Be Afraid...Be Very Afraid
Five and a half hours of fitful sleep later (and unable to get back to sleep now), the strange new world does not look any less harrowing.
For starters, Jim Talent went down in Missouri, and Conrad Burns fell a thousand votes and change short in Montana, so the Donks made a clean sweep of all six competitive GOP senate seats and took that majority as well. You've heard of "salt in the wound"? This is Dutch cleanser.
No, I'm not going to hurl bitter recriminations at the voters. Those that voted for the Democrats made a grievous mistake that we're all going to have to pay for in a multitude of ways (including, for unknown thousands of us, our lives). But they made their choice. My only regret is that it isn't just they who have to live with the consequences.
And consequences there will be. The Democrats, already irredeemably corrupted by the Clinton detour, have spent the past six years spiralling down into sedition, treason, and extremism. They ran on nothing but hate and bile and bigotry. And now it has all been rewarded. They threw a seventy-one month temper tantrum, and it finally got them what they wanted: power. Not exactly the greatest message to send to a party that was in desperate need of reform.
Now that such loathsome people are reempowered, there is absolutely no reason to think that they won't go on as large and wide a rampage of radicalism and revenge as they possibly can. For the Dems, it's been twelve long years in the wildnerness, not just six, that this sulfuric neoBolshevism has been on high-rolling boil. It's like all the water behind Hoover Dam - they couldn't contain it now even if any of them were inclined to be magnanimous in victory.
The flood is coming. We'd better get that ark built, and fast.
As to fingerpointing at the GOP, well, all I can say is this is why you make hay while the sun shines. With a thirty seat majority in the House and ten in the Senate AND the White House, the Republicans had a rare opportunity to get things done that doesn't come along very often for them. What did Denny Hastert and Bill Frist do with it? Not nearly as much as they could have. The tax cuts were extended a couple of years, but not made permanent. They ran away from entitlements reform. They dithered on border enforcement until the last possible moment. The nearly let the Patriot Act get gutted. And, of course, there was "Sailor" McCain's "memo of understanding" that forswore any attempt to ban judicial confirmation filibusters and heralded both the pathetic GOP record on federal appellate court confirmations and last night's debacle.
Looking through my posts from that time, I find any number of pregnant comments, but I think this quote from Jonathan Rothenberg encapsulates everything quite nicely:
Last night the disintegration became official.
Now, then - can the GOP get it back in two years? Well, sure - theoretically. In reality, it's not bloodly likely.
First, now that they're back in the saddle, the Democrats are going to so stack the deck to entrench themselves that Republicans would need another "earthquake" like 1994 in order to dislodge them again. And you'll recall that that "earthquake" took FORTY YEARS to materialize on the House side and nearly a decade in the Senate. Flipping seats and overcoming incumbency isn't nearly as simple as trying on shirts - particularly when the Dems are so much better at insulating themselves from it.
Second, to employ one of my pet axioms, while the Democrats have always wanted power too much, last night was a case of the Republicans wanting it too little. Incumbency is, indeed, supposed to be difficult to overcome. If Pachyderms were as "corrupt" and "arrogant" as some have tried to depict them, one would have thought that they could have retained control for longer than just twelve years, "six year itch" or no "six year itch".
Third, to the degree that last night was a repudiation of President Bush - and by the time the Enemy Media is finished, there will BE no other interpretation - the atmosphere for 2008 will be so poisoned against Republicans that building even a modest "counter-wave" to correct the wrong-way movement of a day ago will be a formidable task.
Fourth, Republicans will absorb that poison and almost certainly flee leftward across the board. Don't expect them to react like the Democrats did after 2000, 2002, and 2004, striking a pose of hardline partisan defiance; such backbone simply isn't in them. They'll fall back into their old "go along to get along" pose like the glove-like fit of a pair of underwear to a man with five penises. As Hugh Hewitt observes this morning, "From the first day of the new Congress it is going to be a partisan slugfest or a GOP dismemberment." My money (at least until the Democrats confiscate it from me) is on the latter. And that's the surest bet you're ever gonna get.
