National GOP Decides To Ignore The Election?
Normal people have every right to feel betrayed by what transpired last night. Red State has a biting article, addressing the disgrace of the GOP:
Idiocy in results is what comes with lack of principle. That idiocy extends to inability to discern self and party interests—not to mention those of the nation you’re supposed to be serving:
As RedState reported, the so-called “bi-partisan infrastructure bill” passed the House last night, delivering a face-saving moment for Nancy Pelosi. ...
Per the final tally, 13 House GOP members crossed the aisle to breathe new life into Joe Biden’s agenda (notably, a group of Republican senators started this months ago). But perhaps worse, they also helped diffuse [defuse?] a highly damaging civil war between Democrat leadership and the “squad,” a group of radical progressives led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
…
I’m seeing a few people justify this by insisting that the infrastructure bill was always going to eventually pass. Not only is that not necessarily true, given the progressive opposition, but it’s also irrelevant to what happened last night.
...
... All these GOP members had to do was vote ‘no,’ and the left would have remained in utter disarray. Instead, they stepped in and saved them.
Even worse, this all happened after voters delivered stunning victories across the country to Republicans on Tuesday night. … Republican voters do not want nonsensical compromises that help Biden’s presidency while harming the country. ...
Honestly, this is the most disgraceful move by House Republicans in a long time. … Something has to change, and fast, before 2022 — or Republican voters are going to quickly become disenchanted.
But beltway politics aside, this vote was another gut-punch to the middle-class, who are already dealing with sky-high prices and a gross devaluing of their savings. ...
The thing about elections is, if you want to win you have to give people with lives a reason to step outside their day-to-day and take the time to vote. That usually involves either showing that you’re different—in a kinda good way—from the other rascals, and so deserve a shot at control, or that you’ll rescue the voters from the other rascals who want to gain control. Moves like this make no sense at all in strictly partisan electoral terms.
Worse, this comes right after typically Blue voting states gave every indication of a willingness—even an eagerness—to consider the GOP as an alternative. Midterm elections, being often national (House/Senate) rather than local where voter interests largely reside, notoriously have much lower turnout. How did this move help the GOP in voter turnout terms? The awfulness of what the Dems represent may save the GOP from themselves, but it won’t generate the type of enthusiasm that a regenerative movement needs.
For perspective, there’s a good article at Reason:
Voters Are Done With COVID-19 and Pandemic-Powered Officials
Panicked Americans surrendered a lot of authority during the pandemic. Now they want their country back.
The GOP move amounted to telling these panicked Americans: Not so fast! Who said you could have your country back?
The article uses polling data to make the point that Americans are moving away from panic politics and are ready for a party that will lead that move. If only.
Politicians have been on a high over the last year-plus, wielding extraordinary power with the approval of voters fearful of viral infection. Democrats, in particular, championed draconian restrictions on life and often won praise for doing so. ... But voters, it turns out, are over their pandemic panic and want something closer to a traditionally restrained government minding its manners and paying attention to the public's concerns.
…, voters on Tuesday issued an unmistakable repudiation of the Democratic Party that was wider and deeper than even some of its more pessimistic tacticians were anticipating," acknowledged a Washington Post post-mortem.
The national GOP was either not paying attention when they let their members bail out Zhou or, dare we think it, likes the New Normal? The author points out that as recently as August polling said that voters were still listing Covid as a top concern. Something changed.
Sure enough, voters gave McAuliffe the edge over Youngkin on the pandemic in polling by Monmouth University. But that margin shrunk as Virginia voters moved past public health worries.
"The top issues chosen as the most important first or second factor in Virginians' vote for governor are jobs and the economy (45%, up from 39% in September) and education and schools (41%, up from 31%)," the late-October poll added. "Just 23% name the Covid pandemic as one of their top two issues, which is a drop from 32% last month."
