Reverse Mandate
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In two short years Democrats made Republicans popular again.
In 2008 even life long Republicans hung their collective heads in shame, having fostered upon America every conceivable sin from George Bush to bank bail-outs. The modern American Tea Party movement formed during the reign of King George the Lesser in reaction to a series of unconstitutional and unconscionable Republican insults ranging from giving a former Goldman Sachs CEO nearly a trillion dollars of fun money, to congress critters trying to bend over pages, to interfering with the end-of-life decisions of a husband and wife.
And sometimes they were just plain stupid.
Indeed, Republicans collectively destroyed whatever brand image they once had as small government advocates, leaving their rapidly declining ranks to wonder why their monthly meetings always had left over cookies and scotch. It seemed that nobody wanted to be a Republican any more, and their members decreasingly claimed the Party of Lincoln as their own in polite company.
Democrats fixed that problem.
Historians will distort the results of yesterday’s election, so it is worth establishing some perspective while the political corpses of 60+ Democrats have yet to start rotting on the battle field. The center of the 2010 storm was “control” and the demand for less of the stuff. People have a predilection for freedom and rail against authoritarianism, except when it is profitable. Those of an independent streak (homo Americanus) tend not to seek ill gotten gains, and thus any form of autocracy is reviled. That is why the Tea Party movement began forming in 2007 (though it received a formal name later on). Tea drinkers congregated when national leaders wrote laws that illegally superseded the Constitution, which is supposed to be Supreme Law. George Bush and other miscreants were acting like princes instead of public servants and were electorally denied royal powers.
So electing a King and a Clown Court in 2008 was a real kick in the jaw.
2008 saw a demoralized Republican party and their conservative/libertarian allies self-sidelined out of injury and indifference. Charles Krauthammer accurately noted that even with the combined baggage of the Bush legacy and John McCain, a charismatic Barack Obama only pulled 53% of the popular vote, which doesn’t constitute a myth much less a mandate. Yet the tragic triumvirate of Obama, the unblinking House Madam Nancy Pelosi, and the perpetual sour puss Harry Reid entered office as if by divine right and tossed their tonnage about in ways that made Manifest Destiny Republicans wince. Democrats showed open arrogance at town hall meetings and when Nancy Pelosi marched toward the Capitol, an oversized majestic gavel in hand, to overrule the 61% of Americans who did not want Obamacare enacted.
People went ballistic. The Tea Party went to work.
The tactical if not strategic mistake committed by Democrats was rushing to take too much turf too fast (much the same way Hitler did when he foolishly opened the Eastern Front with Russia). With majorities in all branches of government and an ideology arguably out of alignment with most Americans, Democrats sought to subject people to their designs, ignoring the effect that had on Republicans two years prior. They were blind to the fact that a large and growing portion of the voting public were abandoning parties in part due to parties abandoning governmental obedience. Democrats failed to see that the same shift in sentiment which escorted Republicans out of power in 2008 would do the same to Democrats in 2010 if they sullied voters with similar shenanigans. Obama played his poker hand, saw Bush’s nearly trillion dollar bank bailout with a nearly trillion dollar slush fund (a.k.a. stimulus) and raised him a perpetually ruinous hijacking of the health insurance market.
Voters called his bluff.
Democrats have one thing to be thankful for as their collect their war dead. Since all House seats are in play every two years, there was a huge sweeping of the lower chamber (and a display of voter spite in escorting Nancy “Bite My Gavel” Pelosi out of her leadership role). Due to Constitutional direction, only a third of Senate seats were decided this year. Had all Senate seats been in play, I have few doubts that Republicans would be in charge of the entire legislative branch (and given the long-term effects of bad Supreme Court and treaty decisions Obama will undoubtedly make, achieving gridlock in the Senate would have been a preferable option).
And yet, all this overlooks the big story.
Trends are important and we saw two covariant trends create today’s headlines. First is that more Americans are claiming to be Independents instead of Republican or Democrats, a clear indication that both parties have squandered their reputations like a drunken girl in the boy’s locker room on prom night (6 in 10 indies went Republican this cycle and more than half pan Obama’s job performance). This trend clearly coincides with the rise of the Tea Party movement which happily took both Republican and Democrat scalps during the primaries, escorting out of office long-standing incumbents and flipping formerly “safe” seats. Democrat failure to see the covariance of these trends was an act of either arrogance, willful blindness or a rush to advance pivotal legislation while they had absolute power.
Or it could have just been idiocy. After all, Barack Obama isn’t a very bright fellow, so we can’t expect his henchmen to be either. Let us assume that trends continue, and the ability of Republicans to methodically shoot off their own toes does too.
The self-organizing power that the Internet provides has started a process of delegitimizing political parties. Whereas people once threw their support behind one or another party based on a lose association of sentiments, they now do not. Over time both of the major parties have eliminated all but a few strands of this connection (the Whigs seem to have lead the process). I know many Democrats who, when pressed, will disagree with most of their party’s platform, yet cling to one or another slender connection (for example, union men, despite being pro-gun and small government, stick with the Dems to protect forced union memberships). Yet these lingering connections are evaporating and the ranks of Independents is now larger than either of the two big parties. Long-term as a nation we are going to focus less on party, more on ideology and use the Internet to chew politician’s butts of every flavor.
We also see a national divide which needs correcting, and indeed is part of the revolt this election represents. At both the state and federal levels, government employees earn more money, have outrageously higher benefits and retire younger than private citizens. Many factors are to blame, but the old paradigm that government servants made less in trade for unshakable job security has been broken, and the mobs who work for ever expanding governments now worry about their cushy environment being removed by angry taxpayers. The battle line is drawn between these camps, and only by extracting themselves from two political parties – that severally expanded the size and expense of government – can taxpayers win.
Thus, the trend will be reinforced and grown. More people will defect from the Democrats and rebel against Republicans. Instead they will vote for candidates of any party or no party at all, based primarily on the politician’s policies and the analysis of peers. Parties, pundits and reporters will have less and less influence on subsequent elections.
This is a Good Thing.
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