OOGEDY-BOOGEDY AND BIBBIDI, BOBBIDI, BOO
Salagadoola mechicka boola
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Put ‘em together and what have you got
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Salagadoola mechicka boola
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
It’ll do magic believe it or not
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
(Music: Mack David and Al Hoffman; Lyrics: Jerry Livingston
It is either a serious discussion on the influence of the Christian right in the Republican party or a nonsensical debate about whether morals informed by religious beliefs have a place in the public square.According to Kathleen Parker and Kevin Drum, there is actually a question about the latter.
As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.
Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.
I’m bathing in holy water as I type.
To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.
Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth — as long as we’re setting ourselves free — is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.
What does she mean “oogedy boogedy?” And I note that most commentators on this article missed her allusion to “armband religion.” Now let’s think a moment and ask ourselves, what group in history is famous for wearing armbands? The Boy Scouts? Maybe, but do you seriously believe Parker was alluding to the Boy Scouts in her little self-aggrandizing missive?
Parker was comparing the religious right with those other famous armband wearers, the Brown Shirts of Nazi fame. But she did it in such a cutesy way, we will forgive her, right? Boy, I bet Parker’s little smear elicited a snicker or two from her new found friends on the left - a crowd she seems to be playing to more and more lately.
But it is the use of the pejorative “oogedy boogedy” that has everyone up in arms on the right. Jonah Goldberg wonders what all the fuss is about:
My email box runneth over with nice attaboys and more than a few interesting criticisms regarding my post about Kathleen Parker. Keying off some of the criticisms, here’s one thing I want to know, as I sit here at the Whither Conservatism conference. What aspects of the Christian Right amount to oogedy-boogedyism? I take oogedy-boogedy to be a pejorative reference to absurd superstition and irrational nonsense. So where has the GOP embraced to its detriment oogedy-boogedyism? With the possible exception of some variants of creationism (which is hardly a major issue at the national level in the GOP, as much as some on the left and a few on the right try to make it one), I’m at a loss as to what Kathleen is referring to. Opposition to abortion? Opposition to gay marriage? Euthanasia? Support for prayer in school?
Goldberg makes the excellent observation that there all sorts of legitimate points to be made both in favor and against those positions. Indeed, I have found some secular arguments against gay marriage to be if not compelling, certainly reasonable and based on both the law and common sense. Hence, “oogedy boogedism” actually expresses a nebulous kind of fear of the religious right more than it identifies any specific proposals that smack of “armband religion” as so cleverly construed by Parker.
Kevin Drum disagrees:
There will always be plenty of votes for a culturally conservative party. That’s not the problem. The problem is the venomous, spittle-flecked, hardcore cultural conservatism that’s become the public face of the evangelical wing of the GOP. It’s the wing that doesn’t just support more stringent immigration laws, but that turns the issue into a hate fest against La Raza, losing 3 million Latino votes in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just a little skittish about gay marriage, but that turns homophobia into a virtual litmus test, losing 6 million young voters in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just religious, but that treats belief as a precondition to righteousness, losing 2 million secular voters in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just nostalgic for old traditions, but that fetishizes the heartland as the only real America, losing 7 million urban voters in the process. It’s the wing that goes into a legislative frenzy over Terry Schiavo but six months later can barely rouse itself into more than a yawn over the destruction of New Orleans.
What Drum doesn’t mention is the utter contempt liberals and Democrats had for the truth in defining the Republican positions on some of those issues. A “hatefest against Latinos?” Only if you’re a Democrat and want to smear your opponent by spreading that notion. Taking the Gilchrist or Tom Tancredo attitude and position on immigration as the mainstream conservative or GOP position is as ludicrous as the GOP trying to make Cindy Sheehan the poster girl for the Democrats on national security.
What Drum is either too much a partisan to say or just clueless about is that the Democrats successfully demonized Republicans on just about all of those issues he mentions above. He is alluding to a successful political strategy not the reality of where the movement or the party stands - with the exception of gay marriage. (Is he seriously saying that 7 million young voters abandoned the GOP because of that? Young voters have been trending left since 1992, long before gay marriage was even on the radar.)
