November 21, 2011

Washington Post Commentary from Wednesday 9 NOV 11: The right wing's 2011 shellacking, by E. J. Dionne, attempts to claim that “conservatives” (anti-progressives” have overreached in 2011 and are now on the retreat, straight through a massive Progressive victory in 2012 elections. Here, I cut (most of) the spin words out and look at the same events that Dionne does. I have a much different view.

“Given an opportunity in 2010 to build a long-term majority, Republicans instead pursued extreme and partisan measures. On Tuesday, they reaped angry voter rebellions.”

No, Republicans did not pursue anything much more than their usual tepid “too little-too late” politics and watered-down statist solutions, while continuing to demonstrate that their ability to manipulate the public opinion and voting process is vastly overrated and not nearly as capable as the Democratic, mostly progressive, party and allies.

“…[Ohio] voters overwhelmingly defeated Gov. John Kasich’s (R) bill to strip public-employee unions of essential bargaining rights.”

Ohio unionists and progressives were able to push back against a poorly-led and badly-planned effort that SHOULD have succeeded but the GOP failed (again) to use the right tactics to defend themselves against highly unethical and shady unionist/progressive publicity and organizing. It does show that the claims that the GOP-corporate alliance allows Ohio’s electronic voting to be hacked are probably just gossip. Unless it is “saving” the capability for 2012.

In Maine, voters exercised what that state calls a “people’s veto” to undo a Republican-passed law that would have ended same-day voter registration, which served Maine well for almost four decades.

“Serving well” of course means more and more Progressive voting and more and more fraud since election-day registration (EDR) began in 1973. Clearly, this allows more fraud, and many believe that Maine does have a fraud problem. This should not have been a partisan issue (EDR) in the first place: it is a matter of protecting against fraud and abuse. Until such time as we can reduce government to the status of a minor irritant, it is essential for the protection of liberty that NO one highjack the process. Voter fraud, whether it is fake voters or dead voters or hacking of voter results, is the direct avenue to power of another First Citizen.

What’s often lost is that the conservative Republicans elected in 2010 aren’t simply pushing right-wing policies. Where they can, they are also using majorities won in a single election to manipulate future elections — by making it harder for young and minority voters to cast ballots, and by trying to break the political power of unions. The votes in Maine and Ohio were a rebuke to this strategy.
Notice that the Democrats have done exactly the same – indeed, they have made a key part of their strategy winning elections for Secretary of State to put unscrupulous, partisan people in charge of the election process, state by state. It is just that the changes they want to make are almost exactly the opposite: they seem to WANT, even more than the GOP does, to have young, uninformed, easily manipulated, government-dependent, emotional voters who can do nothing to prepare and then be whipped up into an election day mob to cast those “single election” votes. The problem is, the Dems do a better job of demonizing the GOP than the other way around.

In Mississippi, perhaps the most conservative state in the union, voters beat back a referendum to declare a fertilized human egg a person by a margin of roughly 3-to-2. Here was overreach by the right-to-life movement, which tried to get voters to endorse a measure that could have outlawed popular forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization.
Again, the cause of the loss is less “overreach” than it is the combination of four decades of demonization of the right-to-life movement, dumbing down of public education, promotion of false “responsibility” and blasting of propaganda. And again, the Democratic ability to outdo the GOP in terrorizing the voters.

The war against overreach extended to the immigration issue, too. Russell Pearce became, as the Arizona Republic noted, the first sitting state Senate president in the nation as well as the first Arizona legislator ever to lose a recall election. Pearce, who spearheaded viciously anti-immigrant legislation, was defeated by Jerry Lewis, a conservative with a mild demeanor. Lewis correctly saw his as a victory for restoring “a civil tone to politics.” This was a case of old-fashioned conservatism beating the Tea Party variety.

Once more, they warp the real situation. Anyone reading the Pearce biography on Wikipedia would see that he is a political opportunist and long-time hog at the public trough, with a background in law enforcement and state government that makes him highly suspect. It is clear that his stand on immigration is NOT the only reason, by any means, for his recall. He certainly did not represent the views of tea party supporters. At the same time, Lewis may or may not be an “old-fashioned” conservative, but he seems to have had to backing of a lot of tea party supporters and others. But such nuances do not bother you when you are propagandizing.

