New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | March 24, 2006

Nick Gillespie surveys the Dems' ingenious midterm plan: Render the opposition unconscious by rehashing soporifically stale policy proposals.

Comments

|3.24.06 @ 2:21PM|#

"[O]ther top Dems are laying down on the job more than Ronald Reagan ever did."

Nick -- as one RU grad & New Jerseyan to another -- I love you like a brother, but the top Dems are lying down on the job, not laying down. (Unless that was just a typo, in which case, never mind and keep up the good work.)

|3.24.06 @ 2:22PM|#

Julian, that sentence is pure poetry!

|3.24.06 @ 2:32PM|#

Best Midterm election plan.... gridlock.

|3.24.06 @ 2:51PM|#

"Instead of wooing would-be voters with something innovative and bold in her March 14 talk, she rummaged through the Donkey Party's deep freezer and served up a bunch of really old pieces of mystery meat whose expiration dates weren't quite clear."

Heh heh, first time I laughed out loud today. Thanks.

Gimme Back My Dog|3.24.06 @ 2:54PM|#

Great article. But really, a Hugh Grant reference? With all of the Lohans, Mosses and various Hilton sisters available you had to go to the wayback machine for an oral sex reference?

|3.24.06 @ 3:03PM|#

I saw some Mencken quotes earlier about the political parties, and I think I'll post a couple here, for no good reason:

Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.

Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right.

|3.24.06 @ 3:30PM|#

Republican stampede was underwritten to a significant degree by the much-derided Contract With America, which captured the voting public's imagination by offering a set of clearly defined, ideologically coherent (and attractive) propositions.

The Republican takeover in '94 was the result of a continuing realignment of Southern voters from their historic party to their more ideological party.
The Contract's importance is almost surely overblown -- even if it is not, it is awfully silly to use the Contract with America to criticize the Democratic message in March, as the Contract with America was released 6 weeks before the midterms.

|3.24.06 @ 3:31PM|#

Americans will vote their whims this November, not their principles. The electorate has all the mental wherewithal of a gang of intelligent chimps, and they will vote for whomever promises the most bananas.

|3.24.06 @ 3:50PM|#

I tend to vote for the guy who says he will protect my bananas from the other monkies.

|3.24.06 @ 4:03PM|#

Don't blame me, I voted for Kang.

|3.24.06 @ 4:17PM|#

Whomever wins must address the Bananas of Mass Destruction.

|3.24.06 @ 5:20PM|#

Kerry went to Yale, not Harvard. Nick needs to give his editor a thorough talking-to. Don't sigh too much when you do it, though, Nick. It'll fog the mirror. Good article, nonetheless.

theCoach also has a really good point. The Cthuloid awakening of the Dixiecrats seems far more likely a culprit for '94 than the CWA. (Hmmm, same acronym as the Communication Workers of America. Coincidence? Well, probably.)

|3.24.06 @ 5:25PM|#

Actually, Republican voting in 1994 barely budged from the previous midterm.

The Republicans took over because Democratic number were way down. The "angry white men" myth of 1994 was just that, a myth. There really was no great movement to the polls by people inspired by the Republicans, angry, white, or whatever.

|3.24.06 @ 5:31PM|#

The problem is you can't come up with new ideas when a large portion of your party is completely dedicated to the status quo. How do you come up with inovative policy proscriptions and still keep the public sector labor unions, evniro groups, tort lawyers, and feminists groups all on board? Take away any one of those groups' support and no Dem has a prayer of winning a national primary or getting a policy put on the national platform. It is impossible to come up with any new or inovative policy sollution to any problem facing the country that is not going to offend one or more of those groups.

|3.24.06 @ 5:35PM|#

Joe,

If that is true, why didn't voting return to normal and the Democrats take back the House and Senate in 1996. You could perhaps say that about the 1952 Republican takeover where the Dems came back and won in the next election. In 1996, however, despite having a popular incumbant President who won re-election easily (abeit with less than a majority in a three way race) the Democrats didn't even make a challenge at retaking the House. Yes, there was a groundswell for Republicans. Get over it.

Larry A|3.24.06 @ 5:56PM|#

The problem is you can't come up with new ideas when a large portion of your party is completely dedicated to the status quo.

Amen.