Fetishizing the heartland as “the only real America” was a direct response to urban Democrats and liberals who have made trashing us out here in flyover country (a term invented by liberals) a cottage industry for authors, pundits, and idiot bloggers like Drum. Perhaps Drum forgets his liberal colleagues and their pointed smears of heartland voters after the 2004 election when calls for secession and sneering at voters in “Jesusland” was all the rage on the left. Fetishizing urban voters as smarter, more sophisticated, more worthy than those of us in the heartland might explain some of that pushback, wouldn’t you think - especially since a more liberal (not necessarily tolerant) attitude toward social issues is a litmus test in and of itself among urban elites.
Drum’s claims of “lost voters” as a result of the Christian right may be true in the aggregate but his specifics leave a lot to be desired. I too, have pointed out that the Republican party is now identified not as the party of fiscal conservatism (How could it be?) but as the party of anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage. Given the alternatives - an economy in ruins, unpopular wars, a despised president, corruption, and incompetence - it is perhaps understandable that the GOP saw its path to victory in turning out its evangelical base in huge numbers. As it turned out, that too, failed.
Now what? If Parker’s “oogedy boogedy” is an elitist’s exaggeration of what the religious right truly represents but if Goldberg is too dismissive of the public face of this movement - the Dobsons, the Ralph Reeds, even the Sarah Palins whose dogmatic approach to the political permutations of social issues turns off many urban, heartland, and in between voters - where can the GOP go to get its mojo back? (Apologies to Mother Jones and Jennifer Rubin.)
What the GOP needs is a little prestidigitation - some Bibbidi, Bobbidi, Boo to drive away the oogedy boogedies and allow the true nature of conservatism and Republican principles to dominate the national debate.
We aren’t going to do that with John Boehner as minority leader. Nor are we going to do it with the bulk of GOP Congressmen now who will no doubt be meekly acquiescing to Obama’s plans to nationalize health insurance, emasculate our defenses, seize control of our schools, and generally impose a liberal template on what still is a country that if it doesn’t lean center right can now be termed a “center-center” nation. More left leaning than they were 20 years ago, the electorate can hardly be termed “liberal” in any sense of the word. Obama won because people believed he would cut their taxes. When queried, the voters still want a strong defense and want a sane fiscal policy.
Those are conservative issues, my friends. The GOP’s mistake in trying to use social issues as a wedge rather than gathering under their tent the bulk of voters who would cast their ballot for a candidate who espoused Republican principles is what lost them the election.
The people may want some form of national health insurance - but they don’t want to break the bank doing it. They may want out of Iraq - but they don’t want our national defenses shredded. And the disconnect between the laundry list of social programs for the middle class offered by Obama and the taxes that would need to be raised to pay for them hasn’t sunk in yet with voters. When it does - when the trillion dollar deficits start to pile up - the Republicans don’t want to be standing too close to the Democrats lest they be hit with the rotten fruit that will be aimed at the left.
This entire argument among conservatives and Republicans comes down to tactics. We just went through an election that proved pretty conclusively that promoting social issues and making them the centerpiece of Republican orthodoxy is just too problematic - too open to dishonest liberal counterattacks that exaggerate and even lie about how pernicious and evil the Godbotherers truly are - oogedy boogedy in spades. The left successfully demonized the religious right and Republicans stupidly made them the poster children for the party. The millions of secular conservatives and religious moderates who had made up the backbone of the GOP fled in terror from the prospect of inquisitions and and pogroms - fostered by the left - and voted Democratic or stayed at home on election day.
Can the two wings of the party be integrated into a coherent whole? This is what will occupy conservatives and Republicans for the foreseeable future. The Kathleen Parkers of this world wants the religious right muzzled and beaten down. The evangelicals and the rest of the base want litmus tests in order to excommunicate those who disagree with them.
The schism is not as wide as it might appear. There is, after all, more that unites us than divides us. But it will take a towering personality or, God forbid, a shock like 9/11 to make the two sides realize it.
