PrintMay 19, 2010
Another Very Bad Night for Obama, Democrats, and the Media
The U.S. dollar and good news for Democrats have a lot in common these days. No matter how much of either liberals print, the absolute value keeps declining.
To be fair, the Jurassic media is actually half-right in their groupthink analysis that yesterday's elections were more evidence that the prevailing mood in the country is simply anti-Washington. But the half they get wrong is very wrong indeed. As such, they were losers yesterday.
The biggest winners were Rand Paul's campaign and the Tea Party movement/philosophy. The biggest losers were Barack Obama and the current far-left Democrat Congress and their notion of a large and intrusive government. Other losers include the political thinking of George W. Bush, Karl Rove, John McCain, and Bill Clinton.
As for the major parties, consider that the continued rebuke of "reach across the aisle" and "new tone" Republicanism is good news for a GOP that is rather rapidly finding its way.
Conversely, the rebuke of a sitting president and Congress -- not to mention the entire governing philosophy of the Democrats -- is potentially catastrophic for them. It was an awful night for liberals.
Anti-Washington, you say?
It is true that there is fierce anti-Washington fervor. But pundits are dead wrong in claiming that this means both parties are affected equally. Washington is a liberal Democrat city -- and not only by the standards of the current makeup of the administration and the Congress, though that is very true.
It goes deeper. The very notion of Washington as a control center and hub of intellectual power and great solutions is by definition a liberal ideal. Washington is Mecca to the Democrat liberal base. By contrast, the city and all it represents are anathema to progress and prosperity for the Republican base voters...you know, the tea party types. Yesterday was another sound rebuke of Washington as defined by liberals and thus another big day for the mindset of the tea party movement.
Best Name of 2010: Rand's a Winner in Kentucky
Liberal pundits like Mort Kondracke and David Goodstein have said that Rand Paul's primary win is more evidence that the Republican Party is imploding. They could not be more wrong. Paul -- armed with perhaps the perfect first name for a politician in 2010 -- is the quintessential Tea Party candidate. A fierce defender of limited government, the younger Paul and many of his supporters seem unburdened by some of his dad's most unconventional thoughts, yet he was able to tap into some of the Ron Paul cult support system.
More importantly, opponent Trey Grayson was a McCain-type candidate. He seems to have borrowed the worn-out phrases from Kay Bailey Hutchinson's tired campaign in Texas. Grayson's ads touted his ability to "get things done" in Washington by "working with people." I think Grayson would have lost to a blank space with such a tone-deaf campaign.
No, Mr. Kondracke, the party is not imploding. It is healing, and this means getting rid of cancers like Grayson (and Bennett and Crist). Rand Paul will win the general election, as will Marco Rubio in Florida and a Republican in Utah.
Specter's Spectacular Loss
Arlen Specter's final chapters as a senator are object lessons in what is wrong with Washington generally and what is wrong with moderate Republicans as a concept. The most devastating turn in this campaign was the release of an ad featuring kind words from Bush 41 from days when Specter was a Republican.
Ironically, this would have been as devastating in a GOP primary as it was in this one. Bush's endorsement of Specter was a centerpiece in Rove's philosophically vacant "permanent majority" strategy. The era of Arlen Specter -- and of the "new tone" -- is over.
Now Pennsylvania will get a choice. Liberal Joe Sestak will run against Conservative Republican Pat Toomey in November. And yes, there is indeed more "than a dime's worth of difference" between those two.
Rush Limbaugh Democrat Wins Murtha Seat
You know it's bad night when a win is actually a loss. Perhaps the worst news of the night for Team Obama was the Democrat win in the special election in Pennsylvania for Jack Murtha's seat.
Huh? Yep, Mark Critz is a "Rush Limbaugh Democrat" who campaigned against almost everything Obama and Murtha support. Frankly, he was more conservative than the McCain campaign of 2008 and more apt to criticize Obama than is, say, Lindsay Graham. Republican Tim Burns had no one to run against, and the district is heavily Democrat by registration. This was hardly a race that can be celebrated by the Democrat leadership today. Critz is the type of Democrat that Nancy Pelosi was hoping to lose in November.
Lincoln Troubles Symbolic
There is no clearer symbol of the trouble Obama is in than Blanche Lincoln. She is a sitting U.S. senator and has the strong endorsement of the two most popular Democrats in a century -- Obama and Bill Clinton -- and she is barely hanging on in her struggle to win a primary.
Lincoln is about 1% ahead of Bill Halter (as of this writing) and will face a runoff challenge. For an incumbent to be rejected by 60 percent of her party's voters is startling. This is a net loss for Obama and for the Clintons as well, not to mention an entire party that would readily admit that those are the biggest names in their arsenal.
The Takeaway
If it was embarrassing -- and instructive -- for George W. Bush's machine in Texas to get wiped out in their campaign for Hutchinson, it is even more so for Teams Obama-Clinton yesterday in Arkansas. Once-powerful national machines are now losing intramural contests on their home fields.
So what does this mean? Does it mean that people are simply fed up with Washington and all elected officials? Not exactly, though there is an element of truth in that analysis.
The real meaning is that people are fed up with this president, this Congress, their party, and the attempt to destroy a country and an economic system that have done more for freedom and good than any other country or economic system in world history.
Moreover, people are also fed up with any kind of namby-pamby opposition party that is little more than a low-calorie version of the statist Democrats. And this is not new. This wave has been building since Rick Santelli had his tea party rant over mortgages in February of 2009. It built through the tea party rallies in the spring of 2009 and into the town hall meetings of the summer of 2009.
The wave rolled in the fall through stunning elections of '09 in Virginia and New Jersey, and then later in Massachusetts with Scott Brown. It rolled after the health care debacle, and it rolls today, fueled by brave conservative leaders like Chris Christie and Jan Brewer.
A lot can happen between now and November's general elections, but make no mistake: Yesterday's elections were definitely an extension of the conservative ascendancy that is taking hold in this country. As such, it was yet another bad day for liberal America and a good day for tea party-supporters.
And it matters not that the pundits do not understand it. The truth does not require validation on the "Morning Joe" program or in the New York Times.
