Brown and the Republicans discovered an amazing Truth in politics: votes win elections.
As I write this article Scott Brown has just been declared the winner in the Massachusetts special election.
Brown's victory is an incredible blow to the Progressive agenda of the Democrat Party, and an equally fantastic boost to the Republican Party as it gears up for the 2010 mid-term elections. His election has solidified a growing trend that began with special elections in Virginia and New Jersey a few short weeks ago. The "Ted Kennedy Seat", as the Democrats and the press identified the office, has been snatched from their grasp and given to a, gasp, Republican or Tea Bagger (take your pick of the appropriate slur).
Even a close loss instead of an outright victory would have sent the same shock waves through the Democrat body politic, regardless of what Nancy Pelosi or Keith Olbermann tried to pedal. Any way you cut it, election night January 19, 2010 has been a great victory for our side of the political fence.
And yet, in light of the way some armchair political analysts have been speaking about electoral politics in America, I have to ask the question: why is Brown's election so great for our side? Brown supports a woman's right to have an abortion. And, he is more liberal than two-thirds of other Massachusetts Republican state legislators. As one observer noted, "What's remarkable about this is the fact that Massachusetts Republicans are the most, or nearly the most, liberal Republicans in the entire country!"
Scott Brown is hardly the model of what Conservatives have been clamoring for. Though possessing a number of strong conservative credentials, he clearly is not cut from the Reagan mold in several key areas that count. Why should we be celebrating his victory, instead of lamenting the fact that another fair-weather conservative with weak values on the sanctity of life is going to Washington?
The answer, of course, for those of us who do celebrate Brown's electoral performance, is that we're not idiots! As much as we'd love to see a 100% rock-rib, down-the-line conservative occupy that Senate seat, this is Massachusetts! Would Brown have received my enthusiastic support if he ran in Texas? No. (Although I would have held my nose on the abortion issue and voted for him for office against a Liberal Democrat opponent). Would I have enthusiastically supported Brown's candidacy if I lived in Massachusetts? Yes. Without qualification.
The reason is simple. I wrote about this just a couple of months ago, and it bears repeating again.
We'll never elect a Sam Johnson Republican in Massachusetts, but we could elect a Rudy Giuliani Republican. With enough Rudys in otherwise moderate or liberal districts, the Republicans will regain institutional power, which means deposing Nancy and Harry and everything they stand for.
It is true that with enough Rudys in Congress, the Republican leadership will never institute a fully conservative agenda. But I'd settle for 80% today, instead of the 20% we get through the Democrat Blue Dogs who keep Nancy in check.
And then, in between elections, as the Tea Parties have shown, we can use that time to help create a more favorable terrain in moderate and liberal districts to elect better candidates to maintain the Republican majority, and help push the conservative agenda to 85 or 90%.
It's important to remember in understanding this philosophy that the U.S. system of government is not organized along ideological lines.
There is no Conservative or Liberal authority in government: there are elected Republicans, Democrats, and occasional Independents who immediately ally with Republicans or Democrats.
It does no good to ignore these facts when looking at the political process. Nancy Pelosi has the institutional power to ram a lot of her legislation through the Congress. Not all of it, but a lot of it. This is because she occupies the top slot in the majority party.
To get to that position Nancy was willing to accept the entry of "conservative" Democrats into her party to knock off conservative Republicans in conservative districts. She didn't support these people in liberal districts. She supported liberals in districts that would elect liberal candidates. Instead, she used a few key races to knock off enough Republicans to gain institutional power, and thus implement her agenda.
This is what the chief bureaucrat of the Republican Party Michael Steele has proposed as a strategy for the Republican Party. Elect moderate, even liberal Republican candidates in districts that will not elect strongly conservative candidates. To do this he has to appeal to moderate, even liberal voters in those districts. He isn't trying to pervert an otherwise pure ideology. He's trying to win elections to shift the institutional power in Congress away from the Democrats.
Once the Republican leadership regains power, then all the forces that go into making a party's philosophy come to bear on guiding, reinforcing, or pushing the elected leadership of the Party in a given direction. This is because a party's ideology isn't written in stone. Rather, it is the sum total of the people who use that party to gain institutional power; voters and elected officials alike.
You demand ideological purity at your own risk of losing the very thing you aspire to achieve: the ability to influence the creation, and exercise, of national policy.
A sound electoral strategy requires one to understand where power is actually located and how it is actually acquired, and then use that knowledge to "play the game" according to real world rules to achieve electoral success. Without success at the ballot box, your ideology is impotent.
