READER EMAIL: Here are a few excerpts from my voluminous inbox:
While I agree that National Security was the big stick that enabled the Republican success in this election, I don’t think you can overstate the repugnance with which many independents viewed Wellstone’s memorial service. I think there is a strong possibility that mobilized many folks to vote against the Democrats.
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Minnesota folk have a strong sense of decency and and watching Democrats make politics into a tasteless political rally offended us to the core. The Wellstone rally was all people talked about here last week. Poll lines were 3 hours long yesterday; I am guessing the final totals will set a new record for voter turnout.
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OK, so it’s not really a revolution everywhere. Here in Georgia it is nothing short of that: the collapse of a 130-year-old structure of Democratic control of the state government that nobody saw coming, outside perhaps of Sonny Perdue’s immediate family and maybe Ralph Reed.
One local trend that a lot of people missed is that in some key states, including Georgia, Massachusetts and Maryland, Republicans were able to run as outsiders critizing an entrenched Democratic political establishment that voters resented more than everyone thought. This kind of thing can cut both ways, of course, but outside of Illinois and maybe Michigan it didn’t. Even in Wisconsin, where Tommy Thompson’s successor got turned out, the Republicans took over both houses of the state legislature.
On the national level, the big issue that Democrats still haven’t come to grips with may not be the economy at all, though I agree with what Josh Marshall says today about their emphasis on tactics over ideas. The big issue that the end of the Cold War and the 1990’s boom obscured may be that Democrats are still not trusted on national security/foreign policy issues. The last election where they were, really, was the one in 1964. Elections they have won since were those where the electorate’s attention was focused elsewhere: on the aftermath of Watergate (1976), or on the economy (1992 and ’96).
Plenty of criticisms can be made of how Republican administrations have handled defense and foreign affairs, but as with economic issues you cannot beat something with nothing. Democrats are for the most part still identified with weakness, as they have been since the McGovern candidacy in 1972, and with putting interest group politics ahead of national security. One of the most effective GOP attacks on Democrats this year was about applying civil service rules to the new Dept. of Homeland Security — the Democrats never came up with a good reason for their position other than that it was what the public employee unions wanted. To most people it looked like doing what the unions wanted was the thing they were really serious about.
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On the national scene, I think this is relief from the constipation that has gripped us for the last two years. Before the elections, big media was touting that this election would be a referendum on the Bush Presidency and I think it was. Look for those same pundits to back quickly away from that statement now. I think it also shows, much to the pundits’ dismay, that the American people are paying attention.
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As the fallout becomes clearer, I think the Dems are going to see that there are a LOT of people like me: Registered Democrats who have previously been party faithful but who jumped the fence based on the war on terrorism. I talked to a little old man while in line for the polls and he told me he was in this category, and was voting Republican for the first time in 20 years. “Those Democrats are going to get more Americans killed,” he said.
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This past Saturday I was in a townie pub in a ‘burb of Boston. I knew then that O’Brien was toast. Her behavior in the last debate turned off the local and blue collar vote, as did the fact that three of her relatives are “on the payroll”. The final straw, I think, was her stand on allowing 16 year olds to have abortions without parental consent — it turned off many “moderate” pro-choicers. She came across as Hillary Clinton would if she only could, and that’s a sure-fire loser anywhere.
So without the “townie”/blue collar vote, O’Brien didn’t have a chance because MA is being transformed by it’s high-tech, entrepreneurial economy. The liberal base is being sapped by a new breed that wants low taxes, increasing property values and a continuing supply of high paying, high tech jobs. But the kicker is that the “townies” are now recognizing that this is in their best interest too and are defecting from this base.
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Interesting spin in the NY Times that says that President Bush must account for all of those waving hands that voted for the Dems. I don’t recall them saying that when the Dems won big in 1998. Then it was a mandate.
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You voiced some wonder that Ehrlich won in MD despite his position on guns (or perhaps despite KKT’s position on guns).
I would suggest that during the sniper episode more than a few otherwise liberal or liberal-minded people went to buy a gun and came up against the waiting period and the State Police background checks and the Federal forms answer truthfully on penalty of a felony) and rethought their positions on guns and gun control.(Hey, I’m a law-abiding guy/gal, why can’t I have a gun to protect myself, and what if I need one during the waiting period? What if I made a mistake by accident on the forms and get in trouble? Hey, I vote for Connie Morella, therefore I am ok, right?) Maybe some cognitive dissonance set in….
