THE 2006 ELECTION: WHAT HAPPENED, WHY DID IT HAPPEN, AND WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND AMERICA?
THE 2006 ELECTION: WHAT HAPPENED, WHY DID IT HAPPEN, AND WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND AMERICA?
by
Ken Eliasberg
(for San Bernardino Republican Women — 2/22/07)
A. The 2006 Election — What Happened?
We lost, and we deserved to lose? Why? Because
our people betrayed and abandoned conservative
principles!! We were not beaten by the Democrats;
we beat ourselves!
We won in 1994 on 2 issues: Limited government
and better ethics. We failed miserably to deliver
on either.
B. State of the Republican Party and What to Do About it?
Battered but not beaten- unless we continue to stay home, rather than reform our party. How? By kicking out the weak and the weary and electing more capable people who will stand up to the Democrats and stand up
for conservative principles. Note, however, that com-
plaining and/or staying home does not get the job done.
We don’t hold our people’s fight to the fire by electing
Democrats; the world situation is just too dangerous
to take this approach. How then? By letting our people
know what we expect of them, and following up to
make sure that they get it and deliver.
C. Some of the Specifics of What Went Wrong
1. Conservative Big Government — an oxymoron:
There’s no such thing as conservative big government!
2. Immigration — amnesty under any other name is
still amnesty. There’s just no way — no honest way,
at least — to put lipstick on that pig. Congress did
nothing, and what the Senate and George Bush
wanted (and apparently still want) to do is amnesty, no
matter what name you use to try to disguise it.
3. Earmarks — our people joined right in in larding on the
pork. When they weren’t joining them, they sure as
heck weren’t fighting them (not at least so as anyone
would notice). Also in this regard, our Congressional
leadership was weak: Hastert and Frisk may be nice
guys, but no one is going to remember them when the
list of powerful Congressional leaders is made up.
Also related to this point is the attitude of many of
our representatives (and very possibly us) — don’t
make waves — just get along to go along. One almost
gets the feeling that our people are just happy to
be invited to the party; we don’t have to participate
in choreographing the event.
4. Bad Legislation — the Congress was too co-operative.
a. McCain/Feingold. Possibly the worst piece of
legislation to ever come out of Washington — and
Democrats (true to form) were violating it
before it was even hatched.
b. Prescription Drugs — a piece of Kennedy legisla-
tion that will end up costing more — much more —
than a trillion dollars
c. No Child Left Behind — another piece of Kennedy
legislation, which, while possessed of some good
features, still puts the Federal government into
the educational arena — a place that I do not
believe that it should be.
d. Other
5. Corruption
a. Abramoffc. Ney
b. Cunninghamd. Foley
D. What About George Bush? A Good Man, a Good Leader —
But Not a Conservative
Problems —
a. Those of a procedural nature - 2 big ones
The President has really only 2 powerful tools when it comes to pressing his will on either the Congress or the public — the bully pulpit and the veto. George Bush used both as if they were electrically charged. He vetoed a piece of stem cell legislation and nothing else (since this outline was first prepared, Bush also vetoed Congress’s cut-and-run legislation, calling for our surrender in Iraq). He should have, at the very least, vetoed McCain/Feingold.
He used the bully pulpit sparingly and not always
effectively to make his case to the public. While he
always comes across as a decent honest man, his communication skills are not going to make any one forget Ronald Reagan, or, for that matter, Slick Willie. To compound the communication problem, he picked Scott McClellan for his public relations representative — someone who doesn’t have the vaguest idea of what public relations is all about. Fortunately, McClellan was sandwiched between 2 excellent P.R. types — Ari Fleischer and Tony Snow — but in between these 2 a lot of P.R. damage was done.
b. Substantive
Simple — Bush is just not a conservative!
Achievements-
a. The War on Terror (although it is time to change
tactics - i.e. take off the gloves - and stop fighting
a politically correct war). War is messy, violent,
and painful, and there is no way to make it
pleasant. There is only one way to fight it —
to win it! How? By destroying the enemy’s
ill to fight and clearly demonstrating to him
that there is no hope for his cause. The problem
today is, thanks to the anti-war left in this coun-
try, our enemies are not afraid of us. We must
convince them that it is unwise to mess with the U.S.
