Grand Old Populists
For the Blue Dogs, Tuesday was a fire bell in the night.
Virginia Republicans led by Robert McDonnell crushed the most conservative Democrat nominee in decades, rolling up a victory that rivaled Ronald Reagan’s rout of Walter Mondale.
New Jersey GOP nominee Chris Christie, whose campaign had been the despair of its backers, won a 5-point victory over Jon Corzine, despite huge Democratic advantages in money and voter registration, two visits by Barack Obama and the presence on the ballot of a third-party candidate who took votes away from Christie.
Maine has gone Democratic in five straight presidential elections. Yet voters overturned a gay-marriage state law, 53-47, the 31st straight victory for traditionalists. This replicates California’s rejection of gay marriage, 52-48, in a year Obama carried the state by 24 points and 3 million votes.
Democrats see green shoots in the capture of New York’s 23rd congressional district, which has been Republican since Ulysses Grant. Yet, even here, the conservative showing was impressive.
GOP candidate Dede Scozzafava is a fellow traveler of the Albany crowd of Gov. David Paterson. She is pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro “card-check” — a euphemism for eliminating the secret ballot for workers deciding on whether they want a union.
Disgusted with a choice between liberals, the Conservative Party put up Douglas Hoffman. While he did not live in the district, his views did reflect the district’s views.
Hoffman was going nowhere, however, until the Tea Party and town-hall activists and Club for Growth sent contributions and troops. Hoffman got ignition when Sarah Palin joined Fred Thompson in endorsing him. He began a rapid ascent from last to first, dumping Dede into third place. When Dede fell to 20 percent, the weekend before the election, she dropped out and endorsed Democrat Bill Owens, who won.
Nevertheless, Hoffman had come, in a month, from nowhere to knock a liberal Republican out of the lead and out of the race and out of the party, and closed to within two points of taking the seat.
The good news for the GOP is that, despite the unpopularity of their brand name — Republican identification is down to 20 percent — this is no longer the impediment it was in 2006 or 2008. The 40 percent who call themselves conservative will rally with energy and enthusiasm to Republicans willing to go to their capital, be it Trenton, Richmond or D.C., to battle Big Government.
As for the Democrats, their problems are not easily soluble, in the short term.
In 2006, the war in Iraq cost Republicans the Congress. Now, Iraq, like Afghanistan, is Obama’s war. In 2008, the financial collapse on George W. Bush’s watch enabled Obama to retake the lead that Sarah Palin’s nomination had given to John McCain. Now, the economy is Obama’s albatross and his party’s responsibility.
Going into 2008, 27 percent of Americans approved of Bush. Eighty percent thought the country was headed in the wrong direction. Over 90 percent thought the economy was bad or poor.
If we can’t win with those numbers, said James Carville, we ought to go into a new line of work.
Obama won, but only because of those appalling numbers. In every state except Missouri where Bush’s approval was above 35 percent, McCain carried the state.
In 2010, Obama will not have George W. Bush to kick around anymore and Republicans will not have “Bush’s war” or “the Bush economy” to defend.
If Americans think the country is still on the wrong course, as most now do, and the economy is still dismal, as most now do, the only way to protest will be to vote against the party that controls Congress and the White House.
Despite all the media mockery of the “Birthers,” “Truthers,” Tea Party and town-hall “Nazis,” it is the populist-conservative center-right that is not only on fire but came out to vote in 2009.
Young voters and African-Americans who came out in record number in 2008 stayed home in 2009. What will cause them to rally to endangered Democrats in 2010, after they have endured another year of what they are enduring now?
After Tuesday’s defeats, Obama flew to Madison, Wis., on the first anniversary of his victory, to remind Americans what a terrible hand he had been dealt. We had, said Obama, a “financial crisis that threatened to plunge our economy into a Great Depression. We had record deficits, two wars, frayed alliances around the world.”
Since then, the financial crisis has eased. But millions more are now unemployed. And deficits are now three times as large as Bush’s largest. And America’s prospects in those two wars are more grim than a year ago. And the Middle East peace process is moribund, and there is the threat of a new war with Iran. What has the outreach to Chavez, Castro and the Ayatollah produced?
President Obama is today the victim of a disillusionment caused by the excessive hopes and expectations that were raised by candidate Obama.
Patrick Buchanan is the author of the new book Churchill, Hitler, and ‘The Unnecessary War,’ now available in paperback.
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The Middle East “peace process” should remain “moribund.” It’s not America’s job to wet-nurse those who refuse to work for peace themselves.
