Some post-election reflections
(1) It’s not enough for candidates to be conservative. They need to be good, as well. Surely such candidates can be found, but many of the Republican candidates who lost last night (especially in the senatorial races) were not among them.
(2) The rift between red and blue parts of the country—and within many states—seems more sharply differentiated than ever.
(3) This split is mirrored by a similar split in Congress, where the Republican and Democrat parties have grown more conservative and more liberal, respectively.
(4) It’s very difficult to flip a Senate from a 60-vote majority for one party to a majority for the other party in a single election.
(5) California, New York, and Massachusetts will remain strongly liberal enclaves for the foreseeable future. (One caveat: rule 1 above may at least partly apply here. Republican candidates in each state were not generally strong. For the House it was different—see Bielat vs. Frank—but despite some good Republican candidates in those contests, the liberals were barely threatened. New Jersey and Christie, Massachusetts and Brown—both seem to be the anomalies rather than evidence of a growing trend in strongly liberal states.)
(6) The emergence of Republican women and minorities is one of the many pleasures of this election.
(7) The flip of many state legislatures to Republican is one of the so far untold stories of this election.
(8) The Republicans have their work cut out for them. They are now, as many have said, on probation.
California, New York, and Massachusetts will remain strongly liberal enclaves for the foreseeable future.
How long can these “liberal enclaves” refuse to accept financial reality?
That’s really the answer.
(7) On the state level, the GOP hold the legislative and executives branches; which was O’s fortunate situation two years ago. Please, God, let our guys show to all how the small government model works better.
“(4) It’s very difficult to flip a Senate from a 60-vote majority for one party to a majority for the other party in a single election. ”
If Senate Democrats think 2010 is a tough cycle, just wait two more years.
http://www.politico.com/news/storie/1010/44289.html
Yesterday was a good start.
Hopefully the Republicans will have good, conservative candidates lined up for the next election.
“California, New York, and Massachusetts will remain strongly liberal enclaves for the foreseeable future.”
I think that if you were able to see a map that somehow allowed you to see population concentrations – that is, people per square mile – you’d see a strong correlation between high concentrations and political spectrum. People in rural – less concentrated – areas have to do for themselves. People in urban areas simply can’t do for themselves the things they _would_ do for themselves in less urban areas. If you live in an apartment house, for example, you can’t go out and get an independent water well – you wait till someone turns your water source on. You also are less likely to actually _own_ your own property. If you have a problem, you move on, you don’t deal with it. Your neighbors are likely to be unfamiliar and temporary.
In other words, I don’t think those areas are going to change. The question is whether they can continue to suck income off the areas that don’t benefit from their services or whether their will be some means of cutting them off, since they have the population to use the majority vote to oppress the less populated areas.
I think the sinister reality is that some of these elections were stolen (or nearly stolen) by the unions. Sharon Angle lead in nearly every poll yet strangely loses by five points? Is it a coincidence that the poll workers were reported to be members of SEIU? My popular local state senator, Frank Padavan, loses by a similar percentage. I think there needs to be some investigation of the bias of the poll workers. How often do we hear stories of ballots ‘found in a trunk’ or cast before polls have even opened?
We need more than ID cards to prove identity, we need a receipt of vote. Every registered voter should receive one if they’ve cast a vote or had one ‘cast for them’ somehow. It won’t stop the fraud but it certainly would improve confidence in the process.
I’m watching Obama’s press conference. He is unwilling to admit that his policy is at fault. He did the right thing, but didn’t explain that it wasn’t policy but a response to an emergency.
He can’t be that dense. I don’t think that you’ll be seeing a move to the center.
(7) The flip of many state legislatures to Republican is one of the so far untold stories of this election.
And it’s a big story. My home state of Minnesota seems to have elected a Democrat, Mark Dayton, as governor. There will be a recount, but we know from experience how Minnesota recounts go. Dayton once gave himself an “F” for his performance as a U.S. Senator, and will likely repeat that performance as Governor. The Twin Cities are pretty liberal (!), and hold over half the population of the state. The Republican gubernatorial candidate ran a poor campaign. Thus the result.
