Nationalized Elections
By Erick Posted in 2006 — Comments (35) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
If you haven't discovered the Influence Peddler yet, you need to start reading that blog. Here is a great post to cut your teeth on.
I think we're starting to see evidence that Republicans are accepting that the election has been nationalized, and that they're trying to frame the issues on which they are nationalized. I've noticed this first on immigration, where endangered Republican incumbents Charles Taylor and Thelma Drake (to name but two) are attacking their opponents for being soft on border control. I am sure that there are already others, and they will be many before the elections.
The Influence Peddler thinks nationalizing the elections might be one way the GOP can mitigate its losses in November.
Thoughts (and consider this an open thread)?
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If each Republican would run on conservative/traditional values inclusive of English only, school choice, border control, traditional marriage, respect for the flag and pledge, lower taxes, controlling spending and a strong national defense while framing their dimocrat opponent as a standard bearer of the White Flag Party in favor of abortion on demand for teenage girls, gay marriage, higher taxes, victimhood, criminal coddling and secular moral values, it would be the dims worrying about mitigating losses as well it should be.
Never play defense when you can play offense.
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.
We should always nationalize elections when the opposition party, if in the majority, would refuse to provide for the common defense, take more private property from individuals via taxation and refuse to confirm the replacement for a soon to retire liberal on the supreme court.
"If they attack us, it means we're winning." - Rush Limbaugh
What losses? The Republican majority has done a great job at pushing thru their agenda. If the agenda was popular, why would they lose?
There are two ground rules to your continued existence:
(1) You must have twenty substantive comments for every one of factually inaccurate snark; and
(2) You must spell correctly.
You're failing. Please remedy the situation.
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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.
I'm not actually trying to be snarky - and no one is answering the question, either. I think the Republicans have been very successful at pushing thru what they want to push thru (tax cuts, judicial nominees, etc.)
It seems to me that these are things they could run on, if they're popular positions.
I'm afraid I don't get the disconnect between their numerous successes and the defeatism in the post above. If someone would care to enlighten me, please do so.
I don't think the National vs Local affects your ability to win/lose an election. The election itself is still won on the issues that are in the forefront of the given election. What nationalizing the election does do, is put all of your eggs in a large basket. If your issues are good, and the breaks come your way, you win big. If your issues are bad, or you have a really bad run of luck, you lose big.
In the past, Dems always focused on the Local level, because at heart they are not a homogenous party: nationalize the election, and you are guaranteed to lose at least some of the offices. By not nationalizing the election, they could run on different platforms in different locations and still win, then crack heads when the elected people came to Washington. Hence the "conventional wisdom" that all elections are local.
Now, on the question of whether nationalizing the elections helps the Republicans? I don't know. I'm not sure the governing Republicans understand their base. I'm not sure Bush does, but I'm certain Guiliani and McCain don't. I think they sort of hit the same note as the base on some issues, although not for the same reasons. On the other hand, since the elections ARE being nationalized (whether Republicans like it or not), because the stakes are bigger, they may start to think harder about what the base wants. To the extent there are Schwarz-like primaries, Republicans might get the message and win the election.
And yes, I concur with Bill Sammon's (sp?, wrote Misunderstimated) assessment that with the first W election, the way elections are won has changed. Before that, you solidified your base, then ran toward the middle. Now there is no middle to run to, so you need to turn out your base.
Nationalizing elections is only a good idea if your party has ideas which are popular with the country at large. I don't think the GOP leadership (Bush, Rove, Mehlman, etc) have such ideas.
It's possible that the GOP Congress may find such ideas if they listen to their constituients. Reining in spending and cracking down on immigration are two obvious possibilities.
