Diversity: just another word for party over ideals
I would offer that Digby has hit upon something important here. Southern conservatism and its self-centered agenda has been thrust into the national spotlight, and undeservedly so. He argues (convincingly, to my eye) that not only has that agenda been repudiated in this electoral cycle, but also that the Democratic Party has demonstrated conclusively that a majority can be held without the South.
Yes. Make sure the first thing you do is abandon that thing that put you guys in power. Your guys ran in the south, west and other red states by acting, well, red. Period. Remember, your guys here in Tennessee hate gay cooties too. They cannot win unless they do. And that’s just how it is. Follow this guy’s advice, and you’re out in two years.
Remember this guy’s advice.
November 10th, 2006 at 10:31 am
Let’s review, the Democrats won by acting like Conservatives.
Why is that so difficult for liberals to accept? Party has nothing to do with it. The Democrats had gone too far left and when they returned to the center they were rewarded.
Why does anyone even read Digby? Pretty clear he doesn’t understand the most basic issue.
I predict the Democrats will have a civil war and those who believe the move to the center was a betrayal of their “values” will be the most vocal and goofy.
This election was good for the country. A 51-49 split in the Senate means the Senators will have to act like grownups. This was a correction that was overdue.
November 10th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
Keep reading, Uncle. You’re taking this out of context.
When I say that Digby has hit upon something important, I’m talking about a couple of things.
1) People are going to be talking about this and coming to grips with it in the wake of this election. “Important” doesn’t mean “correct” necessarily. Democrats in Illinois don’t have to be like Democrats in Alabama. This is an important distinction, and one with which the DP needs to come to grips.
2) Pandering to a specific constituency (see also: “third way” politics) is a often a non-starter outside of the south. You can’t graft Clintonian politics onto people who aren’t Clinton.
I don’t agree that Ford should have run a campaign like Kerry should have run a campaign. That is precisely NOT what I’m saying, and you are wrong to be representing it as such.
What I am saying is that this election was a repudiation of the DLC “third way” as a matter of nationwide strategy.
November 10th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
It was meant to be more a criticism of Digby’s short-sightedness.
And I’m not talking about campaigning. I’m talking about campaigning one way then getting into office and saying ‘we didn’t mean it’. you know, like the republicans did in 2000.
November 10th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
“The thing that put [us] guys in power” more than anything else is Republican incompetence. And frankly, the sooner we abandon that, the better.
And yeah, my guy sure did run red. Not.
For that matter, look at Tester on the issues. The only issues you could describe him as being “red” on are guns and illegal immigration and maybe, if you squint at it just right, defense. Being openly pro-choice, supporting protectionist trade policies, openly opposing PATRIOT, supporting a living wage, protecting the interests of first nations (aka American Indians), mandating energy efficiency and alt fuel development, opposing the sale of public lands to private interests, and supporting expanded funding of public education; yeah, that’s my idea of “running red.”
November 10th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Well, Ok. I’ll buy that one if it coupled with the Rs abandoned their base.
OK, that’s two. Each ran on some ‘red’ issues. It’s just how it is.
November 10th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
Keep reading, Uncle. You’re taking this out of context.
Andy, always with the “context” debating trick. Are you the only one that sees “context” Andy? That is a tired trick and you can do better.
The only thing that was repudiated in this electoral cycle was extreme far left liberalism. The Democrats moved to the middle and they were rewarded.
So what happens now? I believe that is what Uncle is asking. If Nancy and Harry move to the left or perhaps even farther left, the Democrats will give back the modest gains of this election.
This is not a Republican vs. Democrat battle. It is the normal self correction that occurs when liberalism gets out of balance. The Republicans spent money like Democrats and the payback was inevitable.
People are worried about how to pay for college, how they can retire, and what happens if they get sick. Neither party has the answers the people want. Republicans acted like liberals and they were taken out back to the shed and had their fanny’s whupped.
Digby is just sounding out what the far left cannot accept, that they won by moving to the middle.
Live with it, it is the future. Here is a question for Digby, what will you do when Democrats turn from Blue to Purple? That is what they have to do if they want to keep winning.
November 10th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
I agree with no. 9 on all counts.
As a Republican, I hope that the Republican Party has a civil war and decides to act like conservatives.
I specifically hope that the Republicans appoint Mike Pense as Minority Leader, and I don’t care about the seniority that Roy Blount and Boehner (sp?) have achieved.
If the Republicans follow the principles they posited in 1994, they will win back Congress and possibly retain the Presidency.
If they continue acting like they have for the last 5 or 6 years, they deserve to be relegated to being the opposition party.
I frankly had a difficult time pulling for several Republican Senators on Tuesday, with the exception of Jim Tallent.
The Senate will be a better institution without people like Chafee, DeWine, and Allen (2 of whom were only elected to the Senate as a result of family wealth and power and not personal accomplishment).
I similarly hope that the Democrats in the Senate let some of the new, or at least more recently elected, Senators demonstrate some leadership.
The Democrats would be wise to start easing some of the old guard (their initials are Kennedy, Leahy, and Biden) out and letting some of the newer Democratic Senators ( e.g. Bill Nelson) assume some leadership positions, but I know that politics doesn’t work that way in either party.
The Republican Party deserved worse than it actually got on Tuesday.
Its “leadership” has been a slow moving trainwreck, and I don’t care for any more of it.
November 10th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Uncle:
Each ran on some ‘red’ issues.
Well, yeah, but that’s not the same thing as “running red,” any more than a pro-choice Republican would be “running blue.” I would think you’d view some deviation from the party line as a good thing, no matter which party. And yeah, it’s only two, but they’re also the first two I looked at. And I picked Tester precisely because he’s often tossed out there as an example of a Democrat who won by “running red.”