A statistic that came out during the campaign was that thousands of guns were fingerprinted in the last two years (since the law was passed)and not a single crime has been solved on that basis. Meanwhile, the state archivist was found to have declared that MD would not be cooperating with other states’ firearms background checks “for lack of resources”, calling into question the commitment of the administration to doing something sensible about gun ownership by criminals with the existing laws. Further, I believe there was a brief period of time when even the background checks for Maryland gun purchasers were not done properly. When the sniper’s weapon was found to have been brought in from out of state maybe some realized the futility of the exercise.
All of this makes it more than reasonable to assume that what we do about guns is a reasonable question, not an automatic “yes” to more gun laws.
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I’m the state chairman of the Massachusetts Libertarian Party.
I spent the whole day yesterday at the polls, talking to voters and to the political operatives for the Democrats and Republicans.
What Jay Fitzgerald fails to mention is that the anti-income tax initiative was completely a Libertarian initiative, and one that every Republican (Mitt Romney included) opposed.
Tell me again how this is supposed to be victory for conservatives?
This is a stunning victory for the Libertarians; we have demonstrated our ability to set the agenda.
Meanwhile, some members of the Republican state committee (who shall remain unnamed to protect their privacy) have complained to me on numerous occasions of the leftward tilt of their own party, and of the constant witch hunts to eliminate “real” conservatives. . . .
In the mean time, the Libertarian Party is the fastest growing party in
Massachusetts, and we have only just begun.
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1. Terry can claim all he wants that the Democratic base didn’t come out, but the places they DID come out is where they got hammered worst (congratulations, Jeb!)
2. Jeffords just lost everything he sold his soul for, and I think milk AND cheese will be getting much cheaper in the coming months. . . .
9. Look for Maureen Dowd to make inappropriate comparisons to this mandate for Bush to the 100% turnout/vote for Saddaam in Iraq. She’ll make it fit, trust me. If she doesn’t then Molly Ivins will.
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The consensus on the Street is that the Fed will have to cut rates again today to provide stimulus to the economy. Yet Democrats have tried to claim that they have a better economic plan — raise taxes!
If Greenspan does cut rates today, it will serve as an exclamation point to the message voters gave Democrats yesterday — that they don’t have a clue when it comes to a plan for the future.
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The question I’m trying to ask is: “Can the Senate refuse to seat Lautenberg based on the violation of state election laws?”
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Voters in South Carolina elected Mark Sanford governor. He proposed a plan to phase out that state’s income tax.
Voters in liberal Massachusetts nearly passed an initiative to repeal the state’s income tax. It failed only 55-45, a shockingly close margin in liberal Taxachusetts.
Voters in liberal Oregon overwhelmingly defeated a ballot initiative to create universal healthcare in the state because it would have caused massive increases to the state’s income tax.
Clearly, anti-tax sentiment is brewing.
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Ehrlich skillfully finessed the gun issue and made it into the crime issue. According the FBI’s data Maryland is the third most violent state in the nation. (I’ve not seen the more recent data, but at the census bureau site, Maryland was the fourth most violent state in 2000, up from sixth in 1990. Violent crime rates in Maryland did drop, just not as fast as in most other states during the 1990’s.) Ehrlich advocates bringing Richmond’s Project Exile to Maryland to fight gun crime. (Both the NRA and anti-gun groups supported Project Exile.) I know it’s a cliche to say that we need to control criminals not guns, but it’s true. Given Townsend’s spotty record on controlling crime – she was in charge of fighting crime in the administration – Ehrlich’s win also suggests that simply passing more gun control laws is an abdication masquerading as fighting crime.
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How would you like to be Frank Lautenberg this morning?
78 years old and back in the Senate in the *minority* party. Yeah, that’ll get him jumping out of bed every morning.
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It seems to me that the combination of (i) the President’s ability to aid his party’s candidates and (ii) his ability heretofore to keep Senate Dems on the ropes on Iraq, executive privilege, etc. flatly disprove the sentiment running high circa 1999 that the rabid Clinton-haters had irreparably damaged the presidency for all time.
Of course, the speed with which those same persons began to blast the Administration’s “unilateralism” sort of gave the lie to that “damaged presidency” thesis earlier. Even Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was recently trumpeting the return of the Imperial Presidency a few weeks ago.
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I wonder if German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has placed a congratulatory call to President Bush yet?
This just scratches the surface of what I’ve gotten.