Post-election blogging on the partisan political sites has been predictably loony today. It seems to me that the Republicans lost because the voters have lost patience with the corruption, incompetence, and pandering (especially to religious extremists.) But right wing bloggers such as Hugh Hewitt says the Reeps simply weren’t mean enough on illegal immigration (where did that come from?) and the Kossacks are smoking dope that makes them say all of America is just like Berkeley now. This is crazy talk.
Let me submit that the Democrats won with some fairly conservative candidates such as Jon Tester and Jim Webb, and that moderate Democrats like Joe Lieberman and Harold Ford did pretty darn well. The Republicans who lost were the ones who’ve associated most strongly with the Religious Right: Santorum, Allen, and Talent; those who may as well have been Democrats such as Chaffee and Johnson; and those tainted by Abramoff and the other scandals such as Burns. The Republicans haven’t been acting like Republicans for so long they’ve forgotten what they really are supposed to do when in power.
Meanwhile, Arnold Schwarzenegger cruised to re-election and dragged $37 Billion worth of infrastructure bonds along with him, as well as a Republican Insurance Commissioner. If Republicans want to win national elections they should drop the Southern Strategy that emphasizes guns, Bibles, and big spending, and adopt a Western Strategy that emphasizes small government, personal freedom, property rights, and the things that can only be done for us by government such as infrastructure, environmental protection, and (competent) national defense. This would be a return to Goldwater’s ideals, and a rejection of the Religious Right’s desire to use government to force a narrow set of social values on people. It’s perfectly OK for the religious people to be grossed out by gays and abortion, but it’s not OK to require everybody else to be grossed-out too.
The voters in Arizona rejected a ban on gay marriage yesterday, the first time such a ban has been defeated in a statewide election. They’re not a bunch of liberals, and they’re not going to kick out McCain and elect Ralph Nader in his place. They most likely don’t want their government to be in the business of picking and choosing the things that consenting adults can do to each other and themselves.
Although he hails from New York City, Rudy Giuliani is a perfect Western Strategy presidential candidate: pro-choice, multiply divorced, tough but smart on crime, a competent manager, a fiscal hawk, not beholden to the theocrats. If Arnie were eligible, he’d be one too, but at this point his only remaining move is into the Senate seat now occupied by the heinous Barbara Boxer.
If the Republicans don’t adopt the Western Strategy, we may as well all become Democrats and fight for personal and public freedom in the primaries.
My post-mortem is on my blog…
I agree with you on corruption.
But not everybody on Kos agrees with georgia10 right now, and as I noted there’s other factors too: these are the folks that kept saying about every damn crisis, “Nobody could have predicted…” and sure enough, it was only a matter of time before the Dems came up with a strategy they couldn’t forsee around.
And give Howard Dean and Kos credit here: the 50 state strategy worked like it was supposed to. Lamont always was a long shot; but that wasn’t the point: the point was actually that Repub campaign money (and Lieberman was a Repub in all but name in this contest) is fungible, and challenging a Repub in race A – a long shot race – leaves less money for races B, C, and D, especially since the Repub’s response inevitably is a nonlinear response. (They’re not so fiscally conservative, even on the campaign trail.)
And as I note he who lives by the gerrymander, dies by the gerrymander.
So the 50 state strategy forced the Repubs to play a game of whack-a-mole, and their micortargetting and all that other nonsense meant nothing at the end of the day. Because it was the corruption – and Iraq, and no sophisticated way of manipulating the voters was going to make a difference.
So let’s see if the Repubs recover and renounce their excesses, or if they retreat to become the new party of the former Confederacy…
Hear, hear. Radley Balko makes a similar argument at The Agitator.
I think the main reason Arizona voted down the same-sex marriage ban amendment to the Arizona Constitution is that same-sex marriage is already illegal by statute in Arizona and the constitutional amendment went far beyond that to prohibit anything “similar to” marriage between unmarried people, whether gay or straight. The opposition to the amendment emphasized the point that it would entail the end of domestic partnership benefits being granted by government agencies, and would no doubt also be used (as it has been used in other states, by the same religious right groups pushing this amendment) to attack legal arrangements like guardianships and health care powers of attorney.
If the “Protect Marriage Arizona” proposition had been restricted to just banning gay marriage, I suspect it would have passed.
As one of those religious-right nutjobs, I can tell you that you have not correctly understood our mindset. Unfortunately, that does not stop most people from trying to explain it on the web anyway.
1) I do not care what two (or 3 or more) consenting adults do in the privacy of their own lives. Never have – never will!. I DO care about changing the defenition of an institution that works perfectly fine, thank you. I know that the protest then comes to be “what about all the divorce? Heterosexuals don’t seem to be doing it right!” Well, the problem is with the people, not the institution.
