It’s one of the most under-told stories of every election cycle. The sheer amount of dedication, time, and effort required to run for public office. The sheer intensity of a hard-run campaign.
Candidates – good ones, anyway – put everything aside for the race. Jobs, homes, families, nest eggs – all sacrifice for it. All are sacrificed for it.
Losing is, therefore, hard. Hard enough, when you lose on issues, or money, or October Surprises. How much harder, when losing was simply fate?
That was 2006. Republicans lost, and Democrats won. Everything, everywhere. It was a tidal wave of 1994-esque proportions. A massive, inevitable defeat, brought on by forces that were well beyond our control.
As such, a lot of people lost elections they would, in any other year, have won.
The question I’ve been asking myself since is: should we have known? Should I have known? Could candidates have known, and thus spared themselves the anguish?
There were plenty of signs.
First and foremost, politics is a pendulum. According to George Will: “In the 140 years since 1866, the first post-Civil War election, party control of the House has now changed 15 times -- an average of once every 9.3 years.”
A dozen years after the Republican Revolution, Republicans were doing more defending of old turf than fighting for new, and the defensive is a weak place to be. This year, time took its toll.
Another factor: the marriage amendment, which may have spurred Democrat success in places where student turnout – fueled by massive anti-amendment efforts – brought more-than-usual Democrat votes to the polls.
Another: conservatives were disillusioned on spending, immigration, Social Security. Politics is a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business, and those tax cuts are a few years old.
And then there’s the war. I hesitate to conclude that people have turned against the war effort, but the steady drumbeat of casualties with neither end nor measurable goal in sight took their toll. Polls showed clearly that the public was not happy, and as public opinion on the war went, so went opinion on President Bush.
All these things – and probably more – affected races up and down the ticket.
It’s not enough to ask why we didn’t see it before. In some ways, we did. Pundits have been pounding on Iraq and the President’s numbers for a long time. Conservatives have been pounding on non-conservatism. The marriage amendment was scheduled for well over a year.
We knew, but could we have changed it? Altered those dynamics somehow? If so, why didn’t we? And if not…could we have known that, and acted accordingly? In time?
Probably not.
The bigger the office, the more time you need to prepare. That’s why we started talking about 2008 last year.
If you were planning to run for office, you had to make your decision months ago. July, June, or even earlier. Case in point: Scott Walker, who dropped out of the Governor’s race in May.
Did he know something? Did he read those tea leaves – take a long, careful look – and decide this wasn’t the year to be a Republican candidate?
If so, then he is officially the smartest guy in the room, whatever room he’s in.
Because that wasn’t easy. These opportunities don’t come along every day, and even if things look bad six months out, well, things change fast in politics. The right event, issue, scandal can flip political fortunes faster than a middle-aged Congressman can learn to use e-mail. The only thing more fickle than fate is public opinion.
So, back in May, and June, and July…perhaps we should have anticipated more fully the effects of the marriage amendment. Perhaps we should have anticipated the Doyle campaign’s expert ju-jitsu on his ethics problems.
But could we have known then that Iraq and the President’s numbers were going to drag Republicans down, come November? Could we have honestly predicted that the Bush administration – with all their Rovian strategery – wouldn’t turn that around somehow?
No. Not in July.
Our candidates took the chance, because the chance was there. Two years from now, opportunity again available, they’ll take the chance again.
Heads held high. Waving to the crowds. Hoping they aren’t headed for a cliff.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Republicans, Foiled by Fate
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5 Comments:
2 years from now, with the DEMS leading, we will be right being them...shoving them off the damn cliff!!!!
To lay the defeat to simple fate is to deny the effect of inept governance by the R's and the effect of scandal building on scandal.
Republican puffery about security couldn't disguise the fact that DHS turned into a contractor rewards program, that ports are no safer now than 5 years ago and that the emergency response efforts of FEMA had been dismantled under "Heckuva Job Brownie."
In Wisconsin the efforts of John Gard to hide from meaningful governance to concentrate on embarassing the Governor led to the impression that Republicans had no ideas beyond obstruction and divisiveness. Pushing an agenda of guns in clinics while making it harder for patients to get in, making health care decisions for women, and the abject failure of SB1 all contributed to the feeling that the R's were doing little besides pandering to their base.
The foolishness of 8-year-old hunters, of armed teachers and of camera-free public forums all led to a perception that some of the R's were unhinged.
To call the failure of Republicans "fate" is to run from the hard reality of failure. The danger to the Republicans from that strategy is that steps will not be taken to bring the party to the people instead of turning it hard to the right.
Look at a bell curve. figure out where the voters are and plan for 2008.
Good luck.
Grumps, I won't try to argue with any of your specifics - they're the kinds of things that can be said, and are said, in every campaign by every side.
Like 1994 for the Democrats, Republicans got nailed up and down the ticket. I can name half a dozen Republicans without even thinking about it who would have won in any other election year. This year, they lost. To those individual candidates, that's fate.
Arrogance lost it for the R's. The Republican thumb-nosing of SB1 should send a stong message: the public wants clean government, and if the R's (or even D's) stand in the way, they will be rolled over in 2008. We want to see the values, not just hear about them.
FEMA is a Govt. agency that any Conservative worth their salt despises. Just another way for Govt. to interfere in our lives. Full disclosure; I work for the Fed Govt, specifically for the DOD. The DOD is inflated and many jobs could and will be eliminated after the war. At least the DOD is a constitutional agency, specifically outlined in the constitution to protect the Country.
FEMA is an agency made out of whole cloth as an acquiescence to the Dems in W's early days of bi-partisanship. This is the same as the no child left behind act which was also an acqiescence to libs prior to 9-11.
I get off topic a bit but let me rebut the entire myth of heck of a job done by Brownie. Choppers were up in the air before during and immediately after Katrina hit. This is a fact. The Coast Guard were in port while the hurricane hit and were pulling people from danger up to 10 minutes prior to impact. Several choppers stayed up during the storm, disregarding orders from higher ups because they saw people in need. 130,000 people were rescued in 48 hours. All the BS in the world espoused by CNN, Spike Lee and the alphabet networks is just more claptrap. I know this as fact because you see I was at Northern Command HQ in Colorado Springs CO. the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and Headquarters Command and Control Center during the tragedy. BTW, it took CNN 3 days to find out we were running the show and figure out the chain of command. The alphabet networks were even worse. If you think Katrina was a failure by FEMA then you don't know the first thing about what went on. A failure would have been the Feds showing up 10 days after the storm. Or a President showing up three weeks later, and complaining about his own accomadations. Oh yea that did happen, in 1993 after hurricane Emily hit GA, SC, NC, MD, DE, and the Eastern Seaboard.
Who was that Pres in 1993?...
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