So get used to it, my fellow conservatives. We had our run at the Promised Land and we blew it. We won't get a second chance, if ever, for a long, long time.
If the jihadis let us live that long, that is.
UPDATE: I can't resist bazookaing Double-H's lame attempt at a silver lining:
Hillary's path to the Democrat nomination will be unopposed. And with congressional majorities comes the power to set the agenda and turn the electorate even more back toward their psychopathic way of thinking. For all the conventional wisdom on our side of the aisle that she's polarizingly unelectable, we need to consider the unnervingly likely possibility that Mrs. Clinton may ride into the White House on a wave of popularity and acclimation. You can be damn sure that Giuliani or Romney (or McCain) won't do much to slow it down.
Oh, come on, Hugh. Did the Enemy Media labor under the onerous burden of covering for Bill Clinton? Hell, no - the reveled in it! They exulted in it! Here they had their own Nixon hanging around their necks like an anchor and they (and he) jiu-jitsued that into sky-high approval ratings that stuck it up our collective ass sideways. How will this be any different?
What you have to remember is that for the Left, the job is only partially accomplished. The billious agitation of this decade is only going to continue at an even greater fever pitch given that they've got the propaganda tools of congressional control added back into their mix. And all of it will be directed at so completely demolishing the GOP coalition that there will be no hope of stopping a Clinton restoration.
That's when the reign of terror will truly begin.
Two words, Hugh: "Fairness Doctrine." To say nothing of "McCain-Feingold," which was passed by a GOP Congress and signed into law by a GOP president. After 2008 "playing offense" will become, by law, a thing of the past for the center-right. President Rodham will not tolerate it, and she'll have the Congress (and the courts) to back her up.
In the interim, I suppose we can give it a try. But we'll just be pissing into the wind. Last night's election results will be sold like they're Moses' stone tablets - concrete proof of America's "rejection" of "right-wing extremism". All our "offense" will be dismissed on that basis, minority Republicans won't take our advice on that basis, our frustration with them because of that will metastasize...oh, hell, you can see where this is going, cantcha?
The penultimate bottom line is we were entrusted with power and we squandered the opportunity. It is not a mistake the Democrats will repeat.
The bottom bottom line is that something catastrophic will have to happen to change the paradigm and swing the pendulum back in our direction.
And something or things will happen - the Dems (and al Qaeda and Iran and North Korea and...) will make sure of it. The only question is how much of an America there will be left to salvage.
God help us. God help us all.
ADDENDUM: And with that, I bid you adeiu until tomorrow. I've got meetings most of the day and thus wouldn't be online much anyway, and after five consecutive nights of five hours sleep, I doubt I'll last much past when I walk in the front door tonight.
But I really don't want to be online today, any more than I want to listen to talk radio or any other media outlet. Maybe I'm funny that way, but when my sports teams lose I turn off the TV before the post-game interviews and analysis. Heck, I turn it off once the game is out of reach. Why? Because I know my team is going to lose and I feel no great obligation to be a witness to it. Just ask my son about SuperBowl XL. I sure as hell didn't sit through the damned Lombardi trophy presentation (okay, if the refs had been up on the platform with Dan Rooney and Bill Cowher, maybe...), and I'm not about to endure all the undecorous gloating from the DisLoyal Opposition.
Life is going to be difficult enough going forward. I - we - are going to need all the morale we can get.
For starters, Jim Talent went down in Missouri, and Conrad Burns fell a thousand votes and change short in Montana, so the Donks made a clean sweep of all six competitive GOP senate seats and took that majority as well. You've heard of "salt in the wound"? This is Dutch cleanser.