But folks out in the country are pretty smart. Amazingly, both houses of the Minnesota legislature flipped from Democrat to Republican. Not in their wildest dreams did the Republicans think that would happen. The Dems had held the Senate since the 70’s, most recently with a 46 to 21 advantage. And they held the House with an 87 to 47 advantage. Those were huge leads for the Republicans to overcome.
Methinks a lot of ordinary rural folk (they’re called “out-state” by the Liberals) saw that their governor would be a Democrat, so they decided to put a bunch of Republicans in the legislature as a “check.” They might wear bib overalls, listen to country music, hunt deer, fish, and go to church . . . but they ain’t dumb.
Cap’n Rusty: wow, Minnesota! I had no idea.
uncleFred: I don’t think it’s density. I think it’s ideology plus narcissism.
When California and New York default I will take pleasure in the knowledge that a Republican dominated House will not fund a bailout. As Maggie Thatcher said, the problem with socialism is sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.
One sensible Pundit commented that the Republicans are developing a very strong “farm system” in the state legislatures. The flipping of 17 legislatures has gone largely unremarked by the national media, but it is very significant.
My current mantra is that folks have demonstrated that they will not accept “Tweedle dee or Tweedle dum” alternatives in primaries. Hopefully, the legislative farm systems will come into play to groom the next generation of conservative alternatives.
Of course, we will never know how some of the so called “fringe” primary winners this cycle would have fared in the general election if they had received appropriate support from the GOP establishment. I can’t wait for the next call from one of those establishment organizations looking for a contribution.
Cap’n Rusty,
I think the local wins also bode well for the future. Talented conservatives will be more likely to enter local races if they think there’s a chance they can win. This increases the pool for national office. It also gives them a microphone to communicate with voters and dispel the red neck idiot clichees.
The results in California mean the the public employees’ union, the teachers’ union, the prison guards’ union, and the rest will ride the train until it runs out of steam. I just hope we’re in a little better situation than New Jersey when that happens.
Neo,
I very much agree with you that it’s not enough to be conservative (or have Tea Party support) to be elected. You have to be a quality, vetted, electable candidate. A good example is Christine O’Donnell. I really like her principles and think she would have voted in good ways. I also think she was unfairly trashed. BUT…things she had said and/or done in the past made her vulnerable to being trashed (being called, unfairly, a witch comes to mind…so does her comment about masterbation). As a result, she couldn’t overcome the deep blue sentiment of her state (as did Scott Brown in MA).
If a candidate isn’t vetted in or before Republican primaries, he or she damn sure WILL be by the ultraliberals. And it doesn’t even have to be by his or her opponent (remember Maher?).
Having said that, her winning the primary still did some good. Republican congress members will now think twice about RINOish voting, knowing they could be primaried and lose. Even some Democrats may learn a lesson from her primary win.
Suek:
You said:
“In other words, I don’t think those areas are going to change. The question is whether they can continue to suck income off the areas that don’t benefit from their services or whether their will be some means of cutting them off, since they have the population to use the majority vote to oppress the less populated areas.”
There’s a good solution to that problem and it was wisely built into our Constitution by our Founding Fathers…states rights. Restore power to the states and even more local government entities. Government that is close is government that is best.
This may not solve intrastate problems but it would help with interstate problems.
Quite frankly, I live in a VERY conservative area in Texas (our Republican congressman got reelected with 80% of the vote). I really don’t give a damn what people do in California as long as it doesn’t affect my freedom and as long as I don’t have to pay for it.
I think that Christine O’Donnell is a quality candidate.
I think Carly, Meg, Damon Dunn, etc are all quality candidates.
Damon Dunn’s life story was tremendous.
I think the Californian’s who didn’t vote for him were basically irresponsible and lazy. They just voted Democrat here and in Delaware because they were led by their fears, their stereotypes of Republicans and core beliefs of Republican bad – Democrat good.
