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The Moose Stops Here

snip

The Republicans are in serious denial. A few heretics excepted, they hope to blame all their woes on their unpopular president, the inept McCain campaign and their party’s latent greed for budget-busting earmarks.

The trouble is far more fundamental than that. The G.O.P. ran out of steam and ideas well before George W. Bush took office and Tom DeLay ran amok, and it is now more representative of 20th-century South Africa during apartheid than 21st-century America. The proof is in the vanilla pudding. When David Letterman said that the 10 G.O.P. presidential candidates at an early debate looked like “guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club,” he was the first to correctly call the election.

On Nov. 4, that’s roughly the sole constituency that remained loyal to the party — minus its wealthiest slice, a previously solid G.O.P. stronghold that turned blue this year (in a whopping swing of 34 percentage points). The Republicans lost every region of the country by double digits except the South, which they won by less than double digits (9 points). They took the South only because McCain, who ran roughly even with Obama among whites in every other region, won Southern whites by 38 percentage points.

Those occasional counties that tilted more Republican in 2008 tended to be not only the least diverse, but also the most rural, least educated and slowest-growing in population. McCain-Palin did score a landslide among white evangelical Christians, though even in that demographic Obama shaved the G.O.P. margin by seven percentage points from 2004.

The Republicans did this to themselves, yet a convenient amnesia can be found in conservatives’ post-Election Day soul searching. There’s endless hand-wringing about Bush and McCain blunders and Abramoff-Stevens corruption, but there’s barely any mention of the nasty cultural brawls that defined the G.O.P. campaign narrative this year as the party clung bitterly once more to its 40-year-old “Southern strategy.”

more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/opinion/16rich.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

young people ages 18-29 have caught the voting bug. On Nov. 4, 23 million Americans under 30 years of age voted, an increase of 3.2 million from 2004. And it didn’t just start with Barack Obama in 2008 because the same age group showed an increase in 2004 from 2000.

While Barack Obama – his charisma, his youthfulness and his Internet appeal, the whole package – is part of the reason, he’s not the main reason why young people are voting again in substantial numbers. The increasing youth vote has more to do with the replacement of the older Gen-X or “slacker” generation with the younger Millennial Generation, a post baby-boom cohort that now holds the political reins of the youth voting bloc.

At the 16th Annual California Policy Issues Conference in Los Angeles last week, Heather Smith, executive director of Rock the Vote, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, youth voting initiative that started 18 years ago in Los Angeles, said today’s 18-24-year-olds – unlike the Generation X that preceded them – are very motivated to vote.

“For the Gen X-ers, politics was so uncool,” began Smith. “Now, everyone is talking about politics with friends and family.”

This year marked the highest youth vote turnout since 1972, when a record number of young people went to the polls motivated by the Vietnam War and the draft. In the last election, young voters represented 18 percent of all voters that turned out.

http://www.sgvtribune.com/opinions/ci_11001118

It went on to say about 5 million more votes were cast this year than in 2004.

Torture the numbers long enough and they’ll confess to anything.

They just don’t get it.

No. 3: The columnist can quibble with the new progressive era as he sees fit, but we’re winding down with eight years of neocon foolishness. With Obama in the White House and the Dems heavy in the House and the Senate, there will be a different approach to energy, health care, tax cuts, and foreign policy. Good.

No. 4: Cillizza says a Republican couldn’t have won the White House this year. Well, maybe. I mean, Rudy G wasn’t going to win it talking about 9/11 every other sentence, and Romney wasn’t going to win it as a Mormon with the aforementioned social conservatives uneasy about his religion. Brownback wasn’t going to win it trying to blur the line some more between church and state, and Huckabee wasn’t either. That left McCain. The social conservatives didn’t like McCain all that much, even though he sought and received an endorsement from Hagee, who called the Catholic Church “the great whore.” Clearly, it was a borderline operatic year for the Repubs. Back to the drawing board for Grover Norquist, Bill Kristol, and the clergy.

No. 5: Cillizza wants to argue that picking Palin wasn’t a blunder. Has Cillizza has his post-election vacation yet? He should go down to the beach, there, and flop right down on the sand. Order a few umbrella drinks.

OK, so McCain’s campaign started out with “Obama’s just a celebrity. Pick me because I’ve got experience.” Once you’ve established that as a pillar of your campaign, it _is_ a huge mistake to pick someone who is even less experienced than your opponent.

If it comes out in 5 or 10 years that McCain purposely “threw” this election, I, for one will not be surprised.

That…and the fact that McCain ran such a negative campaign and had no new ideas for dealing with the issues. All the talk about being a “maverick” but unable to come up with any substance other than cutting spending (which every candidate who ever ran for prez has promised) got old quick. Americans are sick to death of politics as usual. Besides, he was too damn old.

Syle always wins over substance with independents.

If they paid much attention to the substance, they wouldn’t be independents.

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Maybe the Reagan Democrats finally got wise and realized that George W. Bush only finished what Reagan started with his voodoo economics?

This election was about the economy and the pick of Sarah Palin only made it a nastier campaign by her and the Religious Right throwing in the hate-filled speeches. It was only after McCain picked Palin when his poll numbers really started tanking with the voters that matter – the independents that you seem to dismiss so casually as being too stupid to grasp the substance.

People prefer style over substance – yeah, maybe, but when the substance being offered is only hate-filled speeches labeling Obama as a terrorist, socialist, anti-American and ‘that one’, obviously the majority of voters decided against that particular substance.

I think this one is true. But the party wasn’t murdered so much as it is committing suicide.

The GOP is on the brink of a civil war between at least three factions. And there are factions WITHIN the factions not getting along.

I think we may well see Democratic control of Congress and the While House at least for the next 8 years. They have the numbers to actually get the cons out of the way and get things done.

Like,

Axis of Evil
If you’re not with us, you’re against us
I looked into Putin’s eyes and saw a good soul

Nothing limiting about those prognostications. /sarcasm

If McNasty can have a coming together attitude, can’t the rest of you bushies follow suit?

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Chuckle…. McNasty. I wonder if Phantom has a sense of irony? Or the obvious?

An opinion to the contrary from none other than a former Washington Times editorial writer:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/13/AR2008111303550.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

A prudent idea in theory, but the problem is that there is no such thing, and never has been. It’s simply shorthand for the political consensus of the moment, which can change overnight.

Obama’s got one thing right: once you start affixing labels to everything and everyone, you severely limit your options.

Let the dems believe them; the inevitable overreach will follow. The boom in gun sales (I know of several first-time gun buyers who are buying specifically because Obama was elected – and who voted for him and STILL don’t believe him on this issue) speaks to the reality. The election was a rejection of Bush, not an embracement of Obama, the Democratic party, or “progressive” policies.

This is still, at least as measured on the usual American political scale, a center-right nation.

Syle always wins over substance with independents.

If they paid much attention to the substance, they wouldn’t be independents.

I am not claiming that is gospel, but seems to be consistent with other estimates.

I thought I read that somewhere else, that the youth vote didnt really materialize as projected.

He won with crossovers, not necessarily the youth vote. It appears his victory didnt depend on the youth they way they thought it would.