Until the voters prove me wrong at the polls, I’m optimistic about our chances on Tuesday – not just locally but statewide and nationally too. But yesterday I read a pundit who declared that the GOP is giving up on retaining the U.S. Senate seats in Pennsylvania (Santorum) and Ohio (DeWine) to concentrate on other states where candidates once thought reasonably safe were in trouble. And this was from a nominally conservative author.
I lived in Ohio the last time Senator DeWine was on the ballot in 2000. His reelection that year was considered such a lock that I voted for the Libertarian candidate to try and keep that party on the ballot. Six years later, a combination of a President made unpopular by a constantly carping mainstream media and a scandal called “Coingate” (dug up by my hometown paper) that has tarred the Ohio GOP is resulting in DeWine trailing a liberal Congressman named Sherrod Brown in the polls. Tuesday could well mark the beginning of the end of Mike DeWine’s Senate career and place an Ohio Democrat in the U.S. Senate for the first time since 1998. Or will it? No matter what is said and written about any race, the end result isn’t known until the final ballots are counted. I’ve seen polling margins of as much as 17 points disappear in the final 10 days of a campaign.
But the DeWine situation continues a disagreement I’ve had with the Ohio GOP and to a lesser extent the Maryland state party. It seems to me they listen too much to the so-called “conventional wisdom” and pay too little attention to the actual voters. Mike DeWine is only thrown out of the Senate if the state and national GOP sends the message they’ve given up on him and the voters respond to it.
There were polls in the Maryland media this week showing that the GOP candidates for Attorney General (Scott Rolle) and Comptroller (Anne McCarthy) both trail their Democrat opponents by double-digit margins. But that can all be erased if people who support their campaigns get out to the polls with 100% efficiency. Besides, there’s a pretty good chance that the poll may have been slanted or flawed (consider the source) by its base of responders and the timing of it. After all, how much media in this state worries about what the Eastern Shore thinks?
To me each Election Day I work a poll at is like a Super Bowl – a culmination of a long campaign season. In the 2000 election campaign I was out doing nominating petitions in the dead of an Ohio winter for a State House candidate because the filing deadline was early January for the March primary. (I actually did my personal nominating petition for the county’s central committee in the summer of 1999 for a March 2000 election.) That year turned out to be a full-year process that almost literally started the day after the 1999 municipal elections concluded, so really there wasn’t much of a break between the summer of 1999 and Election Day of 2000.
But I don’t give up on a candidate nor do I give up on races. If we do happen to lose the elections this year, it will hopefully teach us lessons on how we can both educate and motivate the electorate. Unlike the Democrats, who whined after the last three election cycles that “they didn’t get their message out” while desperately trying to obfuscate what they REALLY stood for (bigger, more intrusive government), most of the disappointment with the Republicans is that they have strayed away from their principles. It’s almost a case of trying to out-liberal the Democrats and as the country gets more conservative they’re chasing an ever-shrinking pie of left-wing voters. And part of this is because they know that right-wingers really don’t have a place to go aside from staying home on Election Day.
But rather than throw my hands up in disgust and give up on these politicians, they’re still getting my vote as they should yours. It’s purely logical to think that, if someone feels the same way about 80% of the issues as you do, it’s going to be a lot easier to debate with them about the last 20% of the way and press to get that little extra than it is to start over with a person who only believes in 20% of what you do but talks a good game. Put another way, in 1994 the GOP gained control of Capitol Hill based on the principles encoded in the “Contract With America.” It’s far less likely that if the Democrats regain the majority in Congress (or more locally, take back the governor’s seat) that principles and issues Americans endorsed in 1994 and still believe in today will be advanced.
People may argue that, “well, the Democrats will only be in power for one term and then the GOP will learn its lesson and return in 2008/2010.” I’m sure that the Republicans felt that way after the 1954 Congressional elections as well, figuring a 1956 return was inevitable. But it took the GOP 40 long years to get Congress back and a lot of what conservatives target as “big government programs” were enacted during that four decade period. At 42 years of age, I personally don’t want to grow old waiting for another Congress to advance the principles of conservatism, particularly in the judiciary where we’re just one vacancy away from placing the Supreme Court back into truly Constitutional hands.
If it does come to pass that the Democrats seize back Congress (unfortunately we can’t ask the late Peter Jennings if that event would qualify as a “national temper tantrum” too) and the O’Malley/Cardin team of expansive and intrusive government takes over control of our state, conservatives who stayed home and didn’t vote will certainly be kicking themselves. Worse, it will become a feeding frenzy for the “drive-by media” as the “blue tsunami” angle will certainly be played up. The answer for some elected Republicans, unfortunately, will be to go even more moderate in the hopes of playing to where they percieve the electorate to be and the principles of conservatism will be set back even further.
You know, sometimes I wish the Democrats who get their panties in a bunch about the so-called “domestic spying” program and “eroding civil liberties” would sit down and think (yes I know this can be tough for them at times) about things like private property rights, Massachusetts-style health insurance laws, business licensing, and unfunded mandates – a million and one government regulations and restrictions that place more curbs on our personal freedom than a measure enacted in a time of war and designed to affect only a small portion of Americans who wish to damage our nation by encouraging foes from without. With as much talk as liberals have about wanting to be free from religion in schools and public places, they should be the first to support our war against the Islamofascists since I doubt they have the desire to be converted to Islam at the point of a gun either. Our enemies have no problem with dying for their cause if they take a few “infidels” with them, and they’re more than willing to sacrifice generations until they win their battle to subdue the West and make America their own caliphate.
Twice as a high schooler, I wrote and delivered a prizewinning presentation for the VFW Voice of Democracy contest. One of them had the subject of “My Commitment To My Country” and while I’ve long since misplaced the speech I wrote I’ve maintained the commitment.
A freedom fighter can be described as someone who’s brave and dedicated enough to protect our country, even at the cost of his or her life, in our armed forces. I declined to do that, as I had the fortune of going through draft age in a period where there was none, the 1980’s. But I prefer to think that I do my best freedom fighting and serve out my commitment with the words I write. Aside from that talent, I’m an ordinary citizen who works, pays his taxes, volunteers here and there, and tries to be a net contributor in life rather than a net taker. And I think most Americans are like me in that respect.
So while the state and national Republicans might not like the chances of some candidates, it’s up to the voters to decide. And if they believe as I do that the government that governs best governs least then they’ll touch the screen or punch their ballot for Republican candidates. Then they and I will work on achieving that last 20% of agreement rather than attempting to climb that mountain of an 80% disagreement.
I can only imagine how much time you waste in your life writing this stuff that no one reads.
Hmmmm…considering my readership has gone on a continuing upward trend in the almost one year I’ve done monoblogue, I think I’d have to disagree – besides, you read it didn’t you?
Something tells me you disgree with my political assessments.