronald Reagan the way the ancient Egyptians once mourned for Osiris or the ancient Greeks the passing of the great god Pan, but he ain’t coming back.
All the talk about so-called strategies for the future among Republicans has focused on “getting back to the essentials” that have defined conservative politics in the Republican Party for the past generation — low taxes, free trade, minimum government, low interest rates and happily running up astronomical budget and international trade deficits on the assumption that there would never be a day of reckoning. But between the great Wall Street meltdown and President-elect Barack Obama’s decisive national victory, it came.
Republican conservatives are fond of arguing that Obama is doomed to fail and that when he does, the American public will eagerly embrace the GOP in relief as it pitches its traditional message once again.
But this is a passive and even fantasy-world approach to political strategy. Obama and an awful lot of well-educated, ambitious and experienced people around him do not intend to fail. If they can stabilize the U.S. economy, significantly reduce the annual government budget deficits that George W. Bush ran up and bring down the potentially catastrophic annual trade deficits, the Dems could be running the country for many elections to come.
So don’t believe the prognosticators. Please get out and vote because it doesn’t matter what they say is going to happen. You have to make it happen.
November 2, 2010 at 7:06 pm
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November 2, 2010 at 7:13 pm
Your post brings to mind three words, "Dewey Defeats Truman".
November 2, 2010 at 7:25 pm
Exactly. Here in MD, the Liberal media is saying the message that the Democrat governor is winning. No one knows that really as you said – not until the fat woman sings.
November 2, 2010 at 7:34 pm
http://www.therightscoop.com/open-thread-video-i-am-american
Great song for motivation! Vote! Great point and great post!
November 2, 2010 at 8:31 pm
Rick, Sorry you live in MD. I used to live there. It can be a lovely place, but you are surrounded by liberals. (I am kidding of course about sorry for you living there, my whole family is there). I personally did have to move to a place where I felt it would be better to raise my family.
November 2, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Reading those articles seems so odd to me today but I do remember hearing many people say some of the same things expressed.
What a difference today, I wonder what they will write tomorrow.
November 2, 2010 at 9:48 pm
I voted early, but since I am not a Democrat I am not allowed to vote often.
— Mack
November 2, 2010 at 11:02 pm
I DARE THE REPS THAT WIN TO BE GOOD
November 2, 2010 at 11:44 pm
If only there would be significant changes if the Republicans win. But as in 1994 and many other cases there wont be. The Democrats want to drive us off the clif at 90 miles an hour; the Republicans want to drive us off the cliff at 50 miles per hour.
And, of course, both parties are firmly in the grip of that ubiquitous Lobby – the one to end all lobbies. Let us always keep that well in mind.
November 3, 2010 at 3:26 pm
"The Democrats want to drive us off the cliff at 90 miles an hour; the Republicans want to drive us off the cliff at 50 miles per hour."
This is exactly right and it hits the nail on the head better than any other statement I've ever heard.
This sums up my sentiments perfectly. I've said for a while that we are on the inevitable path to collapse, as inevitably happens with every democracy. It will happen regardless, but will simply take a bit longer with Republicans than with Democrats. There are simply too many in the general population who vote in their own self-interest for any appreciable number of fully and truly principled candidates to ever be elected. Even with people who mostly vote Republican, the common sentiment by the public is one which expects the government to provide for us, solve our problems and make us happy. I even heard some of these expressions from last night by some who voted Republican and are opposed to the Democrats. Sentiments like these are the quintessential indication that we have crossed a point from which there is no turning back, and it only goes downhill from here. The government will only continue to grow and bribe the public with its own money (to include OTHER peoples' money) and more debt. And most people will always vote in a way which will only continue to foster this.
Believe what you will – no one in any other country or economy that ever collapsed ever believed it would happen to them, either. But I, for one, will not fall into that trap of ultimate naivety. It WILL happen to us just like everyone.
November 7, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Also, the GOP sweep didn't happen everywhere, nor did it necessarily have effects that will be permanent.
Case in point: in Illinois, where I live, the GOP did flip three (probably four, but ballot counting isn't over for that one) Congressional seats from blue to red, and also won Obama's old Senate seat (as noted in "Live Blogging The Apocalypse")
Unfortunately, Dems hung on to the governor's seat, and kept control of both legislative houses (although they did lose a few seats). That means that when redistricting is done next year, the Dems will be in total control of it and you can bet your gluteus maximus they will draw the maps as much to their advantage as possible. So the GOP will have an uphill battle KEEPING those Congressional seats.
On the national level, a lot changed in two years, didn't it? Which means a lot could change BACK in the next two years depending on events. It's way too early to write Obama's political obit; Truman, Reagan and Clinton all had disastrous mid-term elections in their first terms but they all survived to win re-election.
All that being said, while I know that Republicans/conservatives/pro-lifers get "unfair" treatment in the media, from the political establishment, etc. sometimes I get tired of all the whining I hear about it. Yes, the deck may be stacked against us, but, deal with it. If you have to try twice as hard as the "other side" to win, then just DO IT. Failure is not an option!
Elaine