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US political junkies Take note: Michael Barone has a blog. And its just as good (so far) as you knew it would be. Takeaway line from his first few posts:
All of which only illustrates my First Rule of Life: All process arguments are insincere, including this one.
And he hints at the problem that will bring the GOP down, if not next year then very likely in 2008: the lackluster-to-disastrous domestic performance of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress have given most Republicans no reason to turn out and vote for them. As Virginia Postrel said recently (sorry, can’t remember where), now that the Republicans have given up on economic freedom and markets, they are basically just the party of social/religious conservatism after all.
And if that’s all you got, you won’t win many elections in this country.
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As I understand it Bush won the last election based on “issues”. Certainly some was on foreign issues, but a lot were domestic issues. I think there is a ‘revival’ occuring in the red states and perhaps just maybe it’s a wave that still has some inertia in it.
If so, it doesn’t leave much room for secularists (either from the religious right or left, or the quasi-religious left). There are optimists in the (right) libertarian realm who so the day of advanced statism coming to an end. I see the opposite. There are just too many superstitious people in the world for Statism to really ever decline, the best is simply a respite from time to time. I think the ante-bellum period between Viet Nam and now, with its relatively low tax rates and slight roll back of regulation (at least in some key areas) is over.
Of course, in the particular case, the Republican candidate was a moderate who had won a very disputed primary (with some heavy political ads against her by the Club for Growth types), and the Democratic candidate also attacked her from the right for voting to raise taxes as a state representative.
Personally, I’m happy about the swift response to the awful Kelo decision, happy about the bankruptcy bill, and happy about CAFTA. (Though of course I admit that CAFTA is not perfect; yet at the same time I realize that many people are upset about CAFTA and the majority of the population opposes free trade in any case.) I still hope that at least Rep. DeMint’s plan for Social Security goes through, and I think is has a decent shot.
Sadly, you definitely won’t win many elections based on free trade.
The energy bill was a massive collection of subsidies for ethanol and other “environmental friendly” fuels. Massive amount of rent-seeking, much of it hiding under the pretense of environmentalism. I certainly can’t say anything good about it. The highway bill was a typical highway bill; at least in this case the annual increase was below most years. Certainly better than the one two or three years ago.
I’m not seeing an RSS feed for Barone.
No feed, no read.
On the plus side, perhaps, the special election did seem to show that Democrats have given up on gun control and are willing to run NRA members who are anti-gun control in order to try to win districts. Perhaps cuts down on the risk of gun control if the Dems take control. Was a losing issue for them overall, anyway.
Well the GOP will have had 8 years in power by the end of Bush’s term. Who is there to seriously run against him? Hilary? Dean? Al Gore? Kerry?
Barone can “hint” all he wants, the religious/social conservatism will still be a big voting bloc. They’ll run on the fact that Bush stood up for something (never mind that it might have been the wrong thing) whereas Kerry would have quibbled and hum and hawed. This is just my opinion on how it’ll be spun out (the facts be damned) …
Hilary Clinton in the White House. Now that’s something to frighten the kids with.
religious/social conservatism will still be a big voting bloc
But not a winning bloc, not even a plurality. The Repubs need both their social conservative wings and their economic conservative wings to win elections. Far too many people (like myself) who voted for Bush as the lesser of two evils on domestic policy now feel absolutely zero motivation to go to the polls and put Republicans in office.
A sizable portion of the Republican vote comes from people who vote for them in spite of, not because of, their occasional Luddism and prudishness. We vote for Republicans because we think they might be a little better than Dems on taxes, spending, regulation, the whole big government thing.
That case is getting to be nearly impossible to make. Motivation is draining from an essential part of the Republican base.
While I’d agree that the social/religious aspects of the Republican platform may well be what turn great numbers of voters apathetic or lukewarm about supporting Republican candidates, I’d take issue with the presumption of ‘lackluster-to-disasterous’ as an accurate description of their economic policies (and results of same).
While the truth of the matter is that in such things, appearances are more important than what’s actually happening, it would be a gravely mistaken assumption to think that the Democrats will be able to continue the streak begun by Clinton. And that is that they’ll be able to run campaigns that willfully ignore actual economic indicators while portraying the current situation is as bleak as possible terms, followed by dire warnings of impending doom just over the horizon. ‘Things’ in general (at least through this last go round) weren’t nearly as crappy as was portrayed by the Democratic talking points (and for a lot of folks, actually bore no resemblence to the pestilence afflicted land they described). There were even several occurances late in the campaign season which directly contradicted their claims (one benefit of having a long, long run-up to election).