Nationalization tends to be correlated with incumbent defeats. On the other hand, the process of nationalization is often misdescribed as an election about "national issues." With all due respect to Tip "all politics is local" O'Neill, what election isn't? It's a rare case when there isn't some overriding national concern weighing in on an election, be it the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and now the War on Terrorism. Nationalization is not an identifiable process whereby candidates (especially challengers) take these so-called national issues and run on them, because that happens every year. Nationalization is a special case where political circumstance forces individual candidates to stop being individuals and to run simply as a "Republican" or as a "Democrat." This means voters are not choosing between Joe Republican and his challenger or John Democrat and his challenger, but between the Republican platform versus the challenger and the Democrat platform versus the challenger. I said this correlates with incumbent defeats because often it is the incumbents who become symbols of their party's platform, which a majority of their constituents will rarely agree with in its entirety, while their challengers get to run as individuals. This happened in 1994, when Bill Clinton was able to persuade even conservative Democrats to vote for very liberal policies. They thus became stand-ins for the Democrat party platform, which is much easier to run against than an individual incumbent.
We do not have a nationalized election this year. The GOP's often reviled moderates ensure that we do not by dissenting from the party line, which highlights in voter's minds that the GOP is made of an individuals who vote their conscience and with their constituents, instead of a party machine. Strangely enough, it is actually the minority party that better guarantees party discipline and lock-step voting. This will have an effect on Democrat incumbents (Maria Cantwell's struggles seem to be a good example), but challengers still get to run as individuals because they have not yet been assimilated into the Democrats' congressional machine. It will be interesting to see what the effects of having such a disciplined minority party will be, because I can't think of an election where it has happened before.
Others see panic-stricken Democratic candidates desperately grabbing for the only life-line offered them by the far left portion of their party...
"Always be honest with yourself even if you are honest with no one else...
...It helps you keep track of your lies..."
--Myself
Yes, this election is national.
For example, the arrests in Britain have not helped Bush's popularity so far, a recent CBS poll finds. His job approval remains exactly at 36 percent (lower in other polls), where it was a month ago. Even the president's rating for handling terrorism – supposedly his strongest rating – remains unchanged at 51 percent.
It is time for some real changes in our war on terror. Bring our soldiers home to protect US instead of babysitting the Iraqis. Spend all that money on US (port and airport security) and not on people that demonstrate against us in their streets.
Failure to make changes now will have severe consequences for us republicans in the fall.
Clearwater Conservative
Remember us? Moderate Republicans. We are the guys reps need this fall to stay in power. Iqnore us and reps will pay a terrible parice.
Clearwater Conservative
The track record of people who loudly proclaim their republicanism is not very good, but maybe you are the exception.
The problem afflicting the GOP is that it has bent over so far to please the "moderates" that it is losing support on the right.
In practice, trying to placate the moderates is a losing game. Bush 41 was as moderate and centerist a president as America has had since Eisenhower. The liberal and moderate wings of the party deserted him in droves to vote for Perot and Clinton.
If you want higher taxes, the troops out of Iraq, more Federal money for embryonic stem cell research, abortion legalized, gay marriage legalized, etc, which seems to be your position, then I encourage you to vote for the Democratic party.
Is allowed to differ from the party platform on ONE or TWO issues. But if you differ on like fifteen or sixteen issues, then it would be better for everyone if such a person were not in the party.
Also, running on solid conservative, or at least small government libertarian principles always wins at the ballot box except in a few places like New York, San Francisco, and Boston.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
The track record of people who loudly proclaim their republicanism is not very good
My observation as well. With posts that have "Conservative" or "GOP" in their user name, and/or include phrases like "we Republicans", it seems like 90% of them are arguing in favor of policies supported mostly by Democrats.
Sampling a few Clearwater "Conservative" posts confirms the pattern.
C'mon Kossaks, it's fine to come here and politely argue why you think we've got it all wrong. But if that kind of honesty doesn't appeal to you and you'd rather try to pass yourself off as a Republican to sow confusion, at least do it more convincingly than you guys have been doing it so far. It's not entertaining when you're so easy to recognize.
For your ruse to be halfway convincing, you'll need a little more creativity than copy/pasting a Democratic talking point and prefixing it with "To avoid electoral defeat we Republicans must ..."
You never can tell who's an angry Rockefeller Republican, and who's a moby troublemaker.
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"In this day and age, you're not going to get a fair shake in the media" -- Lance Armstrong
If they embrace the Democratic party position on every issue, and reject the Republican party position, then they are either a moby or very confused.