Republicans learned how to play the game in Massachusetts. And for that reason the Obama agenda has been slowed, if not stopped.
Now it's on to November to finish the job, not by imposing a single uniform litmus test applicable to every Republican candidate, but by supporting the most practical conservative candidate — like Scott Brown in Massachusetts — for each unique district or state.
Imagine just what’s happening now…
Now that Scott Brown has been declared the winner and Martha Coakley has conceded; imagine all the mental ponderings happening in the different facets of the progressive left.
Imagine you’re a Democratic member of Congress from almost anywhere other than the Peoples’ Republic of San Francisco. After this bellwether win for a relatively unknown republican candidate in a state so blue as to not have elected a republican senator in 38 years; what are you to do? You have to begin your re-election campaign soon. Which way do you run? Do you preach, “Obama, we love you anyhow!” and back a possible administration ploy to force passage of health care legislation; or do you attempt to put the brakes on the House Speaker by saying; “We’ve got to recapture the soul of our great Democratic Party!” Who wants to look for work in an environment that already has a 10% unemployment rate?
Imagine you’re a political donor. Do you write that next check anyway, or just chuck the whole thing? Do you ‘double down’ on the Soreoto Administration as the pundits at MSNBC encourage all to do or take a step back?
Imagine you’re a staunch supporter of the Republican Party recently pummeled into silence by the MSM and the electoral results of 2008. Do you continue to hunker down, or do you feel vindicated? Do you continue to insist on a ‘litmus’ test for republican candidates, or re-think the strategy of tailoring candidates to specific districts?
Imagine you’re a highly regarded member of the MSM. Do you persist in your sniping of all things conservative; or do you try to weasel your way toward more neutral ground without being too obvious about it?
Here’s what I’m betting on; I believe that most progressive politicians will subscribe to the Olbermann/Matthews school of liberalism. I believe that Congressmen, MSM types, and donors will tell the President that he should ‘double-down’ on the bet. I’m betting that they’ll continue shoving health care down the collective throats of the American people. I believe they’ll continue to be so tone deaf that they fail to recognize the scope of a state with a 3 to 1 margin of registered democrats to republicans with another 52% of independents failing to elect a progressive democrat really means. In short, I expect them to continue to over-reach.
Bill: I think you’re on the mark about the Dem’s. They have become an ideological party (at least as driven by their leadership). It will be interesting to see if the rank and file elected officials follow.
Clearly, the electorate is not ideological. They are pragmatic (but this does not mean they are valueless — they have standards that are common sense and tradition-oriented, rather than abstract and pseudo-progressive).
If the Republicans get their act together (with the help of groups like the Tea party to focus their message), November will be a great month.
Phil does this mean that we should change our registration back to an R or continue working to find and support conservative democrats?
Steele may have an idea on ways to get votes but he has no clue on how to establish a strong cohesive statement of values/plans. The only time the Rs had this clarity was with the ill fated Contract with America and now the author and killer of that compact is sniffing around to be a presidential candidate.
Holding ones nose becomes a real impediment when you really need to breathe!
Let’s hope the Dems will follow their pattern and write a book entitled “What’s Wrong With Massachusetts?”
Seems clear to me that the Dems thought they had a chance for a govt takeover of healthcare.
This is what happened in England after WW II. Healthcare was Labor’s program # 1 even though jobs & security were higher priorities with the public. And the Labor Government got it & all the Kings horses…, including Maggie Thatcher, can’t dismantle it, because the public sees that as a takeaway of their “free healthcare”. And, hey, it’s good except for the rationing, shoddy equipment, & no innovations. Other than that….
I agree with Bill W on this thread that the Dems now want to move ASAP because they’ll never have as many Senators & Reps as they do now. But cooler heads, or in this case selfish heads (“I want to get re-elected” heads, that is), may put a break on this.
I’m worried, however, that RINOs will join with the Dems & get some form of Socialized lite, Medicare lite, & for us then, Brown’s victory would be:
“And everybody praised the Duke
Who this great fight did win.”
“But what good came of it at last?”
Quoth little Peterkin.
“Why, that I cannot tell,” said he,
“But ’twas a famous victory.”
sedonaman
good one!
Mickey: We need to elect Republicans to get the present Democrat leadership out of power.
As to which candidate to support, that’s easy. Support the most conservative candidate each individual district or State will elect. Brown would not have won in Texas, but neither of the two Republican Senators from Texas would have won in Massachusetts.