While the electorate of the US does famously exhibit classic ADD symptoms every election cycle, at some point the Dems are going to inherit a generational label as the ‘chicken little’ party, and it will stick in people’s perceptions of them. If the Repubs can adopt a significant and succesful exploitation of this, along with developing a simple, credible marketting campaign that exentuates the positive aspects of stable economic growth…Katie bar the door.
A lot of discussion this past election cycle pondered the phenomena that appeared to be the Democratic Party sinking into a long-term minority/opposition party role – and so far, claiming that this time around, by doing the same things that set them on that course in the first place will somehow turn things around and win them the day (and the seats), just doesn’t really make too much practical sense to me.
English Guy – Barak Obama is shaping up remarkably well for the Dems. Hillary? Forget it.
Barak Obama is nowhere near ready to be elected. As far as I’m aware there has only been one black person in the history of the republic that could have had a decent shot at winning the White House, and the Colin Powell ship has already sailed.
My prediction is that unless either McCain or Giuliani win the GOP primary Hillary will indeed get the presidency. I think we’d be making a huge mistake to underestimate her, because she’s been playing the game brilliantly for the past couple of years. You can forget about challenging her with someone like Bill Frist; he’d be eaten alive. Mitt Romney would give her a race, McCain or Giuliani would beat her handily.
Hank, they said that about John Edwards, too. Yet he ran a pretty good, close race – bar his silly vice presidential posing at the bitter end. As for Hillary, no way in hell. She’s far too divisive a figure. She is to the GOP base as Bush is to the Democrat base. Hillary Clinton is exactly the candidate the Dems shouldn’t run. The purpose of this post was to highlight that the GOP haven’t done enough to spur their base into action in 2008. If the Dems nominate Hillary Clinton, Bush won’t have to do a thing in regards to flogging the Reaganite GOP platform to get the Republican vote out – Hillary will be enough to draw them out in droves – if only to vote her down.
Barak Obama is nowhere near ready to be elected.
Barak is the ultimate affirmative action candidate. At this point, his qualifications consist of being young and black. I mean, he might someday by fine President (unlikely, given his lefty inclinations), but at this point he is no more qualified than a million other people.
Yet [John Edwards] ran a pretty good, close race
Except for winning only one primary, losing the general election, and failing to deliver his home state (traditionally the job of the VP candidate). I mean, c’mon, John Kerry mopped the floor with this guy – how strong can he be?
If the current trends persist, that is to say, the Repubs keep losing their economic conservatives and the Dems continue sinking into the hole of irrelevance, there could be a major realignment of the political landscape that finally splits the Repubs into two parties, one offshoot being a true pragmatic libertarian party that espouses toth economic, social, and political freedom.
Is that such a bad thing?
TWG
R C Dean – what was he before the election? He campaigned extremely well in the primaries (going from zero to hero), and there’s a good chance he would have delivered the presidency to the Dems had he have run. He had the most comprehensive policy package out of all the Dem candidates, however Kerry had the establishment behind him. Edwards’s major problem was that his cart was hitched to the wrong horse. Now he’s yesterday’s man.
On the topic, the logic is almost embarrassing. It is even more embarrassing that I have to presume what the logic was!
SO here goes: ‘there are not enough religious/social conservatives in the US to win elections; ergo a party appealing only to that group will not win elections’
SO, what about:
– religious/social conservatives appealing (as candidates) to people who are not religious-social conservatives? Especially in light of:
– the other side?
– non-compulsory voting (you don’t need to appeal to a majority of people, just a majority of voters)?
– better local campaigning across the country?
Thing is, you need social conservatism to shut down the socially (and therefore financially) expensive things that the State spends so much of our money trying to alleviate.
See “Tories’ values and virtues”
(Times Letters, 5 Aug 2005)
Back to logic class, Patrick. You have neglected two critical terms – “only” and “many”.
You characterize my claim as “a party appealing only to that group will not win elections,” when what I said was “you won’t win many elections.” Because I am not a total naif, I know that elections are all inherently local affairs, and that for any number of reasons a weak party can pick up a few here and there. I wasn’t claiming, as you imply, that a social conservative-only party won’t win a single election.
You then go on to ask about “religious/social conservatives appealing (as candidates) to people who are not religious-social conservatives.”
Well, if they are appealing to people who are not religious/social conservatives, they are not appealing only to religious/social conservatives, are they?
I’m not talking about individual candidates, weak opposition, blah blah blah. Those are the cases covered by the exceptions to many.
I’m merely saying that, even though Bush captured the social conservatives completely, he still needed a good turnout from other Republican-identified groups to win. If the Republicans, through their big government antics and heavy handed prudery, fail to motivate any part of their base other than the social conservatives, they will start to lose seats and offices.
And deservedly so, the backstabbing statist swine.