These top two issues are, in fact, closely related. They also are closely related to the Covid Regime. The Covid Regime is to blame for our current economic woes—the shutdowns, the wasteful spending—and they’re also to blame for the school closures that have enraged normal parents. Yes, it’s the closures, perhaps as much as the CRT in the schools. Taken together, these polling results expressed a deep desire for a normal life for families and middle class working people. McAuliffe and Murphy touted their support for the Covid Regime’s continuance, and the results were predictable:
[McAuliffe] plummeted in the polls and dramatically lost to Youngkin.
Elsewhere, government overreach got comparable slaps. ...
The Gallup organization has shifted from trying to predict electoral outcomes to attempting to gauge public sentiment on broad issues. The article quotes a Gallup study that we noted earlier. Americans want a return to what they consider a traditional normal, as regards government’s role in their lives. Did the national GOP somehow miss this, or …
"Americans have shifted back to favoring a more hands-off approach for government in addressing the nation's problems after a rare endorsement of a more active role last year," Gallup reported in mid-October. "Last year marked only the second time in Gallup's 29-year trend that at least half of Americans endorsed an active role for the government on this item," the polling firm added. Before the pandemic, Americans supported activist government for only a brief while after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks before returning to a preference for "fewer government services and lower taxes." That's happening once again.
Get a load of this from ABC/Ipsos, as if the GOP needed any more encouragement to slap down Zhou and Pelosi:
On the national scene, that preference may be reflected in weak support for the multi-trillion-dollar spending schemes stalled in Congress. "A plurality (32%) of Americans think the bills would hurt people like them if they became law," finds a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll.
So what are those people to conclude? That the GOP is, at best, divided on whether to help people like them or to give them another kick in the pants? That sort of ambiguous messaging is not the way to goose enthusiasm turnout.
... Voters are by no means unified in what they want, and it's not at all obvious that they voted on the same issues this week. But it's clear that most people have moved beyond the crisis climate that drove them to cut a lot of slack for government during the worst days of COVID-19.
The GOP needs leadership. Smart leadership. Who will step up and address this disgraceful drift?
We're not voting our way out of this. That the GOP would betray its voters was always a fpregone conclusion. That they would wait for the day after the voters gave them victory to do so was not.
Now you know what's really been holding up Spendapalooza. They had to wait until after the midterms to pass it with GOP support. The midterms were a disaster anyway, so...
One takeaway from the past few months is that the regime is not behaving like they ever need to face an honest election again. Because they don't.
I wrote the following after the stunning victories after Tuesdays midterm elections around the country, in response to an author on a blog site which I frequently peruse stated something to the effect, ‘the GOP was finally convinced after such a display of stunning victories and would certainly coalesce on the same game plan of Virginia nationally:
“I am predicting that is it more likely that that the GOPe will suggest that yesterday’s wins were one of “moderation, gentile sensibilities and gently reaching out to suburban soccer mom’s.” The Left is going to be more committed to the tyrannical absurdities of the past 10 months, not less so.”
“How many GOP congressional and senatorial leaders have said enough of the nonsense of the WH/Congress/Media? How many GOP congressional and senatorial leaders have said enough of the nonsense of Faux-ci and the NIH/FDA?. What has become obvious is the split within the GOP on the way forward, and I hope never to return to the Mitt-esque failures of compromise. What exactly can one find to compromise with considering the current resident of the WH handlers and their policies, the party that put him in office, and the sycophantic 4th Estate which promotes/defends it? What we know for certain is that many GOP Governors have been successfully aggressive, articulate and contrarian to the absurdities of Leviathan. However, not so many within the city limits of DC.”
Now this Friday night abandonment of principle by the morons. The DFL was coming apart! Instead of administering the coupe de graces they offer them a lifeboat two days later on the infrastructure bill?
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony
of innocence is lost
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled
with passionate intensity.
I have this horrible feeling that we’re screwed. Our elected leaders are perfectly Machiavellian in knowing the appetites of the electorate and the electorate enthralled by the panem et circenses being offered.