When you call yourself "ClearwaterConservative" but then say you are a "Moderate Republican", you tend to come across as someone pretending to be one, or the other, who might actually be neither. Just some food for thought.
""It is time for some real changes in our war on terror."" Let
our troops do their job in Iraq, instead of having our troops worried about defending themselves against Americans who want to charge them with murder every time they fire at the enemy.
All I see is "Triumph of the Spitzer" ads, so who knows?
Given that the alternative to nationalized elections is a pork-eating contest, I'll take nationalized any day.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
I hope I'm wrong, but I think you'll have to resign yourself to the NY election just being a Spitzer coronation. Even the Election Commissioners' cars are sporting Spitzer stickers - Check out this photo
I'd describe the Republican party of today as a a rampaging pack of ruthless predators, spreading fear and scorched earth throughout the planet.
Hmm.
In more bad news for the Kossacks, Predators prefer dimwitted prey.
I feel peckish.
And we are dealing with some dim.witted.prey.
Man, I just WISH the GOP was rampaging like a pack of ruthless predators, pouncing on a hapless America, imposing things like originalist judges, spending cuts, killing the death tax, closing down about 4 cabinet-level bureaucracies, deregulation -- oh, and forcing energy independence on us by opening ANWR and more off-shore sites. Then rampaging on the world scene by kicking the UN out of America, engaging Islamic fascism more directly and forcefully, and striking fear into the hearts of little tin-pot totalitarian regimes like NK, Iran, and Syria by the very real threat of military consequences.
For once, I wish dKos was onto something....
The Dallas Cowboys will make the playoffs and thrive there in spite of dragging around the big smelly dead mackerel which is terrell owens
That is the day that the 17th Amendment was ratified. By removing the state legislator from the equation it removed the state officials from relevance and pushed the electoral process to the national level.
Of course, it took the power of a quickly dispersed media to refine it, but no less, before we all were born (most likely) the advent of a truly nationally elected government occurred.
...a while back you may be interested in checking out:
"The Road To Freedom Is Seldom Traveled By The Multitude"
With the parent comments lost, and the thread numbering shot, I wouldn't want to try to read the discussion, heh.
I do hope Clayton can fix those...
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"In this day and age, you're not going to get a fair shake in the media" -- Lance Armstrong
That does put a damper on following the discussion.
Good catch!
Thanks
"The Road To Freedom Is Seldom Traveled By The Multitude"
Even among conservatives, very few really understand how the 16th and 17th Amendments destroyed Federalism. Those amendments were the biggest wins for Leftists in United States history.
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Eliminate the IRS and all payroll taxes! http://www.fairtax.org
With entrenched districts resulting from redistricting following 2000 census, only hope Dems have to take control of Congress is to build a national wave large enough to sweep out GOP incumbents.
GOP has better ideas and policies for our country, so I welcome national debates. But right now I don't see rational debate - I see a hate-spewing left trying to radicalize a national wave. Better for congressional candidates to keep it local.
Carlspan
which has been going on here sporadically, the latest issue of The American Conservative takes a look at that very question.
Some of the usual crackpots are present (Lew Rockwell: conservatism today is as bad as communism ever was.) but many of the essays are worth a read.
Ross Douhat - Liberals, on the other hand, dream the same dream and envision the same destination, even if they disagree on exactly how to get there. It’s the dream of Thomas Friedman as well as Karl Marx, as old as Babel and as young as the South Korean cloners. It whispered to us in Eden, and it whispers to us now: ye shall be as gods. And no conservative dream, in the 400 years from Francis Bacon until now, has proven strong enough to stand in its way.
"If they attack us, it means we're winning." - Rush Limbaugh
Erick
Here's some more on the subject from Space.com "Tale of the TV Tapes: Apollo 11 Mission Archive Mystery Unspools"
"The Road To Freedom Is Seldom Traveled By The Multitude"
are common themes for House GOP incumbents. Although the Administration and Senate have been weak on the former, it is painfully obvious the opposition would be worse. The KosKids and jihadists unintentionally injected the War on Terror back into the national dialogue last week.
Do those themes constitute a "nationalized" election or just realities that can't be ignored? Tough call there, but both help the Republicans if used properly.