I too, have pointed out that the Republican party is now identified not as the party of fiscal conservatism (How could it be?) but as the party of anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage.
There’s the signpost pointing the way out of the wilderness. It’s a matter of emphasis.
You need all the instruments to create a symphony, and selected ones to carry the theme.
Comment by John Howard — 11/20/2008 @ 10:25 am
It’s a pretty wide chasm. People just trying to make a buck on the one hand and people who think Adam had pet names for his favorite dinosaurs on the other. People who worry about Al Qaeda, North Korea, Iran and Pakistan on the one hand, and people who worry that two men might get married on the other.
It’s not just a question of issues, but of motives, interests, culture, epistemology. The sleek hedge fund manager doth not lie down with the pompadoured preacher.
I’m glad to see the GOP civil war well and truly begun. But since I like you, Rick, I have some personal advice on surviving: if a guy named Pickett yells “charge,” pretend to twist your ankle.
Comment by michael reynolds — 11/20/2008 @ 11:09 am
The evangelicals erred by identifying too strongly with one political party, which enabled them to be cynically used during the political campaigns on one or two wedge issues. Because of this, the opposing party was able to cynically paint them as out-of-touch denizens of the lunatic fringe. The evangelicals should be out there showing how their beliefs affect their outlooks on all policies, and working with both parties as need be. “Religious” and “right” should not be automatically connected.
I disagree that “Obama won because people believed he would cut their taxes.” He won because, as you say, the Republicans were known more for what they were against rather than what they were for. Plus, the Republicans’ track record hurt them. The Republicans don’t need new ideas… they need the will to execute the principles that are the core of the party, like smaller government and fiscal responsibility. Attractive as those principles are, Obama won because the Republicans did not deliver on them.
So it’s a hard sell for conservative politicians to talk about principles. I hear your outrage, Rick, but I don’t hear that being echoed in many places on the right.
The conservatives are missing an opportunity with the economic problems- the country really needs to hear a plan for dealing with the crisis from them, as a counterpoint to what the Obama administration will come up with.
Comment by Postagoras — 11/20/2008 @ 11:18 am
Wow, Rick, not like you to blame your party’s problems on the opposition. . . at least not completely. Dem distortions responsible for the voters rejecting the GOP culture war platform? I think not. In an election about the economy and other weighty issues, the extreme fringe of the GOP was visible to the public at every turn. From “drill baby drill” to the bizarre call and response of the Palin - and some McCain - campaign rallies, most people on the right, left and center felt they were watching some crazed anger fetishism of an irrational and frightened group they didn’t know.
Both sides did their share of demonization, I can’t even repeat the slurs that flooded the virus emails and web pages of the blogosphere, but the GOP did a great job of self-destructing.
Comment by emgersh — 11/20/2008 @ 12:16 pm
I do believe that “the evangelicals and the rest of the base want litmus tests in order to excommunicate those who disagree with them.” That “litmus test” is code for Roe v. Wade. It is not referring to the Judeo-Christian ethic or illegal immigration or national defense or capitalism.
“Oogedy boogedism” is a big topic with wild eyed leftists. They tell tales of Sarah Palin and her congregation channeling God in a group cell phone trance reminiscent of snake handlers. They claim that Sarah Palin believes that man and dinosaurs existed simultaneously and that she does not believe in evolution. So, “oogedy boogedism” ranges from “intelligent design” to buying into the whole God “charade.” “Oogedy boogedism” is code for driving your particular beef with religion from the public square. That could be Huckabee, Romney or going back to rejecting a Catholic because of the “cult of Mary.” In truth, “oogedy boogedism” is an all inclusive term which says that you many practice religion in the privacy of your lives, but you may not speak it in politics.
Barry Goldwater famously trashed the religious right. Ronald Reagan won the presidency without membership in a Christian church or even attending church, but referenced God constantly. George Bush (43) is known to be a devout Christian. But unlike Clinton toting his 40 pound Bible for press-op visits to church, Bush (43) has kept his faith and worship at a very low key.
