The sideshow before the big event has arrived. I am of course referring to the commercials, debates and forums that comprise the lead up to the November 2nd midterm elections. As if the attack ads, public speaking gaffes (beheaded bodies in the Arizona desert Gov. Brewer? Do tell!) and the hot button issue of how many anticipated Ohio voters disapprove of Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner’s tan (for the record, according to a recent PPP poll, it is a full 57%) were not entertainment enough, we citizens still have to do the hard work of deciding where to cast our vote.
I’ll go out on a limb and state for the record that “none of the above” never seemed like such an attractive option as it does this year. The frustrated left side of the political spectrum wants revenge for the failed conciliatory efforts of the Obama elite, retribution for the perceived breakdown in delivering on a November 2008 mandate. Reform health care? Yes, we can….dilute an initially strong attempt into weaselly, convoluted nothingness. Banking reform? We’re so angry at you Wall Street. We’re fired up! We’re ready to go…away with consumer protection, which proved to be as forsaken as the public option. How about a serious energy plan, immigration reform, a repeal of the wildly unattractive “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military? Yeah….we’ll get to that later, maybe.
Tried and true liberals have every right to ask where the Game Change went. As they watched President Obama’s futile, clumsy attempts to collaborate with a petulant “Just Say No” Republican caucus, “the end of politics as usual,” as Candidate Barry boldly promised, became an increasingly distant pipe dream.
On the right, and most certainly inside the suddenly powerful Tea Party Express, President Obama represents the worst kind of Big Government activist. “Socialism!” they cry and resent the Chief Executive’s attempts to regulate oil companies who dump oodles of crude into the Gulf, revamp a health care system that disproportionately favors the rich or really, quite frankly, do much of anything at all. Plans to return to laissez faire government principles never appeared quite so inert.
Now I do not mean to convey that “traditional” Republicans and the House that Mark Williams Built are ideologically one and the same. Not at all. However, for better or worse, the fortunes of one are inextricably linked with the other, due to the fact that Tea Party candidates have thus far refrained from running on Independent tickets.
That truism is all the more important to recall when we consider the lavish, luxurious claims by Republican strategists and leaders of early September. As recently as the 9th, Byron York of The Examiner quoted insider Republicans as buying into their own hype, confidently declaring that “control of the House has gone from possible to inevitable.” And so it certainly seemed, with anti-incumbent sentiment at a record high, and an easily distracted populace successfully led to believe that it is the policies of the Democratic majority, and President Obama, who have gotten us into the fine mess that we’re in, rather than the natural fallout from eight years of fiscal mismanagement and deregulation on the part of W.
Yep, the proverbial Democratic goose was all set to be cooked. Poll after poll showed that Barack, Harry and Nancy had better prepare for a long and embarrassing November rebuke.
But wait just a second…..
I started writing this column before the Tuesday, September 14th primaries. For those on the left who wanted a miracle, it seems their prayers have been answered. Though moderate Republicans and members of the Tea Party Express have always been tenuous allies, united in the goal of overthrowing the Democratic agenda, debilitating fissures within the Republican ranks displayed themselves this week, most notably in the Delaware Senate primary. Perhaps GOP domination is not so “inevitable” as presumed. The scattershot ideological platform that has gotten the party this far is beginning to demonstrate disadvantages.
Consider a midsummer article (July 21st) from the Editors at NPR which declared, “Congressional Republicans who don’t think the party needs an agenda should consider the performance of Rep. Pete Sessions and Sen. John Cornyn on Meet the Press over the weekend. Asked about their affirmative program, the leaders of the GOP campaign committees in the House and the Senate sounded a very uncertain trumpet — indeed, one that was halting to the point of being embarrassing.”
Over and again, GOP Republican leaders, confident that their opposition to the Obama agenda would be enough, are learning to their great peril that they may have to get their own house in order, so to speak, before they can ever win back the trust of the American people. Declarations of the demise of the Democratic Party may have been premature. Though the Democrats are far from infallible, it was not their party cannibalizing themselves in front of the national media on Tuesday night.
The lead story on many of this morning’s front pages is the shocking victory of conservative activist and Tea Party darling Christine O’Donnell over longtime GOP Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware’s Republican Senate primary. Yahoo News launched a story containing the following quote: “Castle, a moderate who once served as the state’s governor, had been so favored to win in November that his decision to run had reportedly influenced Democrat Beau Biden, son of Vice President Joe Biden, to abandon plans to seek his father’s old seat.”
For a party as formerly sure of itself as the GOP, there are a host of pundits, insiders and strategists wiping a veritable omelet off their faces today. How did they get this so wrong? Maybe because they don’t know what Americans want in “the Great Recession” any better than Democrats do. Republican insiders have made the grave mistake of interpreting Democratic rejection as GOP acceptance.
The most damning evidence of an all-out Republican insurrection comes in the form of a stunning reversal in longtime GOP darling Karl Rove’s fortunes. The Dr. Frankenstein of the Bush administration suddenly finds himself on the outs with the formerly fawning masses. Political website TPM wrote the following of the man once revered as “The Architect”: “After Rove bemoaned O’Donnell’s nomination as the end of the GOP’s chances to take back the Senate in a heated interview with Sean Hannity last night, pundits from Michelle Malkin to the bloggers at Hot Air slammed him as a traitor and even called for Fox News to suspend him as an on-air analyst.”
We have another six weeks to ponder the irony of it all, but one thing is evident: the GOP must solve its internal problems before it can begin to pose a serious and credible national challenge to Democrats. A greatly suffering American public is crying out for change, but we also want confidence that those we elect have the basic mental capacity to make sober decisions. For those of us in the middle or to the left, the fringe doctrine of the majority of Tea Party candidates is not the break for which we’re looking.
Instead of sounding the death knell for the mightily struggling Dems, the “insiders out” message received at the polls, directed at both parties, could present a unique opportunity. Things are about to get really interesting.
Becky Sarwate | Contributor
I am about as liberal as they come, and please don't expect to change me, though I do sometimes sneak up on you with a surprise (pro-death penalty, for instance). I am a freelance writer for several Chicago publications. I write about all things urban, Hollywood, my own turbulent life, and of course, my number one passion: local and national politics.
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