A Historic Election, An Early Thanksgiving
David Horowitz – Today is a day for conservatives to thank Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid for destroying the Democratic majority in Congress, stopping the progressive juggernaut and putting Republicans in a perfect position to take control of the Senate in 2012 and eject the Radical-in-Chief from his Oval perch. Watching the MSNBC leftists Olbermann, Matthews and Maddow try to explain away the rejection of their policies by the American people and attribute it to “outside money,” inept messaging, insufficiently radical policies and poor instructions to their camp followers was a particularly satisfying experience. Keep on thinking that way comrades, encourage Obama and Reid to open the throttle on the socialist express and – as Karl Rove put it with a joyful exuberance in his FoxNews commentary — “drive that train off the cliff.”
This was an election night which saw the state houses in North Carolina and Alabama go Republican for the first time since 1872 and 1874, which cast out — often by landslide margins — “old bull” Democrats Skelton, Boucher, Oberstar and Edwards, who had been in the House for more than twenty years and had stuffed their districts with enough pork to keep their voters satisfied and the seats they held their personal property for as long as they drew breath. Here was a night that saw the election of a Republican governor in the unionized Michigan by a twenty-point landslide, and the installation of Republican governors through the arc of the Midwest from Wisconsin through Illinois and Ohio for the first time in half a century, along with the state house and legislature of keystone Pennsylvania. Here was a sixty-seat flip in the U.S. House of Representatives a feat that hasn’t been achieved since 1948. Read more
From Defeat to Rout
NRO – They can’t say they weren’t warned. The polls showed independents beginning to turn away from President Obama in the spring of 2009. Town halls in the summer showed strong grassroots resistance to the Democrats’ health-care plan. In November 2009, Republicans won big in Virginia and New Jersey — both states Obama had carried the year before. A few months later, opposition to the health-care law helped Republican Scott Brown to win the seat that Ted Kennedy had occupied for decades.
Democrats had plenty of time to change course. Instead, they decided that the public was easily confused and would come around. The weak economy and previous Democratic gains meant that Republicans would likely do well in this election, especially in the House. But it was this Democratic obstinacy that converted a defeat into a rout. Republicans took control of the House, defeated liberal heavyweights such as Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and picked up a slew of governorships and state legislatures. The House will now have more Republicans than in any year since the 1940s.
The Republicans deserve some credit for their own success. The early popularity of the president did not prevent them from opposing a bloated stimulus, and they rejected the superficial arguments for cooperating with the Democrats in extending government control of health care. They refused, in short, to acquiesce in their widely predicted extinction. Read more
Common Bread 