No, I'm not going to hurl bitter recriminations at the voters. Those that voted for the Democrats made a grievous mistake that we're all going to have to pay for in a multitude of ways (including, for unknown thousands of us, our lives). But they made their choice. My only regret is that it isn't just they who have to live with the consequences.
And consequences there will be. The Democrats, already irredeemably corrupted by the Clinton detour, have spent the past six years spiralling down into sedition, treason, and extremism. They ran on nothing but hate and bile and bigotry. And now it has all been rewarded. They threw a seventy-one month temper tantrum, and it finally got them what they wanted: power. Not exactly the greatest message to send to a party that was in desperate need of reform.
Now that such loathsome people are reempowered, there is absolutely no reason to think that they won't go on as large and wide a rampage of radicalism and revenge as they possibly can. For the Dems, it's been twelve long years in the wildnerness, not just six, that this sulfuric neoBolshevism has been on high-rolling boil. It's like all the water behind Hoover Dam - they couldn't contain it now even if any of them were inclined to be magnanimous in victory.
The flood is coming. We'd better get that ark built, and fast.
As to fingerpointing at the GOP, well, all I can say is this is why you make hay while the sun shines. With a thirty seat majority in the House and ten in the Senate AND the White House, the Republicans had a rare opportunity to get things done that doesn't come along very often for them. What did Denny Hastert and Bill Frist do with it? Not nearly as much as they could have. The tax cuts were extended a couple of years, but not made permanent. They ran away from entitlements reform. They dithered on border enforcement until the last possible moment. The nearly let the Patriot Act get gutted. And, of course, there was "Sailor" McCain's "memo of understanding" that forswore any attempt to ban judicial confirmation filibusters and heralded both the pathetic GOP record on federal appellate court confirmations and last night's debacle.
Looking through my posts from that time, I find any number of pregnant comments, but I think this quote from Jonathan Rothenberg encapsulates everything quite nicely:
[W]hy bother voting Republican if it means blocking originalist judges and raising taxes? If a Republican majority in the House and the Senate follow up a surrender to Democrats on judicial nominations with tax increases, you can mark this day as the day the Republican majority began to disintegrate.
Last night the disintegration became official.
Now, then - can the GOP get it back in two years? Well, sure - theoretically. In reality, it's not bloodly likely.
First, now that they're back in the saddle, the Democrats are going to so stack the deck to entrench themselves that Republicans would need another "earthquake" like 1994 in order to dislodge them again. And you'll recall that that "earthquake" took FORTY YEARS to materialize on the House side and nearly a decade in the Senate. Flipping seats and overcoming incumbency isn't nearly as simple as trying on shirts - particularly when the Dems are so much better at insulating themselves from it.
Second, to employ one of my pet axioms, while the Democrats have always wanted power too much, last night was a case of the Republicans wanting it too little. Incumbency is, indeed, supposed to be difficult to overcome. If Pachyderms were as "corrupt" and "arrogant" as some have tried to depict them, one would have thought that they could have retained control for longer than just twelve years, "six year itch" or no "six year itch".
Third, to the degree that last night was a repudiation of President Bush - and by the time the Enemy Media is finished, there will BE no other interpretation - the atmosphere for 2008 will be so poisoned against Republicans that building even a modest "counter-wave" to correct the wrong-way movement of a day ago will be a formidable task.
Fourth, Republicans will absorb that poison and almost certainly flee leftward across the board. Don't expect them to react like the Democrats did after 2000, 2002, and 2004, striking a pose of hardline partisan defiance; such backbone simply isn't in them. They'll fall back into their old "go along to get along" pose like the glove-like fit of a pair of underwear to a man with five penises. As Hugh Hewitt observes this morning, "From the first day of the new Congress it is going to be a partisan slugfest or a GOP dismemberment." My money (at least until the Democrats confiscate it from me) is on the latter. And that's the surest bet you're ever gonna get.
So get used to it, my fellow conservatives. We had our run at the Promised Land and we blew it. We won't get a second chance, if ever, for a long, long time.