“Oogedy boogedism” is an attack on all people of religion. The fact that any on the right would use it is proof that they would join in the games of name-calling and deceit in order to gain power. Clinton took an “atonement tour” with Jesse Jackson as spiritual guide, Joe Leiberman had to explain Saturdays off, Obama had an amazing religious mentor, Jimmy Carter ran and served as an evangelical and they were all tolerated and supported.
The leftists need to be cornered and made to explain their concerns whenever they attack a person’s religion. In other words, the right needs to be more like John F. Kennedy when he went to West Virginia and defended his faith and showed the voters that the Pope was not running.
The Reverand Wright did not sink Obama. There is no reason that a Republican candidate should slink away from his or her religion either.
If the Republican Party has anything to clear up it is the abortion issue. Steve Forbes once campaigned with the statement that he opposed abortion as birth control and he wanted to make abortion as rare as possible. While that leaves the camel’s nose under abortion tent, it does neutralize the rabid pro-choice crowd. It allows them to be painted pro-abortion which puts them on the defensive. They need to explain what they mean when they use their bogus catchall “health of the mother” phrase.
Conservatism and the religious right did not get smacked for their beliefs. We lost because we didn’t stand up for our beliefs. We need more Rick Warren type questioning and candidates who have a can of retorts to “gottcha” questions by the MSM.
This is no time to poll around for a new set of core beliefs.
Comment by David — 11/20/2008 @ 12:22 pm
You end up at the right destination on this trip but take a couple of wrong turns.
First, fuggedabout what Drum and those contemptuous liberals think. They are the least of the GOP’s problems and merely a subset of its – and your — propensity for whining.
Second, the “oogedy boogedy” crowd includes some seriously demented people who are seriously responsible for the outcome on November 4. I know that neither you nor most other conservatives have the cojones to tell them to go form their own lunatic fringe party, but until they are dealt with they will continue to marginalize the GOP.
And as an aside, how can you continue to quote Jonah Goldberg? He makes Bill Kristol look brilliant.
Just asking.
Comment by shaun — 11/20/2008 @ 12:32 pm
Rick,
I think the end of the Cold War brought out the divisions in the GoP that led to the religious right taking hold of the party. During the Cold War, GOP heroes like Reagan could get away with paying lip service to culture war issues because those issues were subsumed by the battle against Communism. Communism was the 100 pound gorilla that aligned the religious, libertarian and other elements of the party. Once communism was defeated then the battle for the party really began and that battle is still going on. Candidates can no longer get social conservative street cred primarily from being anti-communist.
A party cannot govern based on culture-war issues, so I think if the religious right is setting the party’s agenda and priorities, then the GoP will be in the wilderness a long time. I don’t have any solutions, unfortunately.
Comment by Andy — 11/20/2008 @ 2:48 pm
Can somebody please tell me why the hell the common wisdom surrounding McCain’s lousy campaign and subsequent loss is that GOP bible-thumpers tainted his bid? If this really is the case, then the GOP should stop trying to run on social issues. Considering the fact that the Democrats have the schools, universities, press and unions, Republicans are going to lose every single time in all but the most staunchly conservative regions, and they certainly won’t be able to remain viable at the national level.
But this isn’t what really happened. McCain ran a lousy campaign and many Republican voters - myself included - voted for him only because the alternative was unacceptable. After the 2004 election, Congressional Republicans went off the rails and started spending money liken drunken sailors on shore leave (no offense to present and former members of the USN), and it alienated a lot of conservatives such as me. But people like Parker are shooting pretty wide of the mark when they claim Republicans lost due to their candidate’s lack of religious zealotry. They’ve been losing since 2006 because they tossed aside a core conservative principle - minimizing the size of government and its corresponding intrusion in people’s lives.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Ms. Parker. If this keeps up, I may have to resurrect the Canine Pundit.
Comment by Sirius — 11/20/2008 @ 3:21 pm
“The millions of secular conservatives and religious moderates who had made up the backbone of the GOP fled in terror from the prospect of inquisitions and and pogroms – fostered by the left – and voted Democratic or stayed at home on election day.”
