Since others will bring this up, let me state my bias right up front: I am a pro-life Democrat. I do not think there is any way to find a coalition for meaningful change — any kind of real compromise at all — on abortion policies in this country without the involvement of pro-life liberals, old-school conservative Democrats, mainstream Catholics, Hispanics, African-American clergy and many others who do not feel at home in the Republican Party.
Now that I have that out of the way, I want to vent a bit about the whole angle the mainstream press is taking right now about the collapse of the Republicans in some parts of the Bible Belt and the Heartland in general. I refer, of course, to the trio of defeats on the latest special elections to the U.S. House of Representatives. Yes, I have written about this before.
The question of the day is this: What are the Republicans doing wrong?
Take, for example, the Washington Post A1 report by Jonathan Weisman and Paul Kane that ran with the headline, “After String of Losses, Republicans Face Crisis.”
House Republicans turned on themselves yesterday after a third straight loss of a GOP-held House seat in special elections this year left both parties contemplating widespread Democratic gains in November.
In huddles, closed-door meetings and hastily arranged conference calls, some Republicans demanded the head of their political chief, while others decried their leadership as out of touch with the political catastrophe they face.
GOP leaders sought yesterday to “re-brand” the party with a new slogan and renewed pledges of fiscal rectitude and limited government. But the slogan — “The Change You Deserve” — came under mocking fire, because it parallels Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama’s “Change We Can Believe In” motto and it mirrors the advertising slogan for the antidepressant Effexor.
Wonderful. The Onion couldn’t do a better job of covering this situation.
If you keep reading, you’ll learn all kinds of things about what the Republicans are saying about each other and the tactics they are attempting to stop the slide. It’s a real inside-baseball, inside-the-Beltway horse race report.
There are more wails from the GOP:
Even Republican strategists were downcast about their prospects for the fall.
“These races were not in New Jersey or New England, where Republican erosion has taken place over the last decade. They were in the heart of the Bible Belt, the social conservative core of our coalition,” Rep. Tom Davis (Va.) fretted in a 20-page memorandum given to House Republican leaders yesterday and provided to The Washington Post.
“Members and pundits, waiting for Democrats to fumble the ball so that soft Republicans and Independents will snap back to the GOP, fail to understand the deep seeded antipathy toward the President, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures and, in some areas, the underlying cultural differences that continue to brand our party.”
But there is something really interesting about this horse race — it seems that there is only one horse.
Very few people are asking: What are the Democrats — at least in these recent races — doing right?
However, the New York Times report at least mentions the winning candidate and devotes one or two words — a flicker of a hint — as to what went on down there in Mississippi.
The Republican defeat in a special Congressional contest in Mississippi sent waves of apprehension across an already troubled party Wednesday, with some senior Republicans urging Congressional candidates to distance themselves from President Bush to head off what could be heavy losses in the fall.
The victory by Travis Childers, a conservative Democrat elected in a once-steadfast Republican district on Tuesday, was the third defeat of a Republican in a special Congressional race this year. In addition to foreshadowing more losses for the party in November, the outcome appeared to call into question the belief that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois could be a heavy liability for his party’s down-ticket candidates in conservative regions.
And what, pray tell, is a “conservative Democrat” these days? What if these victories for the Democrats are, in some way, linked to the actual merits of the Democratic Party’s candidates in these races, their actual stands on key moral, political and cultural issues?
In other words, can Democrats continue to win races in these zip codes if they continue to run candidates whose beliefs — religion is going to figure into this — echo those of the voters in those regions? In other words, what happens if the Democrats run populists who are progressive on many issues and conservative on moral issues? What happens if the party platform, for example, at least suggested that compromise was possible on the moral and cultural issues? What if the “conscience clause” was restored on abortion?
Back in 2000, the platform said that Democrats stand “behind the right of every woman to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade.” However, it also said the “Democratic Party is a party of inclusion. We respect the individual conscience of each American on this difficult issue, and we welcome all our members to participate at every level of our party.”
But things changed. In the 2004 platform, the conscience clause was replaced with a statement that Democrats “stand firmly against Republican efforts to undermine” abortion rights.
Tell that to the Democrats who are winning these special elections.
We need information, please. Tell us more about the content of these races. Give us some facts.
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Comments (10) |
May 15, 2008, at 1:08 pm
I think that Republicans may have made a mistake by aligning themselves too closely with the religious right. I would imagine that the person who takes his religious beliefs seriously is more likely than the average person to see neither political party as the answer or the absolutely correct way of running government. If that’s true then he’s more likely to be a swing voter as long as neither candidate violates his morals. Maybe that’s why conservative Democrats have been able to make headway into Republican territory. But that’s just speculation on my part; it’d be interesting to see it covered.
May 15, 2008, at 1:41 pm
Good point. I know plenty of christians who agree with Democrats on most issues, but vote republican because abortion is such an important issue to them. I don’t know why MSM hasn’t picked up on this distinction more.
