Tell me if this isn’t pretty close to the truth. I wrote this back in May to comment on a post by the Detroit area bloggers Conservababes: Right From New Fallujah.
If you ask me (well, since I’m adding the comment I guess I wasn’t asked – but anyhow):
In 1994, the Republicans won back control of the House by having principles.
In 2006, the Republicans risk losing control of the House because someplace along the line they lost their principles.
And they reason why they may lose the House is that those voters who have principles and elected the GOP no longer have the faith in them to justify their vote. In my home state of Maryland, we could have the perfect storm:
Conservatives stay home because they’re disillusioned with the political process.
Democrats, who’ve already attempted to game the system with some poorly written early voting laws and other election reform, “turn out” in great numbers. Probably those numbers will be inflated by provisional ballots, but nonetheless are counted.
What happens then is that the GOP governor is defeated for re-election and the black GOP Senate candidate loses his bid, keeping the seat in Democrat hands.
On November 8, the Washington Post crows about these Maryland losses in a state the national GOP thought might be in play and plants the seed (spread throughout the MSM) for a Democrat rout in 2008.
Then the remaining Republicans, seeing what they assume is a public backlash against their policies, become even more moderate, thus disappointing their conservative base farther.
And the vicious cycle begins…because an uninformed electorate believes what they see on TV and dutifully reflects it on Election Day.
The immigration fight could be the last hurrah for the Reagan conservative movement if it’s not won.
Aside from the part about early voting (I’ll grant the results were relatively legit in Maryland) I think I hit the nail pretty much on the head.
If you’re interested in some of my other comments on other posts, I maintain and occasionally update a section called “My feedback” which is linked on the left column of monoblogue. I was reading it today as I added a comment I made on another local blog.
