Sigh. Good morning.
Actually, I'm only a very little bit glum.
Now, there is a silver lining, but I have to admit I was VERY wrong about the way the election was going to go.
The good thing is that conservatism won just about everywhere, but Republicans, who usually champion it, did not. It is difficult to explain to someone who isn't steeped in politics, but there are two elements I think fall into this.
First, and most easy to grasp, is that this was an election about Republicans. Democrats did not win (with a few exceptions) so much as Republicans lost. They lost when they did not listen to their voters. They did not secure our border, they did not protect the tax cuts, they did not take a firm stance on support in Iraq, they did not stand firm behind judges.
As a result, Republican voters have sent this message: "Unlike Democrats, who want their candidates in control no matter what, we will actually hand over control of the country to the opposition if you do not do exactly what you promised when we voted for you."
I believe firmly that we will re-elect Republicans in 2008, and another Republican president, and hopefully those politicians will know for certain that we mean what we say when we insist they do what we elected them to do.
One of the greatest illustrations of this is Joe Lieberman. His party loathed him for standing with the President on the issue of Iraq. Well, if this election was all about hating Bush and wanting to leave Iraq, Lieberman would have lost the general election too. He won handily. Even with the republican taking 10% of the vote away from him (because nobody thinks the Republicans would have voted for Lamont). Instead, it was about people who kept their word, who voted on what was important, and kept their campaign promises. Lieberman did all of these things and even Republicans supported him (though he often votes against our issues, he was at least intellectually honest and he GETS it about the War on Islamic Extremism).
Okay, here's the other thing, and it is harder to explain:
Ballot initiatives are when laws have to go to the voters instead of to individual state legislators. Many initiatives were on ballots all around the country. Conservative initiatives have won almost universally. TWENTY states passed bans on gay marriage, Arizona passed English as their official language, Colorado is denying illegal aliens access to citizen benefits, a whole lot of things.
So, how did all these conservative issues win, when all the Republicans lost? There are only two answers, and they can coincide. One, the country as a whole is conservative, even if it is split Rep/Dem. Two, lots of Republicans DID show up, but they didn't vote for the politicians who let them down in Washington.
I like the theory, but I loathe the practice.
It is wrong thinking. You don't hand power over to the opposition, you elect more conservative Republicans, so instead of a fight between liberals and conservatives, you have a fight between conservatives and moderates.
I'm actually more optimistic about 2008 than if we'd won AGAIN (after all, remember we won HUGE three elections in a row, so it was almost inevitable that we would take a step back). Historically, in 6th year mid-term elections, the party in the White House loses 40 seats in the house and 7 seats in the Senate. This was a loss, don't get me wrong, but it was better than average if you look at history.