Sure Rick. Either that, or they finally realized that their supposed party simply uses them for a guaranteed vote, then mocks and ignores them till the next election. It couldn’t possibly be the fault of republicans that the republicans stayed home in droves. Complete nonsense.
Comment by Chuck Tucson — 11/20/2008 @ 3:26 pm
Andy,
“Once communism was defeated…”
This is one of the biggest jokes ever played on the American people. America, aka Ronald Reagan, didn’t defeat communism. Communism failed on its own because it’s a stupid worthless system. It would have failed with or without the help of the United States. In fact, the US went out of its way to make communism seem so much worse because we knew it was failing, but needed a common enemy. An ‘evil’ to our ‘good.’
Comment by Chuck Tucson — 11/20/2008 @ 3:31 pm
While I agree that we are at the point where there is a separation between the religious right and the secular right, I see the “how” of how we got here a bit different, probably because if I had to be classified, I would be “both”. It was a de-emphasis on both the social and the economic/governmental halves of conservatism by the GOP that caused this.
The de-emphasis on the economic/governmental is already well-documented. The party distanced itself from the (soon-to-be-repealed) elimination of partial-birth abortion as soon as it was passed. It similarily distanced itself from opposition to gay “marriage”; indeed, most of the efforts were citizen-driven. When taken alone, the right side of those issues still ring with the majority; California adopted a 1-man/1-woman marriage amendment by the same large percentage they voted for Obama.
So, why did they vote for someone diametrically opposed to their cultural views for President, when there was a somewhat-less hostile option? The GOP lost credibility on not only the social issues, but also the economic/governmental ones. The voters decided that, if we’re going to have a huge socialist government, they may as well go with 76 years of experience in huge, socialist government.
It didn’t matter that the Republican candidate was a moderate who pandered to Hispanics; in fact, Obama won a historic percentage of both moderates and Hispanics. I honestly don’t believe it would have mattered if that candidate had instead decided to pander to cultural conservatives to the mutual exclusion of economic/governmental conservatives, or decided to pander to economic/governmental conservatives to the mutual exclusion of cultural conservatives; any micro-targeting was doomed to failure.
That sentiment also explains why Mike Huckabee, who can best be described as a Christian Socialist, became the darling of a significant portion of the religious “right”. They saw that the GOP wasn’t going to deliver on either half of conservatism, and decided to back somebody who at least espoused some of the social issues, even if it meant huge government that scorned capitalism.
It is going to take somebody (more properly, several “somebodys”) who can credibly espouse both the cultural and the economic/governmental conservative positions to put the coalitions that gave us Reagan and the 104th Congress back together.
Comment by steveegg — 11/20/2008 @ 5:05 pm
This “yellow dog” Democrat has fallen in love with Kathleen. I am thankful that all you “wingers” will not give her position a thought but will attack and defame her. I am looking forward to seeing Sarah Palin as your presidential candidate for at least twelve years and perhaps sixteen.
Comment by Carlyle Perry — 11/20/2008 @ 5:40 pm
David said:
Conservatism and the religious right did not get smacked for their beliefs. We lost because we didn’t stand up for our beliefs. We need more Rick Warren type questioning and candidates who have a can of retorts to “gottcha” questions by the MSM.
This is no time to poll around for a new set of core beliefs.”
I agree with this, the party needs to stand up and speak up for what they believe in. Otherwise we will continue to face a more liberal agenda.
Comment by Mel — 11/20/2008 @ 7:33 pm
I am not a huge fan of the religious right. I don’t always understand their worries and fears. I’ve been turned off from it from awhile. Maybe it was when a couple Christians I know told me the world was ending in 2011. Or maybe it was when a couple told me Obama is a Muslim. It seems like I have the bad luck of meeting all the nutcases (both right and left).
But whenever I feel like criticizing them, I just remember we should all be grateful to be able to exercise religious freedom without being thrown into a prison cell or worse for being open about our beliefs. I don’t think the left understands or appreciates just how important that right is. They are too busy worshipping at the altar of Global Warming.
