The Morning After
When I went to bed last night, not too late, it was clear that we were not going to win a landslide, as I had hoped, but it still looked as if Mitt Romney might eke out the victory he deserved. He ran a pretty good, but not impeccable campaign. He trounced the President in the first debate, and he stood up to him in the second and third debates. Given the level of unemployment, the growth in the national debt, Obama's attack on religious liberty, and the disarray in our foreign posture, he should have won.
When I woke up at 3:30 a.m. and popped downstairs to sample the results, it was clear that he had lost -- albeit not by much. I had expected the undecideds to break in his direction the last week. They broke in President Obama's direction, instead. Hurricane Sandy may have had a lot to do with this, and Chris Christie did not do his party any good when he took the President on a tour of New Jersey and praised him to the skies.
That was no doubt a part of the story, but there is surely more. When the Tea Party Movement emerged in the Spring of 2009 and grew mighty that summer, I thought that we were on the verge of a great awakening. My suspicions were confirmed when Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts, and they were further confirmed when the Republicans seized the House of Representatives in November 2010 and gained strength at the state level on a scale not seen since 1928.
I erred in supposing that the Republicans would then go from strength to strength. I underestimated the power still held by the mainstream media to bury scandals and shape the perceptions of the electorate, and I overestimated the vigor of the Republican Party in the states. The greatest disappointment last night was not Mitt Romney's narrow defeat. It was the failure of the Republican candidates for the Senate.
To sort out what happened and its larger meaning will take some time. It would, however, be a great mistake to suppose that the Republicans should once again become a me-too party. They failed this year, to be sure, but they will fail and fail again if they stand for nothing at all. The defects in his posture and policies that made Barack Obama so vulnerable this year will persist, and we will have to ponder what opportunities they offer for those on our side. It is good to remember that Barry Goldwater's sorry campaign in 1964 laid the foundation for Ronald Reagan's glorious victory in 1980. The country is in for a grim period. The more forcefully we make our argument, the sooner we will be able to dig ourselves out.
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Comments:
Jul '10
Re: The Morning After
The greatest disappointment last night was coming to grips that the leeches have officially taken over the Host.
Apr '11
Re: The Morning After
Elections have consequences. Unfortunately, after 4 more years, the damage will be too great. Besides, arguments and logic don't work on a people who have been ideologically subverted:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeMZGGQ0ERk
America is doomed.
Edited on November 7, 2012 at 1:29pmSep '10
Re: The Morning After
Has anyone heard from Steve Wynn?
Mar '11
Re: The Morning After
Dr. Rahe - good points. I fear that the calls to become the "me, too" party are already beginning. The Senate failures are particularly painful - the House alone probably cannot control the excesses of the Executive Order presidency we are very likely to endure. Four more years. Good grief.
Sep '10
Re: The Morning After
DWM - Dead White Males, Rest In Peace.
May '10
Re: The Morning After
Well, going Galt is beckoning . If the looters think I will continue to work like a dog for their sole benefit, they are mistaken. Living well is the best revenge.
Apr '11
Re: The Morning After
Yeap!
Edited on November 7, 2012 at 1:48pmMay '10
Re: The Morning After
Romney led an extremely mediocre campaign. We picked a guy who looked an acted generically, and he played 'not to lose' in a race that for 95% of the time he was clearly losing. I think in retrospect people are going to look back on this campaign as one tailor made to lose in a close race.
The debates became the Republican's Achilles heel this cycle. We let them consume us during the primaries and we let them dupe us in the general. Obama gave Romney a freebie in the first debate, and suddenly everyone on our side calling out Romney's losing campaign suddenly started declaring a landslide victory. Yet, the same losing strategy continued apace, leading to Romney's loss. The signs were all there, but we refused to acknowledge them.
Edited on November 7, 2012 at 1:56pmAug '11
Re: The Morning After
Heading to grad school is sounding better and better.
Nov '11
Re: The Morning After
The question is "will they want to?" The nation's penis just fell off last night, and our only protection is a watery-eyed John Boehner? The House can stop most spending things, but they are up for election in 2014 while the president is not. Will they have the courage is confront the president? Confront too hard and we could lose our last line of defense, and the Democrats get to pass a single-payer health care plan and other such nonsense. Will John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy final get a spine while there are only four true liberals on the court?
Confront them on spending matters any way possible just to keep the country afloat? We are beyond doomed.
May '10
Re: The Morning After
I buy your argument that Goldwater laid the foundation for a later Reagan victory. But I am struggling to see how the present corresponds to that past election, because Romney just isn't very "Goldwater-esque..." And it could also be a caffeine deficit (up late last night for some reason...)