And in Iowa, Democrats held their state Senate majority by winning a special election that had been engineered by Republican Gov. Terry Branstad. Occupy Wall Street, notice that elections matter: A Republican victory over Democrat Liz Mathis would have opened the way for Branstad to push through a cut in corporate income taxes. Mathis’s defeat could also have allowed conservatives to amend the Iowa Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Mathis prevailed despite robocalls from an obscure group instructing voters to ask Mathis which gay sex acts she endorsed. (It should be said, as the Des Moines Register reported, that better-known organizations opposed to gay marriage denounced the calls.)
I don’t know enough about Iowa’s politics this year to know how many (if any) of these claims are true, or if this supposed tax cut was the reason for the special election. But I do agree with several commentators that the Democrats outspent and outhustled and outfoxed the GOP – again. I do also know that Iowa is not this nice conservative state: in some ways it is more liberal than Minnesota or Wisconsin, and so this was no rejection of tea party ideas OR conservative ideas, but two middle-of-the road-veering to the left types.

The one potential bright spot for Republicans was not as bright as it was supposed to be. In Virginia, both sides had expected the GOP to take over the state Senate. But at best, the Republicans will achieve a 20-to-20 tie, giving Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R) a decisive role. And their chance of getting even to 20 hangs on the recount of an 86-vote margin in one district.
The split means Virginia has not reverted to its earlier status as a Republican bastion. It remains a purple
state. Especially significant, Democratic consultant Mo Elleithee observed, were the party’s successes in the Washington suburbs and exurbs and in Hampton Roads, precisely the areas where President Obama needs to do well if he is to carry Virginia next year, as he did in 2008. Democrats also comfortably held the New Jersey Legislature, suggesting the limits of Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) much-touted political magic.

Again, as with Iowa, I just don’t know Virginia politics enough in 2011 to be intelligence. But it is worth noting that only Maryland is more dependent on trickle-down from the FedGov to sustain their economy and growing wealth. It never really was a “Republican bastion” but like others, dabbled in neo-con rejection of some of the Tranzi agenda And in Jersey, I don’t think politics has changed in 150 years: you have the “Corrupt Political Party #1” and the “Corrupt Political Party #2” who periodically change their places and their rhetoric (and their underwear) to fool the voters into continuing to slave for them.

One of the only referendum results the GOP could cheer was a strong vote in Ohio against the health-insurance mandate. While health-reform supporters argued that the ballot question was misleading, the result spoke to the truly terrible job Democrats have done in defending what they enacted. They can’t let the health-care law remain a policy stepchild.
If the Democrats do not excel in defending their legislation, it is only because even THEY cannot make a dead mouse into a trophy-quality bull elk.

That useful warning aside, Tuesday’s results underscored the power of unions and populist politics, the danger to conservatives of social-issue extremism and the fact that 2010 was no mandate for right-wing policies. They also mean that if Republicans don’t back away from an agenda that makes middle-class,
middle-of-the-road Americans deeply uncomfortable — and in some cases angry — they will lose the rather more important fight of 2012.

Actually, I don’t disagree with this conclusion by the WaPo columnist: unions and demagoguery (the proper term for “populist politics”) ARE very powerful. So are the powers of the welfare state, ever-growing dependence of the people on the welfare state, the brain-numbing effects of public (government-run, tax-funded) education, and propaganda. It is not that the GOP went too far to the “right” but that the GOP behaved like their beloved elephant on its way to the elephant burial grounds: half-blind, willing to compromise on virtually anything (except MAYBE a single signature issue which varied from place to place and candidate to candidate), incompetent, inept, and too unwilling to call a spade a spade. This WaPo writer apparently tried to imprint on any GOP or conservative readers that might find this, with the last sentence, but the gist of the commentary makes it clear that no good is wished for GOP, conservative, tea-party-activist or anyone else that does not support the trans-national progressive agenda.