So I’m being a little judgmental today…..
Deceased Democrat wins in CA
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local-beat/Democrats-Still-Push-for-Win-in-28th-District-State-Senate-Race–106579728.html
People here just vote against the boogeyman. Everytime.
“It’s not enough for candidates to be conservative. They need to be good, as well.”
I hope by “good”, we get open, honest and sincere, as opposed to “intellectual”. To me, a completely sincere inexperienced housewife is much better than the Ivy-educated know-it-all. It was the “intellectuals” that said we could appease Hitler, get along with the Soviets, spend our way to prosperity, and also brought us the “scientific consensus” of global warming.
No one knows all the answers, and mistakes will be made, but lying politicians muck the water and confuse the already addled MSM.
Which is worse? Dabbling in witchcraft in high school or mis-representing your military service while campaigning? Which drew more mainstream media attention? Which candidate won?
Imagine Alvin Greene being made the face of the Democrat Party the way O’Donnell became the MSM designated face of the Tea Party.
Notice that generally Democrats did their best this cycle in the Senate races which, in the absence of a presidential contest, drew most of the MSM exposure. They struggled at the House, state house and state legislature levels, where coverage always is far more limited.
Any Republican senatorial or presidential candidate faces an uphill path in this country due to the bias of the MSM and its allies in the entertainment industry The more openly conservative the candidate, the greater the bias.
In close Senate races the bias can be decisive. I don’t see this changing.
The MSM bias hurts….but “takes” mostly in extremely liberal states. MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, NPR,PBS broadcast in Alabama as well as NYC.
That conservatives must be “good” really means that they not have even little mouse skeletons in their closets. They must be immune to the vicious, petty, utterly distracting smears that the MSM will seek to pin on them.
Lookit, Blumenthal lied and lied about being in Nam, doesn’t know sh*t from Shinola, and he won; MSM ignored. O’Donnell lost; MSM found two mousies in her closet and the screeching was deafening enough to elect the wretched Coons. The difference is made by the media, aka Rush’s Ministry of Propaganda.
When was the last time anyone heard of Republican vote fraud? When? We treat Dem frauds as routine; this includes disenfranchising our military abroad. Sweet Mother Mary!
Needed are vigorous House hearings, subpoenas, harrassment (since no bills will be signed by Baraq), public villification. Haul them in, SEIU, NBPP, NEA, and roast them over the coals of Congress.
I think it’s ideology plus narcissism.
how about “the ideology of narcissists and sociopaths”?
if women can have feminism…
and blacks can have their version..
and gays their version…
La Raza their version
et cetera
then what would narcissists and sociopaths pick or make for an ideology.
and
What kinds of ‘changes’ would they make incrementally to stop their oppression (on their behavior) and like all the above, manufacture more out of the whole cloth of society so as to make such a position permanent
Well, the results seem to be better than I thought when I went to bed last night. Most heartening is the amount of turnover in the state houses and governor’s races.
Still, I wasn’t in a celebratory mood today. I’m underwhelmed by the results. I was hoping for a bigger repudiation of the leftist agenda. I wanted a megatsunami like they were talking about at Ace’s before the election. We did not get that.
The Tea Party-linked candidates didn’t do as well as I had hoped. I was hoping they would win across the board and deliver the ‘reasonable’ Republican establishment as big an ass-whoopin’ as the Democrats got. Instead, the Republican establishment and their apologists got a new lease on life. People like Karl Rove and Michael Medved, who routinely belittle candidates like O’Donnell and Tancredo, can get their smug on and say, “See? We told you so.” As a result, I expect to see more compromise and reaching across the aisle in the new Congress.
Sixty-plus seats in the House is terrific in normal times. But these are not normal times. The American Republic is still hanging on by its fingernails, as it was before last night.
Another thing: This year the independents broke for the Republicans, while in 2008 and 2006 they went Democrat. Where they will end up in 2012 is anybody’s guess.