For example, Democratic leaders have acknowledged their anti-gun position has bit the big one in the last half-dozen elections, two of the last four no-concealed-carry states are set to go shall-issue and therefore there will be 39 shall-issue or no-license concealed carry states, and no such state is having the least trouble because of it. Still, the "moderate" Democrat response is to "recast their message" to convince gun owners that they're on the same side, while the hard Democrat response is for big-city Democratic mayors to host workshops on banning handguns and semi-auto firearms.

|3.24.06 @ 9:20PM|#

joe-

Like John asked, if the only thing hurting the Dems in 1994 was lack of enthusiasm, why didn't they retake at least one chamber of Congress in 1996? Clinton won with a bigger percentage than in 1992, and IIRC they did pick up some seats, but why didn't they at least get a slim majority in one chamber? You'd think that they would have learned their lesson and gotten their people out in 1996.

Then again, if joe is right about 1994, there are two plausible explanations for 1996:

1) Some of the former Dems watched the GOP Congress in action for 2 years, and learned to stop worrying and love the GOP. No doubt there were a few such people, but I'm not convinced that it was big enough to offset the motivation to retake lost ground.

2) The Democrats, being Democrats, managed to fuck everything up and shoot themselves in the foot with one of those guns that they want to ban.

|3.24.06 @ 10:32PM|#

John,
As I mention above, the Dixiecrats finally settled into their proper home with the Republicans. Although the South has obvious reasons for not liking the Republican party, by the '90s it was just plain weird.

|3.24.06 @ 11:03PM|#

Like John asked, if the only thing hurting the Dems in 1994 was lack of enthusiasm, why didn't they retake at least one chamber of Congress in 1996?

Because the way things are set up, once someone is an incumbent, it's almost impossible to dislodge them. 1994 saw a whole lot of previously Democratic open seats filled by Republicans. Those new Republican representatives were then more or less settled.

The thing about the Contract With America is not only that it wasn't released until late in the game, but it was mostly vapid boilerplate and arcane proposals for rule changes. It had no more meat, really, than the stuff the Democrats are talking about now (except perhaps a couple of things that the Republicans never actually did, like term limits). It was a publicity stunt, pure and simple.

I know Pelosi gets buffeted from all sides -- Daily Kos hates her, the right hates her -- but two things to note: since she took over, she's held together her caucus almost as well as Gingrich did (she's forced the Democrats to basically vote as a bloc on most issues), and she's helped to stop the party from hemmoraghing seats. (The Democrats lost seats in Texas in 2004 because of DeLay's gerrymander, but outside of the Delay-rigged areas, they gained seats.) Basically she's a not-particularly-nice, not-particularly-charismatic person who forces her party to stick together -- that's kind of Gingrichian.

|3.25.06 @ 1:16AM|#

Hmmm, same acronym as the Communication Workers of America. Coincidence? Well, probably.

Can't you recognize a dark and evil conspiracy when it's staring you in the face?

|3.25.06 @ 9:19AM|#

Did people read this article in Slate about the contest between Dems and Reps to claim the mantle of No Ideas? Very funny. http://www.slate.com/id/2138388/

|3.25.06 @ 5:46PM|#

John, thoreau,

"If that is true, why didn't voting return to normal and the Democrats take back the House and Senate in 1996."

They did. The Democrats picked up seats in 1996, 98, and 2000, IIRC.

But "normal" was 50/50 nation, or maybe 50.5/49.5 nation. Remember, there was the tail end of the longterm "Southern Strategy" realignment going on as well. You're both assuming that the "normal" that politics returned to was a big Democratic lead, but in fact, Democratic majorities only held on through the 80s and into the early 90s because of incumbants who had been holding office since the days the Democrats did have a significant electoral majority.

|3.25.06 @ 6:22PM|#

So, what you're saying is that 1994 was the culmination of a trend rather than a reflection of Newt's genius. And low Democratic turnout is what accounted for the GOP gaining a significant majority in 1994 rather than a narrow majority.

Sounds plausible. I'm more willing to believe a theory predicated on bad decisions by Democrats rather than a theory predicated on brilliant strategies by Republicans.

|3.25.06 @ 9:35PM|#

It's an urban myth that there's a baby in the bath water.
... just sayin'.