North Looking South
By John Barham, Nov 17, 2006


Why the Republicans lost the November 7 election

When I was a youngster growing up in Missouri, my father explained to me in no uncertain terms that individuals who exalt and parade their own religiosity are usually charlatans and opportunists hoping to confuse the innocent for their own questionable ends. After a lifetime of observing politicians and public figures, I am convinced that my father’s view was completely accurate.

Following six years of God-talk and the obscuring of legitimate issues with scare tactics about gun ownership, abortion, stem-cell research, same-sex marriage and terrorism, Middle America showed on November 7 that it had awakened to the realization that it had been hoodwinked by the Karl Roves and the Grover Norquists of the Bush administration, who had brazenly proclaimed that “politics is war by other means.” To many, it was clear that the recent years of Republican ascendancy were unique in the annals of the American republic for patently deceitful deeds that had badly eroded traditional American values and, perhaps, even exceeded the duplicity of Richard Nixon.

Not only were Americans lied to about the necessity of a bloody and senseless war in the Middle East and presented with sham rationalizations on how the secular Bathist regime of Saddam was joined with Islamic terrorism, but sweetheart deals were also the order of the day for Kellogg, Brown & Root and other corporate entities that would reap tremendous profits from the raging violence in Iraq. And, as hostilities and expenditures escalated, the administration and Congress displayed their profligacy and incompetence with tax breaks for the mega-rich. 

Formerly, it was Republicans who had made “liberal” a dirty word to be associated with so-called tax-and-spend Democrats, but Middle America came to the realization that someone would eventually have to pay for the borrow-and-spend habits of George W. Bush and the Republican Congress. Paradoxically, it was Republicans who embraced big spending and big government—much to the advantage of their corporate backers, but to the disadvantage of Middle America.

Touting conservative values but practicing spendthrift economics, the president and Congress ran the deficit to astronomical heights and allowed China to emerge as a major creditor of the United States. At the same time, Bush’s neoconservative Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, managed to set records for alienating a majority of the earth’s population with his abrasive style and hawkish views. In post-election finger pointing, leading neocon “thinkers” like Francis Fukayama continued to talk up their ideology, while faulting the execution of their designs on Iraq to bungling in the Departments of State and Defense. However, the neocons had virtually nothing to say about how the Patriot Act, Guantanamo and overt hostility toward the Geneva Conventions contributed to the erosion of constitutionally guaranteed rights and liberties.

If disenchantment with the war in Iraq was a factor in Democratic majorities in the Senate and House, scandals revolving around Tom Delay, “Duke” Cunningham, Jack Abramoff and Mark Foley succeeded in opening the door wide for the Democrats. Television commentator Lou Dobbs spoke for many when he said that now “we have the best government that money can buy.” Thus, moderates, independents and middle-class voters sent a loud and clear message that congressional scandals did not play well in Peoria, and, in exit polls, independents indicated that they favored Democratic candidates by a margin of 59 to 37 percent.

It was unmistakable, too, that voters rejected the doctrinaire stands of the current Republican ideology on social issues. In South Dakota, for example, a Republican-engineered prohibition on abortions was rejected, while in Arizona voters turned back an effort to institute a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. In Missouri, incumbent Republican senator Jim Talent took a hard-right stand against stem-cell research and lost his seat to Democratic state auditor Claire McCaskill.

Exit polls also showed that substantial numbers of those who cast their ballots were concerned about environmental issues. Bush administration efforts to open up more and more of the public lands to the “slash and burn,” quick-profiteering tactics of the administration’s corporate backers did not meet with the approval of the political center, which came to understand that the “flat-earthers” who dominated environmental policy and paid no heed to growing evidence of global warming had no business managing America’s natural legacy. 

Much was made by the big-oil-supported Bush administration of the potential of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to serve as a panacea for the nation’s energy predicament. However, informed voters recognized that the oil that would be available from ANWR would represent a mere trickle in comparison to the millions of barrels consumed daily by a nation with an insatiable thirst for petroleum. Many voters wondered why, after six years in office, the Republican administration had nothing to show in terms of a feasible energy policy. 

When running for the governorship of Texas in the 1990s, George W. strongly courted Hispanics, who now are the largest minority group in the United States. In his successful bid for re-election to the presidency in 2004, the Bush–Cheney ticket garnered 40 percent of the Hispanic vote. But 2006 was drastically different: 73 percent of the 17 million Hispanic votes cast on November 7 went to Democratic candidates, clearly a reaction to the administration’s failure to produce a workable solution to the immigration crisis and to Republican support in Congress for fencing off the southern US border. Gains over the last 10 years in attracting Latinos to the Republican standard were lost, and Republicans were once again cast as an anti-immigrant, anti-minority party.

Indeed, the list of Republican failures is massive, and this recitation could conceivably be expanded into a dissertation of many pages. One could argue whether or not the Bush–Cheney years will go head-to-head with the scandal-plagued Grant and Harding administrations in vying for the bottom-feeder position in future historians’ presidential ratings. Be that is it may, what was most apparent on November 7 was that voters wanted desperately to pull government back to the center. The message was unmistakable: No longer should arrogance and strident partisanship prevail over legitimate efforts to deal with 21st-century issues.

Now the ball is in the Democrats’ court. The Democrats must remember that, in the final analysis, they did not so much win the election as the Republicans lost it. An often fractious party must demonstrate that it has the ability to come together and manage government in a fashion to deal effectively with the valid concerns of the electorate. Under no circumstances will a do-nothing Congress be acceptable.

John Barham, after a career as a professor and administrator in colleges and universities, is now a full-time resident of San Miguel de Allende. He lectures frequently on Mexican history with Elderhostel in Mexico and can be reached at barhamjw@yahoo.com

(Opinions expressed in Atencion are the responsibility of the authors.).