{"id":4112,"date":"2006-11-08T20:59:16","date_gmt":"2006-11-09T03:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/11\/08\/the-western-strategy\/"},"modified":"2006-11-08T20:59:16","modified_gmt":"2006-11-09T03:59:16","slug":"the-western-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/08\/the-western-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Western Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tPost-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<\/a> (where did that come from?) and the Kossacks are smoking dope that makes them say all of America is just like Berkeley now<\/a>. This is crazy talk.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading “The Western Strategy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-14k","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}