Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza has come up with five myths about the election.
No. 1: The Republican Party suffered a death blow. (History says otherwise, because every president since 1934 except George W. Bush lost House seats in his first midterm election.)
No. 2: Black and young voters swept Barack Obama to victory. (“Exit polling suggests that there was no statistically significant increase in voting among either group,” Cillizza said.)
No. 3: Now that they control the White House and Congress, Democrats will usher in a new progressive era. (Not true, he said, because many of the freshman Democrats, especially in the House, are moderate to conservative.)
No. 4: A Republican candidate could have won the presidency this year. (Not likely, Cillizza said, thanks to President Bush’s record.)
No. 5: McCain made a huge mistake in picking Sarah Palin. (Though Palin hurt McCain’s attempts to reach out to independents and Democrats, “it’s hard to imagine conservatives rallying to McCain – even to the relatively limited extent that they did – without Palin on the ticket.”)
“I could make the argument that all is not lost for the Republican Party – that Nov. 4′s across-the-board defeat wasn’t an unmitigated disaster,” columnist Eugene Robinson wrote. “But it would be a pretty dumb argument, and I doubt many readers would take it seriously. The truth is that the Grand Old Party is on a bridge to nowhere and may have great difficulty changing course.
“The essential problem is that changing course will require turning around and marching, if not sprinting, in the opposite direction. At least initially, this doesn’t look like something enough Republicans are willing to do.”
The 20th Amendment, shortening the transition period between presidencies from four to 2½ months, was ratified during economic dire straits in January 1933. Recalling that, attorneys and federal employees Milo Mason and Paul Smyth say it’s time to trim the lame-duck period further. “Our Founding Fathers gave us political accountability and checks and balances because they understood the temptations of power on the best of us. Once we’ve elected a new president, the democratic thing to do is to let him get started,” they wrote in Legal Times, suggesting that Inauguration Day become the first Friday in December.
“In a devastating blow to millions of unsuspecting Americans, newly elected president and international con man Barack Obama fled the country Wednesday with nearly $85 million in campaign funds,” the satirical Web site the Onion reported. Obama and his associate “Michelle” have pulled that same scam in other countries, according to the Onion. “This explains Portugal in ’86, Finland in ’94, and Greece in ’90,” CIA director Michael Hayden said.
Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza has come up with five myths about the election.