Mickey G.,
I agree with your observation; “Steele may have an idea on ways to get votes but he has no clue on how to establish a strong cohesive statement of values/plans.” But I think we should apply the same criteria to his tenure as was described in Phillip’s original posting.
“We’ll never elect a Sam Johnson Republican in Massachusetts, but we could elect a Rudy Giuliani Republican.” A Michael Steele may be just what gives us the types of candidates in the types of districts we need in order to make profound inroads in 2010. There will be plenty of time to replace him with someone more staunchly conservative before the 2012 cycle if the climate requires it. This is not brutal but pragmatic. Always hire the ‘best’ man for the job. However; it should be noted that the definition of ‘best’ is a dynamic definition, not static.
I believe the answer is simple. We have to support ideology over party. Conservatism works every time it’s tried. My personal opinion has always been that the names democrat, republican and independent is just the descriptors we use to divide a ballot. The terms conservative, liberal and progressive are much more detailed indicators of where a potential political candidate will stake his territory.
This is where I agree with Phillip; “Support the most conservative candidate each individual district or State will elect.”
The over-riding priority hers is the re-capturing of the institutional power required to govern. Having said that; we must ensure we understand how to wield that power once we achieve it. I heard Howard Dean make, last night, what I believed to be a salient point. He said; “Democrats don’t really campaign well but we know how to govern. Republicans campaign well but don’t know how to govern.” While I don’t necessarily agree with the first part of his statement; I believe he has a point with his second sentence. If our candidates are firm enough to campaign on their conservative principles, they should have the courage of their convictions and govern from those same principles. If I never hear the term ‘compassionate conservatism’ again it will be too soon.
Bill: One clarification: “Support the most conservative candidate each individual district or State will elect” takes place within a party setting. As long as Nancy and Harry control the Congress, and in doing so can set the agenda, electing a conservative Democrat doesn’t help. Brown is the guy who can stop the Obama health care fisaco,cap and trade, etc., because he’s the 41st Republican. He was the most conservatiove republican massachusetts would elect.
Agreed,
However; I did hear another statement made this morning I thought was worth remembering. As far as the House of Representatives is concerned, there is alomst no such thing as a safe seat anymore.
Agreed that this statement can easily be proven false just by looking at Nancy Pelosi’s district. But for the overwhelming majority of democrats such is not the case. While re-capturing 40 seats in the 2010 elections still seems too far to reach, I believe this race will be a wake-up call for many moderate democrats that want to remain in the House. I believe they’ll think twice before jumping off the health care cliff at Nancy’s command.
I particularly believe the pro-life democrats will not be swayed to vote for the senate bill as it currently stands with no changes. They just can’t afford to. They can’t afford to get hoodwinked by the senate with a “We’ll fix it later (wink, wink)” approach.
I really believe that Scott Brown’s election has killed health care in its present form.
This is a very important essay.
At the moment, the post-victory euphoria is being replaced, in certain quarters, with the discovery that Massachusetts is not East Texas. Oh my God … have we been cheering for a … RINO? And here comes Sarah Palin, endorsing McCain!!!
The hope among certain purists that they could have a nice, pure, hard-right, and tiny Republican Party all of their own is dissolving away.
In his wonderful History of England, Macaulay described a small sect of Scottish Presbyterians, who refused to swear loyality to King William, who had been the instrument of their deliverance from real oppression. He and his government just weren’t pure enough.
Many conservatives seem not to understand how the American government works. You can elect a very very conservative Democrat over a very very liberal Republican … and by so doing you give the power of government to the very very liberal national Democratic Party.
All political calculations that do not begin with this elementary consideration are worthless.
If you don’t like “liberal” Republicans, get out and change the nature of the base these Republicans operate in and whose votes they must seek. If the voters of Massachusetts had the social values of the voters of East Texas, Scott Brown would be an orthodox conservative Republican. Start there. In the meantime, his election is wonderful news.
Doug 1943,
In your posting you say; “Oh my God … have we been cheering for a … RINO? And here comes Sarah Palin, endorsing McCain!!!” You continue by stating; “Many conservatives seem not to understand how the American government works.” Plus you conclude with; “If you don’t like “liberal” Republicans, get out and change the nature of the base these Republicans operate in and whose votes they must seek.”
