Obama won and the Republicans lost most major races.
The Republicans salvaged some Senate races and avoided a Democrat majority that equals 60, the cloture vote total. However, the 60 vote rule is a Senate rule and can be changed by simple majority vote. There was discussion during the Bush administration that the Democratic block on court nominations could be removed by dropping the 60 vote rule. The “Gang of 14” was made up of Democrats and moderate Republicans that tried to avoid the overturn of the rule in the interest of “bipartisanship.” Harry Reid will find no impediment to ending that rule to further his agenda and anyone who expects him to avoid breaking precedent is a fool.
I do not expect Obama to govern as a moderate.
I do not expect the Congress to discover bipartisanship.
That’s OK with me.
Republicans need to restructure their arguments. David Frum has one recommendation for the future.
A generation ago, Republicans dominated among college graduates. In 1984 and 1988, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush won states like California, Pennsylvania and Connecticut – states that have been “blue” for a generation. (America’s least educated state, West Virginia, went for Michael Dukakis in 1988.)
Those days are long gone. Since 1988, Democrats have become more conservative on economics – and Republicans have become more conservative on social issues.
College-educated Americans have come to believe that their money is safe with Democrats – but that their values are under threat from Republicans. And there are more and more of these college-educated Americans all the time.
So the question for the GOP is: Will it pursue them? To do so will involve painful change, on issues ranging from the environment to abortion. And it will involve potentially even more painful changes of style and tone: toward a future that is less overtly religious, less negligent with policy, and less polarizing on social issues. That’s a future that leaves little room for Sarah Palin – but the only hope for a Republican recovery.
So we should try to restructure the message to appeal to the Creative Class.
The biggest difference between the creative class and the old business types isn’t on cultural issues–few traditional CEOs embraced the religious right’s agenda–but on environmental policy. Executives at places like Apple (nasdaq: AAPL – news – people ), as well as opportunistic investment firms, have become enthusiastic jihadis in the war against climate change. Conveniently, their companies don’t tend to be huge energy consumers and, if they make products, do so in largely unregulated facilities in China or elsewhere in the developing world. And youthful financial firms looking for the next “bubble” could benefit hugely from mandates for more solar, wind and other alternative fuels.
All this could prove very bad news for groups that produce tangible products in the U.S. or that, like large agribusiness firms, are big consumers of carbon. Also threatened will be anyone who builds the suburban communities–notably single-family houses and malls–that most Americans still prefer but that Gore and his acolytes dismiss as too energy-intensive, not to mention in bad taste.
Theoretically, there is opportunity for the Republicans–if they can somehow jettison the more primitive parts of their social agenda and come up with their own bold, environmentally sound energy agenda. The new hegemons could easily be painted as moralistic hypocrites who live the carbon-heavy luxury lifestyle of the super-rich while demanding ordinary Americans give up their cars, homes and even their jobs.
So, we “jettison” traditional religion and adopt the religion of Global Warming and Environmentalism.
My personal opinion is that the Creative Class is about 5% of the population; a wealthy and noisy 5% but still a very small group when the votes are counted. Of course, if the money is what counts, and the rules are easily broken as was done by Obama, they matter more.
But not enough.
I tend to think more along the lines of Victor Davis Hanson.
1. Spending. When Republicans spend at rates higher than Democrats they suffer the wage of hypocrisy, and discredit tax cuts, since the public blames lower taxes for mounting deficits even when they have been demonstrably proven to have brought in greater revenue. In the future, conservatives need to forget all the gobbly-gook about deficits being tolerable as this or that percentage of GDP— and just balance the budget, since the public deals in psychology and symbolism as much as abstract economic data.
I completely agree here. The failure of the Hastert Congress to control spending led to 2006 and 2008. There was a theory, advocated by Tom DeLay, that we could bribe our way to a permanent majority. It was called “The K-Street Project” and was an attempt to tie lobbyists to the party. Wikipedia is not unbiased on some subjects but this gives the outlines.
2. People. Conservatism means an allegiance to past values and behavior. When the Republican Congress not only spent lavishly, but was marked by a series of scandals—Foley, Cunningham, Stevens, et al.— then Republicans lost that high ground as well. Conservative reconstruction must focus on being above the ethical norm, not indistinguishable from corrupt career politicians. By the same token, highly-visible appointments of incompetent sycophants like Press Secretary Scott McClellan or “Brownie” at FEMA remind voters that conservatives have standards no different from the alternative when they claim otherwise.
Some of this was unique to the Bush family which is notorious in its devotion to loyalty to the family. A very good man in California, named Bill Jones, was the California Secretary of State when the 2000 primaries were held. He endorsed McCain and, in 2002 when he was running for the Republican nomination for governor, the administration got revenge by stiffing him. With that went the party’s best chance to win the California governorship. They ended up with a fellow named Bill Simon who lost in a gentlemanly fashion giving us Gray Davis. Bill Jones could probably have defeated Davis.
Bush loyalty gave us incompetents like the FEMA head and Scott McClellan, who rewarded Bush for making him Press Secretary, when he was unqualified, by endorsing Obama and writing a nasty tell-all book. Actually, he didn’t have much to tell.
3. Populism. Joe the Plumber caught on because (finally) the case was made that confiscatory tax rates (40% on top income, 15.3% FICA/Medicare, once caps removed, 5-10% state income tax) mean that none of us can hope to have the financial success guaranteed to others by birth.
Joe the Plumber was able to explain the consequences of Obama’s tax plan (at least that part he admitted to) better than McCain could do. The Republican Party is not the party of the “Creative Class” or of the very poor. I don’t think it will ever be so.
I think the party is best oriented to the concerns of those who own businesses, even very small ones. Salaried employees, who do not aspire to own the business, are not natural Republicans. This includes public employees, although some with unusual life styles, like firemen and policeman, will be different. Most bureaucrats and low level employees are unlikely to choose the Republican Party with one exception.
jettison the more primitive parts of their social agenda
Why did Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California, pass when Obama carried the state by a large margin ?
California’s black and Latino voters, who turned out in droves for Barack Obama, also provided key support in favor of the state’s same-sex marriage ban. Seven in 10 black voters backed a successful ballot measure to overturn the California Supreme Court’s May decision allowing same-sex marriage, according to exit polls for The Associated Press.
More than half of Latino voters supported Proposition 8, while whites were split. Religious groups led the tightly organized campaign for the measure, and religious voters were decisive in getting it passed. Of the seven in 10 voters who described themselves as Christian, two-thirds backed the initiative. Married voters and voters with children strongly supported Proposition 8. Unmarried voters were heavily opposed. LA Times 11/5.
Why is it a losing strategy for Republicans to support social issues when the gay marriage ban out polled Obama by 25% ?
Single voters and atheist voters are going to trend Democrat. Married voters and religious voters favor Republicans. Maybe we should figure out what the latter group have in common. I think we have lost many college graduates, partly because the left has dominated the faculty. They have had an impact on students. Once they get married and start a small business, they may change. Small business owners are probably disproportionately non-college graduates. They go to work and learn a business. Many are former junior college students but many, especially men, have given up on the value of a college education. Stories like this one don’t help.
Two other huge issues will be energy policy and health care reform.
I will be on the National Review cruise from next Saturday for a week. The topic will be “where do we go from here?” I will post more.
