Mark Ellis
Random thoughts and circular firing squads
By Mark Ellis
As Washington Post columnist Charles Lane wrote in his post-election piece "The 2012 Catch 22": "There are two Americas, with conflicting value systems and deep contempt for each other."
AKA Hunter S. Thompson's fear and loathing.
Notwithstanding the partisan divide, some say a demographic Rubicon has been passed. Pat Buchanan has been warning about it for years. It's entirely possible, goes the narrative, that Caucasian-centric conservatism will never again hold its traditional electoral power. White male voters broke for Romney 62-35, but represented only 34% of the total.
Analyst Dick Morris got thumped by his dogged purveyance of faulty poll analyses this time, but he seems right about one thing, "You run out of white people." I'm not conjuring this race-based context out of whole cloth — if you're reading this you know it's out there.
My sense is that the seemly thing to do is to pull back and assess the landscape. I was thinking that before I heard columnist Peggy Noonan say as much on Fox's Journal Editorial Report.
Reassessment is exactly what's going on in Republican circles, including the ones with firing squads.
One indication about how such a reassessment might become manifest came on Fox News Sunday, when venerable conservative Bill Kristol said he thought that Republicans should accept President Obama's offer to immediately extend the Bush tax cuts for all but the wealthiest Americans. "Are Republicans really going to fall on their swords for millionaires and billionaires, half of whom voted for Obama and many of whom live in Hollywood?"
That's a message you did not hear from the GOP on the 2012 campaign trail.
Further, it appears evident to seasoned observers, including analyst Bernard Goldberg on the O' Reilly Factor, that future Republican candidates who hitch their stars to inflexible and often poorly articulated rightist positions on social issues may have gone the way of the Cenozoic mastodon.
Also noted is that approximately 2 million fewer conservatives voted for Romney than did for John McCain in 2008, likely because he is too moderate, too Mormon, too changeable, and not conservative enough. I respect that decision, and it would not have made a difference in the outcome, but the stay-at-homes can spare me their Obama-nations through 2016.
No, Romney was not a staunch conservative. But millions of us voted for him anyway, to get a foot in a door that is closing to shelter the left and the Marxist mob that rides its coattails.
Resigned acceptance comes with the president's decisive victory. Yes, there is the House to check one party rule, unlike in California, but things are very much in Barack Obama and the Democrats' hands now. Conservative white males — and, by association, their Romney-supporting wives — have been called out by race by many on the far left.
Of course if you attempt to call them out in return, be prepared for the race card.
There are white Democrat, liberal, and Independent men. They amounted to 35% in this election. Far-lefties should take care they don't excoriate all of us.
As Cat Stevens once sang, "Baby, baby it's a wild world." History was not kind to the Republicans in 2006, Bush's second term midterm. That election marked the beginning of the end for not only Bush Doctrine conservatism, but also the beginning of the encirclement of the reliable base that supports the GOP.
Nevertheless, if mismanaged this triumph may prove short-lived, and Pyrrhic.
The post-election battle lines are already being drawn; debates about the fiscal cliff, the Benghazi/Petraeus debacle, and whether a pathway to citizenship is the GOP's last best hope or a death wish.
I don't want to think about it yet, but for the politically insatiable the 2014 midterm ship has already become a sail on the horizon.
© Mark Ellis
November 20, 2012
As Washington Post columnist Charles Lane wrote in his post-election piece "The 2012 Catch 22": "There are two Americas, with conflicting value systems and deep contempt for each other."
AKA Hunter S. Thompson's fear and loathing.
Notwithstanding the partisan divide, some say a demographic Rubicon has been passed. Pat Buchanan has been warning about it for years. It's entirely possible, goes the narrative, that Caucasian-centric conservatism will never again hold its traditional electoral power. White male voters broke for Romney 62-35, but represented only 34% of the total.
Analyst Dick Morris got thumped by his dogged purveyance of faulty poll analyses this time, but he seems right about one thing, "You run out of white people." I'm not conjuring this race-based context out of whole cloth — if you're reading this you know it's out there.
My sense is that the seemly thing to do is to pull back and assess the landscape. I was thinking that before I heard columnist Peggy Noonan say as much on Fox's Journal Editorial Report.
Reassessment is exactly what's going on in Republican circles, including the ones with firing squads.
One indication about how such a reassessment might become manifest came on Fox News Sunday, when venerable conservative Bill Kristol said he thought that Republicans should accept President Obama's offer to immediately extend the Bush tax cuts for all but the wealthiest Americans. "Are Republicans really going to fall on their swords for millionaires and billionaires, half of whom voted for Obama and many of whom live in Hollywood?"
That's a message you did not hear from the GOP on the 2012 campaign trail.
Further, it appears evident to seasoned observers, including analyst Bernard Goldberg on the O' Reilly Factor, that future Republican candidates who hitch their stars to inflexible and often poorly articulated rightist positions on social issues may have gone the way of the Cenozoic mastodon.
Also noted is that approximately 2 million fewer conservatives voted for Romney than did for John McCain in 2008, likely because he is too moderate, too Mormon, too changeable, and not conservative enough. I respect that decision, and it would not have made a difference in the outcome, but the stay-at-homes can spare me their Obama-nations through 2016.
No, Romney was not a staunch conservative. But millions of us voted for him anyway, to get a foot in a door that is closing to shelter the left and the Marxist mob that rides its coattails.
Resigned acceptance comes with the president's decisive victory. Yes, there is the House to check one party rule, unlike in California, but things are very much in Barack Obama and the Democrats' hands now. Conservative white males — and, by association, their Romney-supporting wives — have been called out by race by many on the far left.
Of course if you attempt to call them out in return, be prepared for the race card.
There are white Democrat, liberal, and Independent men. They amounted to 35% in this election. Far-lefties should take care they don't excoriate all of us.
As Cat Stevens once sang, "Baby, baby it's a wild world." History was not kind to the Republicans in 2006, Bush's second term midterm. That election marked the beginning of the end for not only Bush Doctrine conservatism, but also the beginning of the encirclement of the reliable base that supports the GOP.
Nevertheless, if mismanaged this triumph may prove short-lived, and Pyrrhic.
The post-election battle lines are already being drawn; debates about the fiscal cliff, the Benghazi/Petraeus debacle, and whether a pathway to citizenship is the GOP's last best hope or a death wish.
I don't want to think about it yet, but for the politically insatiable the 2014 midterm ship has already become a sail on the horizon.
© Mark Ellis
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