I submit that all these things, and more, are currently happening. Phillip Jackson in the original post said; “Scott Brown is hardly the model of what Conservatives have been clamoring for. Though possessing a number of strong conservative credentials, he clearly is not cut from the Reagan mold in several key areas that count.” Both Phillip and several other contributors have been saying for quite some time that it is more important to tailor candidates to the district than it is for any one candidate to pass a ‘litmus’ test regarding ideological purity. Phillip goes on to say; “The answer, of course, for those of us who do celebrate Brown’s electoral performance, is that we’re not idiots! As much as we’d love to see a 100% rock-rib, down-the-line conservative occupy that Senate seat, this is Massachusetts!”
I believe more and more conservatives are arriving at the same conclusions. You have to win elections in order to project power. You are not going to convert all Congressional Districts in the US to ideological conservatism overnight. In fact, you’ll not convert some districts ever; The People’s Republic of San Francisco immediately comes to mind.
Also the overwhelming majority of T.E.A. Partiers realize that a third party will never command a sufficient majority to project more power than either of the two institutionalized parties in this country.
Ideology does trump party, but that statement must be leavened with a strong dose of pragmatism. At the end of the day what counts are 218 seats in the House and 60 seats in the Senate. The liberals are getting a heavy dose of this reality as we speak.
Having said that; republicans stand a much better chance of holding their voting blocks together in the House and Senate that the democrats ever will. It is conventional wisdom that the Democratic Party is little more than a loosely held amalgamation of special victim’s groups. This was made quite apparent during the 2008 general election primaries when liberals were literally wringing their collective hands over which victim’s group candidate to elevate to presidential candidate status. The second piece of conventional wisdom is; that among these special victim’s groups, none of them have any compunction over throwing any and all other groups under the bus to achieve their particular aims.
This is seen in Nancy Pelosi’s iron fisted set of demands over Congress. Democrats ran stealth conservative democrats in closely contested districts in 2006 and 2008. This resulted in a majority of democrats, but several tens of ‘blue dog’ and ‘fiscally conservative’ democrats. These are the very groups that fought health care reform to the point that even though democrats had the majority, they could not exercise the power. Nancy has been telling these junior Congressmen to fall on their collective swords in order to pass the liberal/progressive agenda and in return they’ve flipped her the proverbial bird! Why? Because they like the job they have to well already, and can easily see that those same districts they were so recently carefully coached into winning can flip on them in a heartbeat if they fail to pay close attention to their constituency.
Since even socially liberal conservatives share more of the ‘core’ belief system of the party, my guess is they won’t be nearly as difficult to hold in line.
There is a fair amount of make-believe in politics. People tend to project their own beliefs on the politicians they support. Thus we have the far Left of the Democratic Party fulminating over Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, which act is in fact completely in line with his campaign promises. They probably hoped he was lying. Yet they would be utter fools to abandon him, and the Democrats in general, because these are the channels through which their poison can flow into the American bloodstream. Let’s hope they do walk in a huff and start a third, “truly Left” party. We must not emulate them.
Doug 1943
You write; “There is a fair amount of make-believe in politics. People tend to project their own beliefs on the politicians they support.” Your iteration of the progressive left assuming that Obama was lying about Afghanistan notwithstanding.
There is an article in the on-line version of the Financial Times written by James Carville entitled ‘Democrats need to learn the blame game’ the gist of which is that James thinks the democrats wouldn’t be in the position they currently find themselves (their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate in jeopardy, and health care in a mess) if they would just have blamed George Bush more often. The link is http://www.realclaerpolitics.com
Never mind the fact that you can find articles that state; ” Whether it’s the economy or national security, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle feel it might finally be time for Obama to drop the predecessor blame game.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/25/obama-administration-blaming-bush-president-enters-second-year/
There is another missive written on the Huntington Post by Paul Begala urging Congressional progressives to pass the Senate version of health care. Begala writes; “You’re going to get the attack anyway; you may as well get the accomplishment. I don’t mean to be rude, but if health care is the kiss of death, you’ve already been kissed.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-begala/pass-the-senate-bill-plea_b_434700.html
Apparently; Paul is so orgasmic over the possibility of progressives getting control over such a massive section of the economy; that he’s willing to throw all more moderate democrats under the proverbial bus in order to achieve his progressive party’s ultimate ideological aspiration. This is such a transparent plea. You can tell he feels the chance to exert such control over so many Americans slipping away, and he resents it. And he doesn’t’ particularly care if it costs 40 Democratic Congressmen their jobs in November.