If the jihadis let us live that long, that is.
UPDATE: I can't resist bazookaing Double-H's lame attempt at a silver lining:
Hillary's path back to the White House is much more difficult with her party in the majority in the House, and much much more difficult if the Senate falls to Harry Reid's command as well. Clarity as to her party's fecklessness will be back within the first six months, and the GOP frontrunners - Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney - do not have to serve in the almost certain to be paralyzed Senate.
Hillary's path to the Democrat nomination will be unopposed. And with congressional majorities comes the power to set the agenda and turn the electorate even more back toward their psychopathic way of thinking. For all the conventional wisdom on our side of the aisle that she's polarizingly unelectable, we need to consider the unnervingly likely possibility that Mrs. Clinton may ride into the White House on a wave of popularity and acclimation. You can be damn sure that Giuliani or Romney (or McCain) won't do much to slow it down.
The Beltway-Manhattan media elite is now stuck "covering" Democratic majorities. Sure, they will go easy on them, but it is much more difficult to cover for a majority than a minority.
Oh, come on, Hugh. Did the Enemy Media labor under the onerous burden of covering for Bill Clinton? Hell, no - the reveled in it! They exulted in it! Here they had their own Nixon hanging around their necks like an anchor and they (and he) jiu-jitsued that into sky-high approval ratings that stuck it up our collective ass sideways. How will this be any different?
What you have to remember is that for the Left, the job is only partially accomplished. The billious agitation of this decade is only going to continue at an even greater fever pitch given that they've got the propaganda tools of congressional control added back into their mix. And all of it will be directed at so completely demolishing the GOP coalition that there will be no hope of stopping a Clinton restoration.
That's when the reign of terror will truly begin.
And it is a wonderful day for new media, especially talk radio. For two years we have had to defend the Congressional gang that couldn't shoot straight. Now we get to play offense.
Two words, Hugh: "Fairness Doctrine." To say nothing of "McCain-Feingold," which was passed by a GOP Congress and signed into law by a GOP president. After 2008 "playing offense" will become, by law, a thing of the past for the center-right. President Rodham will not tolerate it, and she'll have the Congress (and the courts) to back her up.
In the interim, I suppose we can give it a try. But we'll just be pissing into the wind. Last night's election results will be sold like they're Moses' stone tablets - concrete proof of America's "rejection" of "right-wing extremism". All our "offense" will be dismissed on that basis, minority Republicans won't take our advice on that basis, our frustration with them because of that will metastasize...oh, hell, you can see where this is going, cantcha?
The penultimate bottom line is we were entrusted with power and we squandered the opportunity. It is not a mistake the Democrats will repeat.
The bottom bottom line is that something catastrophic will have to happen to change the paradigm and swing the pendulum back in our direction.
And something or things will happen - the Dems (and al Qaeda and Iran and North Korea and...) will make sure of it. The only question is how much of an America there will be left to salvage.
God help us. God help us all.
ADDENDUM: And with that, I bid you adeiu until tomorrow. I've got meetings most of the day and thus wouldn't be online much anyway, and after five consecutive nights of five hours sleep, I doubt I'll last much past when I walk in the front door tonight.
But I really don't want to be online today, any more than I want to listen to talk radio or any other media outlet. Maybe I'm funny that way, but when my sports teams lose I turn off the TV before the post-game interviews and analysis. Heck, I turn it off once the game is out of reach. Why? Because I know my team is going to lose and I feel no great obligation to be a witness to it. Just ask my son about SuperBowl XL. I sure as hell didn't sit through the damned Lombardi trophy presentation (okay, if the refs had been up on the platform with Dan Rooney and Bill Cowher, maybe...), and I'm not about to endure all the undecorous gloating from the DisLoyal Opposition.
Life is going to be difficult enough going forward. I - we - are going to need all the morale we can get.
posted by JASmius at 4:54 AM
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