Appointment of Judges (although here too, we
seem a bit timid, e.g. Harriet Miers +)
The economy — possibly the best in 20 years, and
due directly to George Bush’s efforts (unlike
the boom of the ‘90s which Clinton had nothing
to do with, but for which he took credit).
Integrity! Perhaps, more than anything else,
we owe George Bush a debt of gratitude for bringing
decency back to the White House. After Clinton I feltwe needed a fumigator more than we needed a leader — in “W” we got both.
E. THE WORLD SITUATION
We are at war — a war that is an existential threat to
Western civilization. In short, this is not one of those
weekend wars in Grenada or Haiti or a 30,000 foot
war, as in Bosnia. This is a war that could destroy the U.S. if we are not appropriately responsive to the peril.
And the real enemy is not Radical Islam; rather it is
our radical left-wing that empowers these crazies. If
we were united, I have only modest concerns about
the threat from a lot of backward barbarians running
around with towels on their heads, living in the 8th
century, screaming convert or die. But we are not
united, and one cannot help but get the impression
that the left is more concerned with political power
than national security.
The stakes are just too high for this sort of divisiveness;
Western civilization is imperiled, and all the Democrats
can think of is power politics; what’s this business
about politics stopping at the water’s edge?
F. DOMESTIC PROBLEMS — OUR CULTURAL
EROSION
The specifics of deterioration are all around you (to those
of you who grew up in the ‘50s, does any of this look the
least bit familiar?) Three of the more pronounced aspects
of our deterioration — i.e. the PRODUCTS - are:
- MULTICULTURISM
- DIVERSITY (QUOTAS), AND
- POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
How are these products created and what provides the
soilin which they can grow and flourish, i.e. who produces them and who creates the conditions for them to flourish? This brings me to what I call the TRIPLE TRIFECTA-
1. THE MANUFACTURER
a. Universities
b. Liberal Think Tanks, e.g. Brookings Institute
2. THE DISTRIBUTOR
a. ACLU (and other such far left organizations)
b. The internet — e.g. moveon.org
3. THE RETAILER
a. Liberal Courts
b. Universities — They manufacture the productsfor
the Dems, and then they sell itto our kids to
assure the next generation of lefties
WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS THAT ALLOW IT
TO FLOURISH? There are but three, but they are
powerful. Indeed, they are the cause of our cultural
decay
a. IGNORANCE
(1) Russell Kirk — The American Cause(2) Jay Leno — Man in the street interviews
b. APATHY
c. ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER
The need for instant gratification, and an
impatience in dealing with conflict and
difficult circumstances
G. SOME POPULAR MISCONCEPTIONS — WHO’S
MEANER, WHO’S RICHER — REMEMBER, WE’RE
THE GOOD GUYS, WHATEVER PICTURE THE
MAINSTREAM MEDIA TRIES TO PAINT
H. WHAT REPUBLICANS DO WRONG
We do not like messy conditions; thus we seem to have little stomach for conflict, let alone confrontation
We specialize in being pleasant, polite, passive, and, not
infrequently, pusillanimous, justifying all of this with
the bromide that we are above ugliness. I sometimes get the impression that the Dems have no shame, and we
have no guts. I have even seen some of our pundits —
conservative pundits — go so far as to say that our timidity
is due to the fact that in our guts we think they’re right —
God, I hope that that’s not the case!
I. WHAT REPUBLICANS NEED TO DO — WAKE UP!!
Before it’s too late. What do we need specifically?
The four “A’s”
- AWAKE
- AWARENESS
- ATTITUDE — Get angry; they’re stealing
your country
- ACTION —Don’t complain — engage — get
involved!!
If you do nothing to stop what’s happening, then, in my opinion, you forfeit the right to complain about it when it
happens.
J. THE 2006 ELECTION — AS NOTED, THE DEMOCRATS
DID NOT WIN, WE LOST, AND TO DO SO AGAIN
WOULD BE CATASTROPHIC
K. CONCLUSION
THE ELECTION
THE REPUBLICANS
THE STAKES — SURVIVAL!!
War is about will. We must win this war, and we need
the will to do it. If we lose it, we could lose everything,
and we need the support of the entire country; unfor-
tunately, the Democrats are not on board. I could be
wrong, but, then again,I can afford to be wrong; indeed, I hope that I am. Nothing would please me more than to have peace break out; we could all go down to the park and have a kumbiya moment. However, while I can afford to be wrong,can the left, who is advancing no solution whatsoever to our problem?