Democrats are challenged by the fact that they often hold mutually exclusive beliefs at the same time. This is the fundamental flaw in the supposition of ascribing to beliefs over values. I’ll provide three specific examples:
After the 2004 election, Liberals everywhere literally went out of their minds! Both Hollywood progressives and all other progressive defenders of the faith became vocally outraged against the administration. Some threatened to move from the country, others could not open their mouths without spewing hatred for all things Bush. Literally every thing George did was wrong, bad, deplorable, stupid and immoral. This was my first encounter with people who actually believed George Bush to be simultaneously so ‘retarded’ as to be sub-human, yet at the same time so gifted as to blind everyone to his crafty, cunning manipulative nature. How could any person possibly believe someone to be concurrently stupid and intelligent? If I tried to hold two such mutually exclusive thoughts in my brain at the same time; I would shortly be suffering the same ‘brain freeze’ one encounters whenever one eats too much ice cream too quickly. “Ow, ow, OW!”
Another characteristic of the 2004 election: Physiatrists began reporting large upswings in the number of patients complaining of depression, despondency, and unresolved anger; which these doctors ultimately tied to the results of that election. This illness was eventually identified by psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer as BDS, or ‘Bush Derangement Syndrome’. Krauthammer defined Bush Derangement Syndrome as “The acute onset of paranoia, in otherwise normal people, in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush.”
Now fast forward to 2008. In Barack Obama they found a person so skilled in the art of euphemism and generality that crowds of people literally heard exactly what they wanted to hear; and discarded the rest. A child of the bureaucracy that had purposely spent so little time in any one political office as to leave no record worth analysis. A person of such ephemeral background that one could not even ascertain, with any certainty, his constitutional qualifications for the office he currently holds. The democrats had tried in vain, twice, to hide the ‘accomplishments’ of their Presidential candidates in hopes of offering someone the voters would find palatable enough to elect. Once they found that ‘Manchurian Candidate’; the one they could literally ascribe any lofty ambition to, they fell into their own trap. They thought he was as cunning and devious as they themselves are. They were certain he was saying just what he had to say in order to win. They were also certain he would enable all their progressive schemes as soon as the Inauguration was over. They had no idea he might actually be as naive as he acted.
For further evidence, look at this. They committed the same error over the long haul with their Congressional representatives as well. As I pointed out in my previous post. Progressives are like the masters of the Ponzi scheme that believe themselves to be an order of magnitude more intelligent than their ‘victims’. They keep stumbling over those inflated brains of theirs.
Having said all that: I don’t’ believe they’re foolish enough to start a new party. They know that they really represent the hard-core 20% of the Democratic Party. They need to cling to that other 80% in the hopes of gaining enough institutional power that they may project their will on the American people.
For them; health care is the key. In return for your health care ‘they’ will decide where you live, how much square footage you may occupy, how much energy you may consume, how much and what types of food you may consume, where you will work, how long you will work, and when it no longer benefits the state to promote your continued health or existence. This amounts to ubiquitous control over each and every facet of each and every American’s life; from cradle to grave. If you thought “It’s for the children!” was a heart string tugging bit of oratory; just wait until you start hearing “But it’s only for your continued good health!”
But their frustrations do deepen with each failure. They missed the boat on this type of iron fisted population control in 1992 regarding health care. During the next sixteen years, they didn’t do anything to make any portion of the health care delivery system any better; instead they concentrated on breaking other portions of the overall system more completely. Congressmen and Senators encouraged more and larger questionable loans from our federal lending institutions and ran interference for them in committee. The result was NINJA (No Income, No Job, or Assets) loans; which Fannie and Freddie and the large banks knew were largely worthless. So they bundled them all together into CDO’s (Collateralized Debt Obligations) that hid the true value of the loans and encouraged the upward spiral of housing prices. When all the financial shenanigans paid off with a freezing of the financial markets coupled with the bursting of the housing bubble, they blamed capitalism, spent almost a trillion dollars ‘create’ jobs (knowing ahead of time it wouldn’t really work very well) then touted health care reform as a ‘cost containment’ device for budgetary control. What a crock!
The whole scheme is collapsing on them once again. Only this time they made the mistake of placing on display, for the last twelve months, their absolute contempt for all who oppose them. If it collapses now, they know that they won’t be able to create the perfect combination of voter compliancy and economic hardship for two generations, if ever. This is what is driving Carville, Begala, et al absolutely crazy. It’s slipping through their grubby little fingers once again. Mark my word; they fail to pass health care in the next three months; they’ll be so deep into the 2010 election cycle that it will become impossible. Then the real wailing will begin.
Sorry Doug…my fat fingers. That first link is http://www.realclearpolitics.com