Don't get too depressed, Republicans; the national decline will
be divvied up justly. After all, in a liberal nation, there is no
higher calling than fairness.
And a liberal nation it is. The electorate is complicated, and factors of culture and geography can dictate party identification more than any specific policy. And yes, the Republicans rolled out some ghastly candidates. But that shouldn't fool anyone; there's been a fundamental shift in how Americans view government's role in society, and the GOP is losing the argument.
There was no theoretical hope peddling this time around. There was a record. And Barack Obama also promised the most explicitly left-wing agenda in presidential history—more government, more taxes, more dependency, more bailouts, more regulations—and he won easily. He promised universal health care, more crony "investments" in proven economic losers, more interference in markets—yet he cruised.
Conservatives may be shocked by statist slogans such as the Democratic National Convention's "government's the only thing that we all belong to," and they may be scandalized when they hear a candidate say "you didn't build that," but their neighbors ... well, not so much. When you can't beat a candidate who—judging him on his own terms—owns both a brutal economic record on jobs (this is the first time since FDR that a president has won re-election with an unemployment rate this high) and the feeblest economic recovery in the nation's history, it's time to rethink what you're doing.
Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2012/11/08/democrats-are-the-silent-majorityfor-now
And a liberal nation it is. The electorate is complicated, and factors of culture and geography can dictate party identification more than any specific policy. And yes, the Republicans rolled out some ghastly candidates. But that shouldn't fool anyone; there's been a fundamental shift in how Americans view government's role in society, and the GOP is losing the argument.
There was no theoretical hope peddling this time around. There was a record. And Barack Obama also promised the most explicitly left-wing agenda in presidential history—more government, more taxes, more dependency, more bailouts, more regulations—and he won easily. He promised universal health care, more crony "investments" in proven economic losers, more interference in markets—yet he cruised.
Conservatives may be shocked by statist slogans such as the Democratic National Convention's "government's the only thing that we all belong to," and they may be scandalized when they hear a candidate say "you didn't build that," but their neighbors ... well, not so much. When you can't beat a candidate who—judging him on his own terms—owns both a brutal economic record on jobs (this is the first time since FDR that a president has won re-election with an unemployment rate this high) and the feeblest economic recovery in the nation's history, it's time to rethink what you're doing.
Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2012/11/08/democrats-are-the-silent-majorityfor-now
No comments:
Post a Comment