With fewer Republicans having voted nationally Tuesday than in any election since 1980, the party faithful have to be wondering not only what went wrong but what to do now. Why did exit polls show only 28 percent of John McCain voters “excited” about a McCain presidency? Is the uneasy GOP coalition of economic and social conservatives on the rocks? The fracture over illegal immigration remains, too. “Pat Buchanan isolationist Republicans have little in common with Wall Street Republicans, and libertarian Republicans have little in common with the religious right,” said presidential historian Richard Norton Smith.
What Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., heard voters say Tuesday to the GOP: “Go back to basics, stop embarrassing them and ourselves, be true to our principles, and regain the majority by the virtue of our deeds rather than the eloquence of our words.”
How do the Democrats solve a problem like Joe Lieberman? The 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee and current Connecticut senator, who now calls himself an “independent Democrat,” was strongly behind GOP nominee John McCain, even speaking at the Republican convention. Now, many Democrats want to purge Lieberman from their caucus and strip him of his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. But that sounds like behavior at odds with President-elect Obama’s commitment to bipartisanship. Plus, Senate Democrats will need help to reach the 60-vote procedural hurdle. Look for Lieberman to be forgiven.
The whole world was watching Tuesday night, and now it’s weighing in. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour sees a “tsunami of goodwill” accompanying Barack Obama’s victory, observing that the Times of London said Obama “had revitalized U.S. politics. In Germany, Der Spiegel called Obama’s rise ‘astonishing,’ while the Times of India called Obama an ‘advocate of strong partnership with India.’ Al-Jazeera said Obama had ‘surfed to power on a wave of voter discontent generated by the failures of President George Bush and the Republican Party’ and added that he faces ‘unique challenges.’ It continued that his country was ‘sick of war.’”
Johnson County voters soundly rejected the proposal to elect their District Court judges, preferring to stick with the “merit-selection” system the county has used since 1974. The process involves a screening panel of seven lawyers and seven laypeople that uses public interviews and meetings to pick a slate of three top candidates, one of whom the governor appoints to the district bench. Advocates of electing judges, as Sedgwick County does, argued it would give citizens more control and judges more accountability. But on Tuesday nearly 60 percent of Johnson County voters “said we’re not going to turn our judges into political animals,” attorney Greg Musil of Johnson Countians for Justice told the Kansas City Star.
Meanwhile, Sedgwick County voters this year realized some of the worries of the Johnson County ballot measure’s opponents: A total 23 candidates vied for campaign donations in the legal community. Tens of thousands of dollars were spent. And on Tuesday voters gave the appearance of putting party affiliation first in handing all eight contested seats to Republicans (including the court’s fourth conservative GOP state legislator-turned-judge), in the process leaving the county’s bench all-male.
“While Barack may have been raised in some exotic places, he was raised by Kansas women.” – Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, at the Democrats’ election watch party in Topeka
With fewer Republicans having voted nationally Tuesday than in any election since 1980, the party faithful have to be wondering not only what went wrong but what to do now. Why did exit polls show only 28 percent of John McCain voters “excited” about a McCain presidency? Is the uneasy GOP coalition of economic and social conservatives on the rocks? The fracture over illegal immigration remains, too. “Pat Buchanan isolationist Republicans have little in common with Wall Street Republicans, and libertarian Republicans have little in common with the religious right,” said presidential historian Richard Norton Smith.