I don’t think the GOP should cut off the religious right but I also hope that our future campaigns won’t be entirely centered on social issues. Our biggest task is not social issues but proving once again that free markets and solid conservatism will help keep our nation strong.
Comment by Shelby — 11/20/2008 @ 9:12 pm
The introspection is good but wholly unnecessary. The next two years of Democratic govenance will decide whether the Republicans rebound any time soon. Obama voters may not have known the Dems own Congress but they’ll know soon enough. There’s a tsunami at our doorstep and nobody knows what to do. If McCain had won he’d have been in the same boat. I don’t think the public understands the implications of a 20% decline in Xmas season sales and the waves of layoffs that will surely follow. Only the most efficient retailers will survive and the malls will look, if sales play out as in October, like inner city shopping districts - lots of empty storefronts. You can’t make up for a bad Xmas in March (if you’re a retailer).
A large part of my pessimism is based on the long run the economy has enjoyed. Prior to 1990 the rule of thumb was that an economy was in recession when two quarters of negative growth occured back to back. The 1991 and 2001 recessions had, I believe, just a single quarter of negative growth (and I think that was only slightly negative) between them. So I think this is a triple recession - the two we missed plus the current. We thought we were fighting recession when we were in fact just tamping it down to arise another day. Bush will be blamed for quite awhile……well, the media will blame him forever……but by 2010 it will no longer wash with the people.
Long term I’m optimistic. The private sector swamp hasn’t been drained in a long time (the public sector swamp is still awaiting it’s first draining). We’ll come out of this leaner, stronger, and with a Republican government.
Comment by Bel Air — 11/20/2008 @ 10:22 pm
The ‘litmus test’ of the right is ‘PC’ on the left. Both just tools to beat the living daylight out of intra-party rivals. However, the ‘terror’ of both now seems pretty much diminished.
Comment by funny man — 11/21/2008 @ 12:33 am
“Parker was comparing the religious right with those other famous armband wearers, the Brown Shirts of Nazi fame. But she did it in such a cutesy way, we will forgive her, right? Boy, I bet Parker’s little smear elicited a snicker or two from her new found friends on the left – a crowd she seems to be playing to more and more lately.
But it is the use of the pejorative “oogedy boogedy” that has everyone up in arms on the right. Jonah Goldberg wonders what all the fuss is about:”
Utterly brilliant. You decry someone making veiled references to Nazis and then you follow up with a quote from Jonah Goldberg, author of the book with the smiley face Hitler on the front cover.
You did this deliberately didn’t you?
“And during the last decade (and especially the last two presidential elections) as Karl Rove shamelessly – and successfully – used wedge issues like gay marriage to maximize the turnout among the evangelical community, hideous figures like Hagee and Parsley gained influence because of the size of their following.” Rick Moran
“The power of the religious right in party affairs has never been so great and it may take something of a civil war between the evangelicals and secular conservatives to hash this out. So be it.” Rick Moran
“To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.” Kathleen Parker
Honestly, these three quotes are not that different. Parker is obviously addressing the same group of nutjobs that you have a problem with, rather than Christians as a whole.
Yes, but the idea that the religious right is this huge bogeyman that Parker and the left are pushing is ludicrous. My beef is with the emphasis placed on social issues not who is supporting those issues (mostly).
And it has been a well established scholarly arguement for a generation that liberalism and fascism have much in common - perhaps more than conservatism and fascism but I wouldn’t want to live off the difference. The real point Goldberg was making in his book was the left’s unacknowledged support for totalitarian-like policies. The right has been kicking these kooks out of respectable society for 50 years. The left has a seat at the table for them.
ed.
Comment by Drongo — 11/21/2008 @ 8:46 am
funny woman has said:
The conductor is in the pulpit preaching. He is nobodies gorilla! Republicans need to act more like Democrats and The Democrats need to act more like Republicans. mlacy3
Comment by mlcy3 — 11/21/2008 @ 11:22 am
It’s SOP for the party whose POTUS candiadte wins to proclaim that the other party is done-for. The Dems were finished in ‘04, but here they are, back again. I think maybe the GOP still has a future, Jesus-Landers or not.