So these are the people who ultimately decide our elections? The people who don’t pay attention to politics, have no principles, and cast their votes according to their mood at the moment or whether they like the candidate’s hair style? Really? These are the people we’re depending on to save the country?
“(1) It’s not enough for candidates to be conservative. They need to be good, as well. Surely such candidates can be found, but many of the Republican candidates who lost last night (especially in the senatorial races) were not among them.”
Bingo. Rush Limbaugh doesn’t understand this. Neither do many in the Tea Party movement. If you couldn’t see from day one that Christine O’Donnell was a flawed candidate, then you don’t get it either.
I also have no patience with those on my side who complain about the media or unions. The world is what it is. Accept this and find strategies to deal with it. We can win if we put our minds to it, but we must be smart about it.
I agree wholeheartedly. I’m not the only one who has noticed the rise of many excellent conservative women candidates. As a man, I’m overjoyed and I’m proud to support them.
But they didn’t do so well last night. I left the following comment at Belmont Club after another commenter pointed out that O’Donnell did very poorly among women voters:
Whereupon another commenter directed me to ex-Belmont Club commenter Whiskey’s extensive analysis, at his own blog:
The Election Results: Go Hunk, Avoid Women
Read the whole thing. I hate to say it, but I think he pretty much nails it. If he’s right, it does not bode well for our future.
>>The Tea Party-linked candidates didn’t do as well as I had hoped.>>
Someone this AM said that they actually did better than than they had any reason to expect. The numbers given were something like 113 TeaParty candidates that won out of 139 (not sure of this number) that were Tea Party endorsed.
If that’s a true statement, it’s pretty good success.
Tom the Redhunter Says:
November 3rd, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Of course she was a flawed candidate. Can you name a flawless candidate? Harry Reid? Nancy Pelosi? Barney Frank? Joe Biden? Charles Rangel? Chuck Schumer?
I can go on in that vein for hours. But they are all multi-term winners who can apparently stay in elected office as long as they want or until they die, whichever comes first.
rickl, I think it is probably cattiness. Women are often groupies, and if they see a woman who is outside the group, they gang up on her. Maybe it is some kind of survival instinct? Whatever it is, it is awful. Speaking as someone who has been on the receiving end of it.
One of the bad things about cultural feminism is that it produces a society where women never question their own motives. If women are always automatically good, then what point is there to thinking critically about why women do certain things.
For fun I sometimes take cooking classes, and recently one of my female classmates complained that the kitchen was poorly laid out, saying “this must have been designed by a man.” Excuse me??? Like women are never capable of designing crappy things?
It is not that much fun to be one of the only women on earth that actually thinks about this stuff, as you can well imagine I am sure.
anna Says:
November 3rd, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Check out Whiskey’s article, and feel free to leave your own comment there, if you’re so inclined.
I think Artfldgr might find it interesting, too.
Hey rickl – that article you linked to was money. I have been expressing similar sentiments in private since the 2008 election, but it’s difficult to make the points in public without sounding callow.
Now is the time, for better or for worse, when we can longer worry about how it sounds, for what Whiskey is saying is, from my beta-male wonky poly sci perspective, essentially true.
This is why from the first days of Rubio’s campaign to win the GOP nomination I thought he was the only one who could defeat Obama. (and even he would have trouble, since in the weird world of identity politics, black trumps hispanic, and Cubans are not considered “real” hispanics).
But anyway, the upshot of Whiskey’s analysis concerns Republican women, and the sad truth is that, as Shelby Steele once said of Obama, they “cannot win.” There are some exceptions which would be interesting to get a better understanding of – Kelly Ayotte, as noted, and of course Michelle Bachmann. Ayotte is especially interesting because she won a Senate seat, not a House seat or a governorship (like Nikki Haley). Chances are it’s just a fluke, an exception to the rule. Ayotte also managed to escape the national spotlight, largely flying her campaign under the radar. That was probably the most important factor.
