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Jewish World Review
Nov. 13, 2006
/ 22 Mar-Cheshvan 5767
The Republican debacle
By
Jeff Jacoby
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Two months after Germany's surrender in World War II, British voters
dumped the Conservative prime minister who had led the nation to victory
— Winston Churchill — and replaced him with Clement Attlee, whose
Labor Party had won the election in a landslide. Embittered by his
defeat, Churchill spurned King George's offer of a knighthood. "I could
not accept the Order of the Garter from my sovereign," he said, "when I
have received the order of the boot from his people."
Last week, American voters gave Republicans the order of the boot,
stripping them of at least 29 seats in the House of Representatives and
six in the Senate, and once again making Democrats the kings of Capitol
Hill. It was the GOP's worst showing in decades, and since Tuesday
analysts galore have been reading the entrails. It is easy to be wise
after the event. But consider the judgment rendered by one of the
keenest minds in American politics, who explained nearly a week before
the election why Republican candidates were about to take a beating:
"The reason we are at this moment," former president Bill Clinton told a
group of Democratic donors on Nov. 1, "is that they do not represent
faithfully the Republicans and the more conservative independents in the
country. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here tonight. This is a sweeping,
deep, big thing." According to the nation's most popular Democrat, in
other words, Republicans were about to be punished for having abandoned
their Republican principles. Voters were going to demote the GOP not
because its agenda had grown too conservative — but because it hadn't
been conservative enough.
Exactly.
Nov. 7 was a debacle for Republicans, not conservatives. Democrats
gained power in Washington, but around the country there was no shortage
of evidence that the nation's tectonic shift to the right is still
ongoing. For example, another seven states approved constitutional
amendments barring same-sex marriage; only in Arizona was a marriage
amendment narrowly defeated. The backlash against the Supreme Court's
disgraceful 2005 Kelo v. New London decision continued as well, with
voters in 10 states adopting new laws to protect property owners from
eminent domain abuse.
The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative was at once a brilliant
conservative victory and a humiliating Republican defeat. By an
impressive 16-point margin, Michigan voters said no to racial and gender
preferences in state employment, education, and public contracting. But
the Republican Party, which had joined with Democrats, big business, and
the activist left in opposing the initiative, reaped no political
benefit. The GOP had jettisoned its party's colorblind creed in the hope
of dampening Democratic turnout. In the end, Democrats swept the Senate
and governor's races anyway, while the civil-rights initiative that
Republicans should have endorsed sailed to a 58-42 win.
The next speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is a San Francisco liberal
of the first water, but many of her party's incoming freshmen campaigned
as avowed conservatives. Indiana Democrat Brad Ellsworth, for example,
described himself as anti abortion, pro-traditional marriage, "a hunter
who supports the Second Amendment," and a "local sheriff" who would
fight "to protect our kids from violence and filth on TV and the
Internet." He and other "blue-dog" conservatives will be tugging the new
Democratic majority to the right, while the defeat of liberal
Republicans like Connecticut's Nancy Johnson and Iowa's Jim Leach means
that the Republican minority in the 110th Congress will move to the
right as well.
Voters were fed up with Republicans, and they had every reason to be. In
1994, the GOP swept to power on its "Contract with America" — a
principled platform of fiscal restraint, smaller government, individual
responsibility, and cleaner politics. A dozen years later, the contract
forgotten, the GOP had become an embarrassment — a party of soaring
federal budgets, gluttonous farm and highway bills, and earmarks from
here to eternity. Instead of permanent tax relief and Social Security
reform, the Republicans delivered a vast new drug entitlement and the
McCain-Feingold crackdown on political expression. Worst of all, the
party that had held itself out as the antidote to Democratic corruption
now reeked of its own scandals. Week by week, the parade of sleazy
Republicans seemed to lengthen — Jack Abramoff, Bob Ney, Mark Foley,
Duke Cunningham. Voters finally had enough. Exit polls nationwide found
that it was corruption and scandal, far more than the unpopular war in
Iraq, that voters had in mind on election day.
Churchill's political career didn't end in 1945. He came back from his
defeat, and Republicans can come back, too. "We did not just lose our
majority," one GOP representative said the other day. "We lost our way."
When they're ready to find it again, re-reading the Contract with
America would make a good start. As Bill Clinton could tell them, the
electorate likes Republicans best when they live up to their Republican
ideals.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.
Jeff Jacoby Archives
© 2006, Boston Globe
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