Last week, in the wake of the Republican tsunami, reader and commenter "Steve" noted that (R) should have won the Senate seats in Delaware, Connecticut and Nevada with ease were it not for the tea party-approved candidates. B-Daddy responded by saying this whole thing will take time and implied it was a learning experience.
Allow us to say this regarding the claim that the tea party cost the Republicans seats in the Senate: we don't care.
No, this isn't flippant or cavalier know-nothingness - to be completely cliche', we're willing to break a few eggs in order to make an omelet.
It has been said that one of the most important acts in the history of democracy was when George Washington stepped down after his 2nd term as President, putting to bed the notion of President-for-life. Implied in that act as well, we believe, was the rejection of the notion of the career politician. At that time the conventional wisdom was that you turned over the operation of the farm or your business to the brother-in-law to do the bidding of the people in Washington before returning home to your work-a-daddy life a couple of years later.
So Sharron Angle, Linda McMahon and our wacky ex-girlfriend, Christine O'Donnell weren't "strong" candidates, they weren't "ideal" and they lacked "experience" and "gravitas".
You want "experience"? You want "ideal"? You got it:
One of the most patently ridiculous things ever said with respect to legislating from one with "experience" and whom is on a first name basis with "career politician".
Peggy Noonan recently lamented that a man of unparalleled competence and integrity she knew, turned down an offer to run for public office because he had "not led a perfect life". Well, the fact that the three aforementioned candidates were not "perfect politicians" bothered us not the least.
Coiffed hair, Ivy League educations, teleprompters, nuanced wording, blue blood pedigrees, posturing, triangulation, telegenic smiles and... experience, all in abundance in D.C., currently... and how has that been working out?
We don't care about experience (in the Senate - White House is an entirely different story) or anything else in that previous paragraph. We want votes! We want dependable conservative votes. We want votes to repeal ObamaCare, we want votes to cut spending. We want votes that will be used as a restraining order against the regime's statist agenda. That's it.
The tea party simultaneously energized a segment of the electorate while providing a loose decentralized network that was more an ideal than a brick and mortar political infrastructure around which that energy and passion could coalesce and then act.
The 60+ and 6 and the 680 seats that flipped at the state level was not going to happen without the tea party.
* Heavily qualified
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Some (final)* thoughts on the midterm elections
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4 comments:
Too bad some teabagger didn't cost Spencer Bachus his seat.
"Ideal" is a strawman. What is wanted and needed are candidates who have some decent qualifications and ideas. O'Donnell and Angle were both loony. They knew all the right keywords, but there was no substance. I know many bright, well informed conservatives who I would have voted for before those two.
Steve
Given how the odds were stacked against them, they damn near needed to be "ideal".
CO was fighting her own party establishment as well as a ravenous media and a totally bogus non-sex scandal. I am confident that if you polled people who knew who CO was, only 1 in 5 of those same people could tell you who she was running against. And I think I'm being generous.
Point being, do you honestly think that ding-bat Patty Murray (D - Pluto) would've survived had she been given the same media treatment?
McMahon destroyed Blumenthall in their debate but I suppose if Conn. wants to put a bald-faced liar in the Senate, that is certainly their perogative.
Angle was up by 4 going into the last week and then the Democrats pulled out all the stops, flooded the zone and basically declared Nevada as their Alamo. There was another Republican candidate out there that was going to withstand that onslaught?
You didn't like those candidates and that's cool - I do understand.
Given the excrable combination of Reid, Blumenthal and Coons, however, I much rather prefer the alternative.
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