Private lives……………….marraige…..two different things.
2) Abortion…..stem-cells. We lost on that one. ( I don’t count losing one and winning 7 as a loss as so many do about #1 – regardless of the thin margin). Well, we have to live with it. We accessed the political process and the result was not what we wanted, so now we have to live with it. There have been no riots and no insurrections and life goes on. But, narrow minded? You may not agree, but surely you can understand the logic that if we understand that this is human life we are talking about, then we simply can’t go on and say ‘ho hum, it’s just a choice’
3) Illegal immigration could have been a bigger issue if the electorate had seen any difference at all in the actual positions of the parties. If the reps had found their fortitude, then that could have made SOME difference for candidates that commanded respect, but I agree that ultimately other factors would still have outpaced it. I just think that it would have been a little closer.
Respectfully,
Ron Compos
Anaheim, CA
Well said… pithy and tempered.
A couple of items – I live in AZ, and Jim L. is correct – the gay marriage law was completely too restricitve, and would have passed here too if it wasn’t for these restrictions.
I have a question for Mr. Campos regarding the chuch’s stance on stem cell research…if you feel that a few cells in a jar on a scientist’s desk is “human life”, then what is your view on artifical insemination? Because according to you, if you do in fact feel that four cells in a petry dish constitutes “human life” (a concept that I find so ludicrous that I cannot even put an apprpriate response in words), then according to you NO woman should be allowed to use artifical insemination to have a baby. It is a fact that due to the small success rate of implanting the fertizlied egg into the woman, the process involves fertilizing up to 100 eggs for use. Once there is sucess (or three or so failures), any remaining eggs are either frozen for future use or tossed. Literally hundreds of thousands of fertizlied eggs are tossed or frozen each year.
So my question for you, then, is why has there been no effort by the church or nutjobs like you (hey, you called yourself it, so if the shoe fits…) to go and stalk doctors who perform in-vitro insemination? You can’t have your cake and eat it too – either you are against a process that as a rule destroys hundreds of thousands of “human lives” each year, or you allow science to use these discarded eggs for the advancement of scientific study. Seems like you’re using science as you see fit…
You position on the matter seems intellectually inconsistent and frankly hypocritical….
On immigration: In the next recession (don’t kid yourself, there will be one) all the white-collar jobs will be taken up by imported H1-B visa workers, and all the blue-collar jobs will be taken by illegal immigrants. Why? Because business don’t care about the US middle-class, which drove more than 60% of the US economy with consumer spending. Business doesn’t care about the US economy at all. They are playing in a much bigger world economy, and they will do whatever it takes to compete. That means lowering labor costs by any means necessary. If they can’t “outsource” it to a cheaper labor market, they will “insource” cheap labor from outside the US with H1-B visas (and all the other variations on that theme) and illegal immigrants.
The next recession will wipe out what is left of the US middle-class.
As you note, Mr. Compos, it’s a bit of a stretch to say that marriage works “perfectly fine” when most people have opted out of it, either through divorce or out-of-wedlock birth. But if it is such a great institution – and I believe it is, when used as intended – for raising children and encouraging sexual modesty, don’t the gays need it just as much as the rest of us? And are those of us who haven’t been made gay by the Creator harmed in any way if others imitate our lifestyles? It seems to me more a compliment to the straight way of life than a threat to it.
Regarding the questions of abortion and stem cell research, as Neil points out the definition of “life” you’re using is so narrow as to be utterly inconsistent, and given that the Bible is silent on these subjects, there doesn’t appear to be a legitimate theological position on them. So just as The Rapture is an extra-Biblical construct that was invented in the 19th century, the religious opposition to stem-cell research and first-trimester abortions is simply an arbitrary position justified with a lot of made-up theology.
Consequently, I don’t think it’s fair to say I don’t understand the born-again mind set. If anything, I understand it all too well.
Greetings Neil “Blue State” B-
You indicated:
So my question for you, then, is why has there been no effort by the church or nutjobs like you (hey, you called yourself it, so if the shoe fits…) to go and stalk doctors who perform in-vitro insemination?
Your right, I did take on that moniker. I was being facietious as that term has been thrown around pretty loosely by people lately. I walked into that….I’m sorry.
Thing is……neither me, people like me nor any church has any business stalking ANYONE at all, which is why all of the people I have hung out with over the last 38 years dont do that. I am not using science pro or con, as I see fit, or at all. My only point is that we need to be aware that this technology and it’s potential abuses is every bit as serious as the afflictions that need to be treated.
Why do you think that?