“What has the outreach to Chavez, Castro and the Ayatollah produced?”
Little or nothing, which considering what spurning Iran’s offer through the swiss, the stovepiped intelligence that got us into Iraq, our belligerence via NATO to Russia and various other things you probably could name better than I produced, is a huge step in the right direction.
The bleeding on the foreign front has stopped. Fewer self-inflicted wounds. Some are even starting to heal.
Or as the Hippocratic oath says, “First, do no harm”.
In 2010, Obama will not have George W. Bush to kick around anymore and Republicans will not have “Bush’s war” or “the Bush economy” to defend.
“kick around?” Yes, Americans have short attention spans. Republicans will soon be able to blame all the muck we’re in on Obama. Imagine what McCain/Palin would’ve wrought.
Unfortunately, Republicans won’t get to run against Corzine or Deeds in 2012. Instead, they will probably nominate someone like Hoffman and will get their clocks cleaned. You’ve been around long enough to know that off year gubernatorial elections are almost always decided on local issues and turnout. They are very poor predictors of future national results.
I don’t know when Nixon came to “own” Vietnam. But Lyndon Johnson gets the blame — and rightly so.
Obama, like Nixon, is inheriting something that was ill-conceived by the administration before him.
And my sense is that Obama, like Nixon, will drag out the conflicts in such a way as to put off significant decisions until after 2012.
As for the economy, there could be a problem for Republicans in that the DOW will gain 2,000 points this year, which could influence employment and consumer confidence next year, as those two variable lag about 9 months behind stock market moves.
The last time the DOW gained 2,000 points in one year, Bill Clinton was President.
George W. Bush was 0 for 8 in that category.
American foreign policy has always been hostile with Chavez, Castro and Ayatollah. It might take years before we see any change. We expect a little too much from obama.
And it totally up to America when it will go for war with Iran, because everybody knows vice versa is impossible. Because Iranians can’t even think of attacking America and if they do (think) it will result in their vaporization for the face of earth and their leaders knows this fact very well.
As blogger Steve Benen alluded elsewhere, the Weekly Standard – expanded to cover articles like this one – is the equivalent of giving Republicans a doll that says, “Everything is going to be all right” every time you squeeze it.
Patrick Buchanan woud read good news for conservatives in a plague that attacked only conservatives. When you’re crazy to the bone, it appears there’s no reason to feel anything but boundless (and completely unsupported) optimism. Can’t wait to see how that works out for you, Pat. Still, I suppose the great thing about boundless unsupported optimism is that being wrong never gets you down.
It’s no wonder Democrats and Republicans are afraid of Pat Buchanan…he always hits it right on the head. Pretty sure Pat’s never “towed the party line”, which goes up Democrats’ butts sideways (and Republicans’, for that matter!) It’s always nice to hear Pat’s take on things. I can always trust him to be honest and straightforward.
Obama won because of the Iraq War, the obvious lack of any economic knowledge on the part of McCain, McCain’s cynical choice of Palin for VP nominee, and Bush fatigue. Also the fear of a returning Bill Clinton knocked Hillary out of the Democratic race. So we elected a black man, much against our common sense. Now we have buyers’ remorse: we had no choice and we got no choice.
“So we elected a black man, much against our common sense”
What the heck? Electing a black man ins against your common sense?
That’s an …………..odd…. thing to say.
Obama did not win the election, he was handpicked to be the next President, as most of our presidents are. It is an indisbutable fact, that in the past two elections, George W. Bush cheated. Obama serves corporate and neocon interests. Having a Black man as president, allows the necons to present America as this great savior to the rest of the World, particularly non-Western countries in the Middle East, who are presently the objects of neocon rhetoric and propaganda.
On a similar note, just look at his choices to run his cabinet. Rom Emmanuel, Hilary Clinton, and the list goes on and on and on. They all have one thing in common–to extend the American empire overseas. Look at the present situation in Afghanistan, a country illegally attacked and colonized by the United States. Has Obama decided to relent and pull troops back–no! Well, that answers it. Actually, many neocon propagandists, like Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer, were adament about Obama serving to prop up Islamic extremism, by kowtowing to Islamic interests, because of his background. Jihadwatch, a notorius Islamaphobe and neocon webpage, is especially pervasive in this type of rhetoric, which they use to brainwash their surfers. Propaganda is an interesting tool and art of both coercion and mind manipulation. This was the same bonk used to coerce the public into war against Serbia, during Bill Clinton’s “dictatorship.” Mythical war crimes, rape camps, etc.. Need I say more?