Anyway, most of the Democratic pickups, house-wise, anyway, were in the Northeast and Great Lakes, where they didn’t really have to run all that red to win. It’d be hard to argue that the Dems took the house because they ran red. You’d have a better argument there for the Senate, but again, looking at Tester (who I’ve seen bandied about as a “conservative” Democrat), it doesn’t look like they ran all that red, and it also doesn’t look like they’re likely to abandon those issues on which they did run red. I don’t see Tester backing off on guns or immigration, and I don’t see the guy in PA suddenly deciding to fund free abortions for everyone.
November 10th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
#9:
The Democrats moved to the middle and they were rewarded.
I disagree. The Democrats shut the hell up and they were rewarded.
Republicans acted like liberals
I disagree here, too. The only way in which you could argue that the Republicans “acted like liberals” is that they spent a hell of a lot of money. But they didn’t raise taxes to pay for it, as a liberal would have, and most of the stuff they spent it on was not “liberal” in nature. Even the Medicare prescription drug benefit is basically just a giant corporate giveaway more than a legitimate social benefit.
Sure the Democrats moved to the middle on some issues, but whether or not that’s a good thing depends a great deal on the issue. On guns, it’s probably good. Other issues, not so much.
Chris:
The sooner the GOP stops pandering to the evangelicals, the better it will be for the party. The authoritarian policies preferred by “social conservatives” run directly counter to the limited government principles that fiscal conservatives prefer.
November 10th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
tgirsch,
Democrats like Tester are, from my view, radically different than those who allow our country to be invaded and want to take restrict or take away the most basic right of armed self-defense. George Bush supported both (although his AW ban support was done from the tall grass) He’s finally admitting that the Democratic leadership will be his allies for open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens. Any politician, Republican or Democrat who wants to allow our country to be invaded and then disarm the citizens is a tyrant, traitor and a “domestic enemy”.
I also consider the so-called “free trade” policies (NAFTA, CAFTA) as a left-wing deals in that our trade decisions are handed over to international tribunals and American workers are sacraficed on the altar of globalism by the likes of Bill Clinton and George Bush. I want American sovereignity over our trade and economy to be CONSERVED according to the Constitution.
It seems too that the expenditure of American treasure and blood is an extension of left-wing ideology to foreign affairs. As Republican Congressman, Jimmy Duncan (2nd District TN) said re: Iraq, “there’s nothing conservative about this war.”
But I don’t care what’s “red” or “blue”, I’m looking for anyone who will stop tyranny, global interventionism and expand liberty for the people according to ALL of the Bill of Rights!
November 10th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
Tom’s right. The Dems shut the hell up, and as a result, were rewarded both by the center, which happily deluded itself into thinking they had moved to the center, and by the base, which happily deluded itself into thinking they hadn’t moved at all. Like the two men at Speakers’ Corner who both say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong.
November 10th, 2006 at 7:34 pm
I disagree. The Democrats shut the hell up and they were rewarded.
How so? I heard what they said and it was conservative. Are you suggesting they were not sincere?
November 11th, 2006 at 10:23 am
Well, the Dems weren’t “rewarded” for anything, other than not being Republican. They won this election because alot of angry Republicans either stayed home or voted Libertarian instead.
In a way, this is like the 2000 presidential election. Bush came within a few hundred votes of losing because alot of religious people were turned off by the revelation of his drunk driving arrest, and thus stayed home or voted for someone else.
Had the Democrats recognized how close they had gotten, and acted like grownups instead of resorting to “stolen elections” and “BusHitler” nonsense, and then nominated a moderate instead of a liberal fossil, they might have won in 2004. But they deluded themselves into believing that progressives acutally “won” that election, and so went to the Left instead of the Right.
But by moving to the Left, they alienated most Americans, and all those Cursed Evangelicals who disappeared in 2000 came out in force in 2004. If you’ll remember, despite a record Democrat turnout that election Bush won by an even bigger margin than he did in 2000.
The Dems are faced with the same choice today. The solid majority of the people in this country are center-right in their political views. If the Democrats move to the left, they’ll be voted out in 2008. If they stay in the center, they have a good chance of winning the White House and holding onto Congress.
If they really push gun control, they’ll do neither.
November 11th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
Bush seemed upbeat during his post-election news conference, especially when asked about the prospects for getting “Comprehensive Immigration Reform”. Now that he’s got the House Republican majority out of the way who, along with some Blue Dog Democrats, passed the enforcement only HR 4437, he can depend on Pelosi and Reid to help him erase the borders for “migration” as his other ally, Vicente Fox says.
That will help him grease the skids for the NAFTA highway and the clandestine CFR plan now in the works for a Norht American Union.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=14965
Hopefully there will be enough newly elected, “Blue Dog” Democrats with the left-over independent Republicans who will resist and stop the treason.
November 13th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Ron W:
Don’t have a lot of time to respond right now, but you’re sticking to old liberal/conservative divides. There’s nothing “liberal” about free trade agreements, nor about neo-conservatism, the latter of which is essentially what drives the sort of authoritarians policies you’re objecting to.
November 13th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Oh, and if you want to really address the illegal immigration problem, rather than half-baked walls and mass-deportation schemes, how about serious punishment for those employers who hire them? Attacking the demand is almost always more effective than attacking the supply.
November 13th, 2006 at 2:08 pm
tgirsch,
Agreed. Crack down on those who hire folks here illegally. Deport folks (illegally here) who manage to get themselves arrested. The primary deportation method, however, would be folks who no longer find it to be financially viable to stay. Change the incentives, and you’ll change behavior. I still want a fence, however. And while we’re at it, let’s make it a lot less hard to get here legally (and harder to illegally–see the fence).