Comment by Doug Purdie — 11/21/2008 @ 12:36 pm
The practice of being a conservative is not a popularity contest. Sadly, getting elected and holding a politically conservative-governing majority is. The dichotomy is that to be conservative is to not believe in the “farm team” or the “deep bench”, but to just practice the basic priciples which includes disdain and refrain from being too involved with government and excess governing.
The former democrats that are now socialists believe in using government as a tool to deliver all aspects of gov’t control unto the private citizen. (Who’s talking about converting whom here?) Conservatives have understood and the proof is historically obvious that government run enterprises are largely destructive to a moral society and fail to deliver any quality of service or cost effectiveness. Gov’t run services tend to destroy liberty every time they’re enacted.
Comment by P. Aaron — 11/21/2008 @ 10:27 pm
You seriously suggesting they weren’t doing that before the 2004 election? Here are the inflation-adjusted increases in total federal spending, per year, starting with fiscal 2001: 1.25%, 5.97%, 4.61%, 3.16%, 3.99%, 3.89%, 0.62%.
The 1.25% increase for fiscal 2001 (ending Sept. 30, 2001), is the last Clinton budget. The next three numbers are for the three fiscal years before the 2004 election, and the 3.99% increase is for the fiscal 2005 budget, which Congress passed before the 2004 election. The last two percentage increases, representing the budgets passed by Congress after the 2004 election, don’t suggest that Congressional Republicans suddenly went off the rails. (Also, Congressional Republican bear only partial responsibility for the run up in spending during the Bush years; Bush requested the spending and the Congressional Republicans agreed.)
Comment by Kenneth Almquist — 11/22/2008 @ 5:23 am
Can you point out what social issues came up in this election? Abortion? Aside from a single speech by Palin and a desire on the part of liberals and the media to paint her as hoping to imprison all women who have an abortion (she’s never even tried to raise the issue as governor), abortion played no role in the right’s electoral strategy this year - against the most pro-abortion candidate ever to run! Did gay marriage really play more of a role than it did in 2004 when it helped bring out voters? Not outside of CA. Did embryonic stem cell research play a role? Not with John McCain, who is in support of it. Immigration? Not with a candidate who disagrees with much of his party on the issue - no one dared bring it up.
4% of voters said moral issues was the most important factor driving their vote this year. I think it was 20-something% in 2004. That means that millions of oogedy-boogedys are more pragmatic than they are given credit for and realized the economy was the most important issue.
This election tells us absolutely nothing one way or the other about the role of social issues in the electorate today.
Comment by Dan — 11/22/2008 @ 6:48 pm
[...] Once again, I’ll turn to Rick Moran who has a lengthy discussion of Kathleen Parker’s piece that has conservative blogs and talk [...]
Pingback by OOGEDY-BOOGEDY! « — 11/22/2008 @ 7:32 pm
Most comments ignore the fact that the GOP’s greatest strenth lies in the so called bible belt. Elsewhere its appeal is much weaker. If I were a party leader, I’d try to dispassionately investigate why this is the case and adjust the message accordingly. A good place to start the investigation would a study of the demographics of the party’s 2008 convention.
Comment by honestman — 12/6/2008 @ 10:27 am
I did not need either the liberals or slanted media to be appalled by MY GOP twice in recent years. First live on C-SPAN, invoking Scripture as an excuse to meddle in the private agony of Terri Schiavo’s family. Then Katrina, when I was deployed to Louisiana with the Red Cross, hearing from Fox News’s Shepard Smith that when Michael Brown received an S.O.S. from New Orleans FEMA that people were starving, “Heckuva Job” Brownie replied that he was in a DC restaurant and was starving too because his waiter was taking so long.
For the first time ever, this year I registered as an Independent. And I voted for Obama.
Comment by Mrs. T — 12/7/2008 @ 3:51 am