Apr '11
Re: The Morning After
I hope you'll be studying a real subject like science, medicine or engineering that will give you the skills to find employment in another country like China...otherwise you'll be wasting your time and money. Oh, and learning Mandarin on the side won't hurt.
Edited on November 7, 2012 at 2:10pmFeb '11
Re: The Morning After
Paul A. Rahe:
I erred in supposing that the Republicans would then go from strength to strength. I underestimated the power still held by the mainstream media to bury scandals and shape the perceptions of the electorate
More likely you (and all of us) overestimated how much anyone cares about said scandals. Continuing to pursue them now may get us only rolled eyes and shrugged shoulders. Even Fast and Furious and Benghazi.
Dec '11
Re: The Morning After
From James Taranto in his WSJ "Best of the Web" column, yesterday, before the results were in:
As H.L. Mencken observed: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."
Oct '12
Re: The Morning After
It's very important that we take stock of our situation, as conservatives. The horizon is bleak. America has taken another sharp left turn. We are headed toward social democracy. I think we could and should use these comments to simply assess the situation.
Here's my contribution: The Republicans in the House will break almost immediately on all fiscal cliff issues. No sequester will happen. No more carefully considered cuts will take their place, spending increases will speed up. Taxes will increase on all earners above $200k or so, and maybe on incomes much lower. And all this will happen over the next two months.
My favorite Republican, Paul Ryan, will be compromised completely by his participation in this process and, fairly or not, can no longer hope to be the leader of conservatives over the next four years.
Please post other comments which assess the consequences of this election for conservatism.
Sep '10
Re: The Morning After
As A. Codevilla has pointed out in numerous places both parties have been me-too parties for several decades. Yesterdays exercise was an intramural battle.
The TP got its name in 2009, however it emerged under Bush and has consistently stressed that it is not a Republican movement. Both parties have worked to isolate and vilify it. The GOP has been more covert in its efforts since at the same time it is working to co-opt it.
Any true limited government conservative could have won a landslide by running against the Bush/Obama policies but this would have meant acknowledging there had not been any real differences between the parties. Fifty % of the people still blame Bush for the economic condition of the country and they are as close to the truth as those who blame Obama.
I am sure you are not trying to suggest that Romney's principles, whatever they may be, are as different from Bush's as Goldwater's was from Nixon/Ike. Big government moderates remain firmly in control of the GOP and until this changes it is unlikely a limited government answer will be presented to the American people.
Jun '10
Re: The Morning After
The House of Representatives and perhaps the Republican governors and state's Attorneys General may be our only line of defense for the next four years. Unfortunately that may not be enough to prevent the country from flying headlong into the fiscal abyss.
As depressing as all of this is, think how depressed that business people in Europe who actually create wealth and are penalized severely for it, feel this morning. I'm sure many of them were hoping that America would have come to its senses and that beacon of hope would have shone a bit brighter. Instead, enough of a majority of the American electorate, many unknowingly and ignorantly, who may never fully grasp what they've just done, have snuffed out that beacon.
Probably time to learn Mandarin and Cantonese. I've been putting it off for far too long.
Mar '11
Re: The Morning After
Blaming it all on Romney – his persona, his backstory, his strategy, his money – is pointless. It is one of those "freebie" propositions: you can support it or deny it, but you'll never be able to prove nor disprove it. The technical term in engineering is "a waste of time." (sorry to nerd out on you like that.)
I kept mum on my own pessimism because I'm living in a red bubble in a blue state and I figured I was too whiplashed by all the incoming signals. I did take heart in the optimism of others, and there is no downside to hope. Giving in to despair wouldn't shorten Obama's misrule by one minute, so what's the point in that?
May '10
Re: The Morning After
This loss, however, is on the Republican Party. The party set this guy up for essentially a free ride to the nomination, and he ended up being threatened by erstwhile non-players such as Cain, Gingrich, and Santorum. The only thing that saved Romney in the primaries was his piles of money. Should we really be surprised that he then blew a winnable race against a proven and better funded organization?
I noted back in the primaries that we'd look back at this election as one where the GOP electorate called out for a 'savior' and no one stood up. (well, except for Rick Perry...). The Republican Party thus left us to choose from among a group of extremely flawed candidates. Why? Maybe our good candidates just weren't ready; or maybe they feared the Obama machine. I suspect, however, that it had much to do with too many on our side giving in to the usual "next-in-line" hogwash and stepping aside to given Romney his "turn."
Personally, I'm tired of this same old BS from the GOP.
Aug '12
Re: The Morning After
We may have arrived at the tipping point:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
This is so very depressing.