Saturday, November 08, 2014

Ideological triumph? Yeah, sure...

I see that Sinclair Davidson goes with the "Americans finally coming to their senses" interpretation of the Republican wins, as he quotes an over the top column by bow tied cultural warrior Roger Kimball with evident approval:
Over the past six years, the American people have watched as Obama swept nearly 20 per cent of the nation’s economy under the arm of the federal government in the name of “reforming” healthcare. Obamacare, which passed into law without a single Republican vote, is the most unpopular piece of legislation since Prohibition. In a moment of quiet candour, candidate Obama noted that, under his plan, the price of energy would “necessarily skyrocket”, while the coal industry would be regulated out of existence. How’s that working out? About as well as things on our southern border. The United States already spends more on education per pupil than any other country, but we get far worse results because “investing in education” for Democrats means shovelling money into the troughs of teachers’ unions, diminishing parental authority and forcing a politically correct, multicultural agenda on schools.

The truth is that Obama is merely the latest spokesman for the Democrats’ agenda of dependency, the big-government, socialistically inclined welfare establishment that, since the 1960s, has colluded with public sector unions to substitute tax-funded entitlements for individual initiative and personal responsibility. More and more people have come to understand that the “fundamental transformation” that Obama promised was not the path to Shangri-La, but a new road to serfdom. At issue is the relationship between the individual and the coercive power of the state, economic freedom and, ultimately, our national security.
Never mind the fact that wins by the other side during Presidencies on the way out are not unusual, or that several commentators noted that quite a few Republicans were giving out a more moderate position, and I can find no one who claims that it is any sort of emphatic win for the Tea Party wing. 

Oddly enough, more reasonable commentary from a Right wing perspective can sometimes be found at American Conservative, which Jason Soon links to sometimes.  This article, for example:  Obama is a Republican made many valid points, including one about the nuttiness of the Republicans carrying on in such an ideological sense about "Obamacare" when it was modelled on what was formerly a Republican idea.

I see that there is also a very good cautionary post up at the site about why the Republican win means exactly not what Professor Stagflation thinks it does:
Here are six reasons for caution:
  1. The president’s party usually loses seats in midterm elections.
  2. Obama’s approval, while low, is higher than Bush’s at the same point in his presidency.
  3. We’ve seen this movie before. Remember the “permanent majority” of 2004? How about the “thumping” of 2006? Then there was the “new majority” of 2008. Of course, that was followed by the “Tea Party wave” of 2010. Which didn’t stop Obama from becoming the first president since Eisenhower to win a majority of the vote for a second time in 2012.
  4. The midterm electorate skews older, whiter, and richer than in presidential years. These are Republican demographics, so Republicans tend to do better. The 2016 electorate, on the other hand, will probably look more like 2008 than 2010. Republicans probably won’t ever win many votes from blacks or single women, but they need to continue doing better among the young and Hispanics (as several candidates did last night).
  5. The standard explanation of the results is that the election was a referendum on Obama’s policies. That’s not true for the simple reason that most voters have only the foggiest notion of what Obama’s policies are. (Polls on these matters can be misleading because they often ask respondents to choose from a predetermined set of responses to a leading question, which encourages unrepresentative, off-the-cuff answers.) Rather than voting on the success or failure of specific programs, many voters rely on a vague sense that things are going well or badly for the country.
  6. The biggest factor in voters’ assessment of the direction of the country is the condition of the economy. Right now it’s pretty lousy, despite relatively favorable growth and employment trends. But if these trends continue over the next two years—and they’re far less dependent on Washington that either party likes to admit—they may start to pay off for ordinary people. Should that occur, many will discover that they liked Democrats more than they thought.

1 comment:

  1. Stagflation thought Obama spent too much except he didn't. Obama has reduced the deficit by the fastest amount since WW2.

    Why didn't we read about this?

    Probably because 1) HE didn't know this because his knowledge of fiscal policy is very poor as we saw from Swan's last budget
    2) It does against his ideology and idealogy always tops evidence!

    ReplyDelete