It's time Republicans finally got some credit. Back in 2000, voters seemed to go to ballot boxes asking "why am I here?" Now, the Grand Old Party not only has a popular president, they have consolidated control of both houses of Congress. It's been 68 years since the president's party gained seats in both the Senate and the House at the first midterm elections, and the only time since 1860 that doing so consolidated control of Congress. Not even good ol' Strom Thurmond, who turns 100 next month, can recall conservatism enjoying such endorsement.
In contrast, the depression of the Democrats is a matter not of searching for reasons, but rather sorting through piles of them. The Democrats' only platform seems to be "we're not Bush," but even that isn't certain. Since Sept. 11, Democrats have become so concerned with maintaining the middle that they're now devoid of any coherent message.
Mike Still recently wrote an excellent column (Nov. 8) likening the Democrats to a "nice guy" at a party, too timid to get a girl. One reader responded gloatingly that Democrats aren't the "nice guy," they're the nerdy "loser." I'd say the Democrats are more like the "drunk wallflower," totally inept in a numbing haze as everything passes by. He might as well not even be there.
There's a lesson to be learned here for both parties. While many Republicans feel that this election was an endorsement of a broad conservative mandate, many Democrats yearn to recapture the lost middle that they hold so dear. But these ideas run the risk of disenfranchising American voters for either party.
Consider one of the biggest issues on the conservative agenda in coming years: appointing new judges. This will mean a renewed debate on various moral issues, including abortion. The Christian Coalition of America commented: "We don't need any more judges such as those in San Francisco who earlier this year ruled that children cannot recite the Pledge of Allegiance."
While working in Washington, D.C., this summer, I had a shock one morning when I learned that the judge who passed down that ruling was my great uncle. Realizing this put an interesting new spin on the issue for me.
Alfred Goodwin, so far as I knew, isn't the liberal that politicians made him out to be. In fact, despite efforts to be low-key and non-partisan, Goodwin has maintained Republican connections throughout his career. He was appointed to the appeals court by President Nixon. He had even been recommended to succeed Abe Fortas on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969 by Republican Gov. Mark Hatfield of Oregon.
The new vision of conservative America sees judges like this replaced by ones who are willing to press a moral agenda. With the new power afforded Republicans, this has immense implications. It's likely that Bush will have the opportunity to appoint one or two judges to the Supreme Court this term. If he does so with conservatives in the mode of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, America can expect such decisions as Roe v. Wade to be overturned. This is not at all an exaggeration.
Swing voters should be mindful that voting Republican means far more than support for a war-time president. Many Republicans will see the elections as a green light for applying moral conservatism to a broad spectrum of civil liberties. If the right pushes too hard, it won't only anger the left, it will alienate the middle. Ultimately, the strength of the conservative platform could paradoxically be the platform's demise.
Meanwhile, the drunken-wallflower Democrats can't remember what a platform is. The loss of Paul Wellstone left a great hole for the Democrats, but not because of some sort of political Senate-power calculation.
What the Democrats really lost when Sen. Wellstone died was a man of vision. Whether you liked him or not, Wellstone embodied a sort of gutsy idealism that's totally absent from the Democratic Party today. While conservatives feel energized by the livelihood of the conservative agenda, liberals worriedly look for leaders.
Wellstone was one of few Democrats willing to speak out against the war. The rest of the Democrats should take notes. Why would anyone vote for a party saying, "I guess we're going to war," when the other party is booming "we must fight"? Both parties seem to say the same thing, while only one has guts. War is only one issue among many, but it's got to be important enough for the Democrats to have an opinion on.
I'm firmly against the war, and I don't feel I'm being represented in government. Not only this, but at a liberal college institution, I know that a large portion of my generation here feels the same way. And there were certainly 200,000 more people who felt that way last month in Washington. Who are these people voting for?
While Republicans begin the complicated game of preserving the middle, the Democrats are in danger of disenfranchising the left.
Over the next couple years, it seems possible that either party could succeed or collapse. Until then, we'll just have to wait and see.
Drinks, anyone?