The whole thing is another double-bind placed on conservatives by the leftist narrative. They say, “You have no blacks;” Republicans then nominate blacks; and then they lose to white liberals almost every time. Then the left says, “See, you have no blacks…”
They do the same thing with women (it’s a big thing in poly sci departments to study the reasons for the “underrepresentation” of women in politics, and especially conservative politics). “You have so few women…;” Republicans nominate a bunch of women; they lose to white male liberals; and then it’s back to, “See, you have no women…”
It’s infuriating. We need to take Whiskey’s advice and get the YNWAM (Young Non-White Alpha Male) presence in the party front and center – and, see… just listen to how terrible that sounds, exactly like the left, identity politics, etc. But if that is the reality, then we have to call it as it is.
Fortunately the problem seems to be cabined in national offices – the Presidency and the Senate. Unfortunately, these are the toughest places to make real changes in voter habits.
All candidates are flawed, but some are lucky enough to be insulated by their flawed left-leaning constituencies. O’Donnell didn’t have that luxury, but she also didn’t have some of the qualities, imo, that set several other Tea Party-supported candidates apart.
Neo is right, good candidates not only will fare better during the campaign mudbath, but hopefully will perform well enough once in office to hold the seat until such time as they may move to an even more prominent stage. Rubio and Nikki Haley were excellent candidates who were able to weather all that the degenerate Democrats could throw at them. And Ron Johnson of Wisconsin may turn out to be a bright star in the party, even though he was overlooked in most of the national media coverage.
rickl: independents have decided elections for quite some time.
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Rickl…
i am familiar with wiskys place..
here is another similar place, you may be surprised…
Guys,
I finally found it! I found the essay I was looking for-yes! This is good stuff, stuff that needs to be shared with my readers. Enjoy…
markymarksthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/03/artfldgr-on-sexual-harassment-laws.html
Marky has several articles of mine from mens news daily when i was there, and when i was doing more journalism work..
[still waters run deep and one thing you cant do with me is make any assumptions… ]
i have a large fan base that follows me from site to site while i am there… HI GUYS!!!!!!
they are usually silent but write me letters.. 🙂
markymarksthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/03/artfldgr-on-feminists-reaction-to.html
i also have articles on energy, phyics, biology, philosophy, sensors, design, adn more…
if you see the movie ADAM
you are looking at a person with aspergers
i have a lot of the best qualities without the more serious negatives. i am no regimented, i am not disliking of change, i am not literal, i understand jokes. etc.. i am not a victim, and can be very social.
what negs i do have is inability to negotiate with a VC in a competitive contract, so i cant get my work backed.
i am completely isolated from the world who has put me in solitary confinment for being different. by the way, the most verbal about tolerance are the most intolerant.
people envy my abilities, but they would never pay the price to ahve them… when you see ADAM, note how his life is one big empty thing.
then note, that in that he knows the world better than the other people!!!!!
i wouldnt trade if for the world. but being disenfranchised from research or engineering (wrong sex, race, and orientation), means that i am underpaid for my skills, warehoused, and victimized.
which is why i do all this stuff…
its like leonardo da vinci, einstein, etc..
you guys only got to hear of me and my writing because i move to where i can be most useful
not where i am the most popular, i care not as i dont need people, i could live in a lighthouse or go to mars and not have another person around for a year and not mentally go down like regular people. also, there is no place for me in a socialist state of equals.
I also stopped with the feminist stuff after they decided that they couldnt win the debate given who they were debating, and so they decided to find where i lived…
[and thats why i dont have my own site, my own blog, etc… its scary to have strangers angry at you show up where you live at night to suppress you with the implied implications]
if you look around, you can find all kinds of stuff i have written under artfldgr…
always known for being long
always known for triple periods…
now if i could only do something with the technology, the art, the drawings paintings, etc…
but alas… today the work of a person like ramanujan goes in teh garbage, and the rest of the world jumps on you if you try to connect. if you dont try, your in solitary confinement, if you do try, your an arrogant tall poppy that needs to be cut down.
be lucky if a bus hits me… 🙂
same outcome…