May 15, 2008, at 2:02 pm
The Democratic party has decided that winning is more important than a candidate’s stand on particular issues. So anti-abortion candidates are running and winning in areas such as this. The questions I would ask are: How will the changing makeup of Democrats in Congress be reflected in legislation? To what extent is that change going to be forshadowed by the 2008 party platform?
May 15, 2008, at 4:13 pm
Every story I’ve heard or read mentioned that the candidates were social conservatives. I do think it would be interesting to read some stories about efforts by Democrats to attract social consevative candidates—which they have done the last two election cycles even with the party platform—and what it means as a shift in the party.
I think there are very few people who really care about what’s in a party platform and I doubt many people—outside the Beltway and pundit class—really focus on it when it comes to voting, but it would be interesting to see if there is any energy behind a change in the platform.
May 15, 2008, at 5:37 pm
Michael writes:
Under ordinary circumstances, yea. But it’s perfectly possible for the other party or, more plausibly, a 527 to create an ad blitz on a particular plank and beat the party over the head with it. If the GOP seats that turned over were lost to socially conservative Democrats, this is a real potential problem for the Dems, recalling the damage the swiftboaters did to Kerry in 2004.
May 15, 2008, at 7:48 pm
I agree with Jerry (#4). If the Democrats run candidates whose beliefs (or at least stated positions) are at odds with the party platform, orthodoxy, blogosphere, and presidential candidates, what kind of tensions does that present for the party? Some issues can be fudged, but things like 2nd Amendment and abortion tend to have test votes where there is a bright line test.
Has anyone written about this? What about the tensions faced by the class of 2006? There must be some votes where the Blue Dogs felt at odds with their party.
May 16, 2008, at 1:01 pm
I try to vote with my conscience as close as to the biblical teaching. I can not find one which party that I am comfortable with
I am sure that I will not vote for the Democrat party because they promote immorality (homosexual and abortion), unaccountability for own actions (made laws to open an escape door for the law breakers/irresponsible person) and etc and etc
The most important thing is what I should do biblically as a ‘Born again’ Christian? Could I contribute money or support to an immoral or unbiblical organization?
Thanks to God that He gives us a freedom to choose. But great consequences we will face for each choice we choose, and we will be held accountable in this current world and in time before the LORD. All our hidden secrets will be laid bare before the LORD
May the LORD have mercy on this great nation. May the LORD keep protecting His children going through these difficult and immoral time. And May the LORD protect and bless His Church. Amen!
May 17, 2008, at 1:24 am
What are Democrats doing right?
As a whole, their focus is much more on the “least of these.” Approximately 70% to 80% of polled Americans support abortion. The number includes many Republicans. We can spend forever debating the abortion issue or move on to taking care of the economy and people that do not have decent jobs or health insurance. Republicans deregulated the banking industry and commodity/futures markets that has resulted in outrageous gas prices and the sub-prime housing disaster. The CEO walk away with millions while taxpayers are spending 30 billion to bail out Bear Sterns. How many more years do we want to make CEOs richer while we debate abortion.
Time to look at the big picture.
Matthew 25
44”They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45”He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46”Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
May 17, 2008, at 12:36 pm
The Democrat Party has had pro-(murder by)-abortion language in its platform since 1976 and the platform has supported government funding for murdering unborn children since 1984.
It is irrational or hypocritical to claim that one is a “pro-life Democrat”. That would be like a German in 1939 claiming he is a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party but opposed to Adolph Hitler. It’s like being in a gang of bank robbers and applying to be a member of the sheriff’s posse.
The 40+ million murders of unborn children in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade are a genocidal crime committed predominantly by judges, politicians and supporters of the Democrat Party, abortion doctors, providers and businesses, and traitorous members of the Republican Party. Pro-life groups, judges, and politicians need to go beyond merely overturning Roe v. Wade, and set up a Nuremberg-style trial to try, convict, and punish those people who have been chiefly responsible for such anti-American capital crimes against humanity.
If pro-life groups do not begin to advocate, support, and demand such trials for justice against pro-abortion leaders (including those in the Democrat Party), they obliterate their own claim to being opposed to abortion murders, and reduce their preference to that of which socks to put on in the morning. If abortion is wrong because it is murder, rather than the wrong color of socks, then a pro-life position must truly be a decision for justice.
May 18, 2008, at 8:58 pm
Julie says:
They’re focused on the unborn babies they’re destroying (which truly are “the least of these”)? I doubt it. And I was told in another thread that giving gays the Civil Right to marry was “right” regardless of popular opinion being against it. Doesn’t protecting the unborn fall into that same category of civil rights, even if 80% are against it? Guess not.
And far fewer than 70% support abortion-on-demand ALL the time with no restrictions; most do not support it as the primary means of birth control, and almost 95% do NOT support abortion in the last few minutes of a pregnancy - the “partial birth” abortion. So there is no absolute consensus. Plus, two pro-life Democrats (in MS and LA) have won elections in the past few weeks. Imagine that. Absolutism on the pro-abortion issue in that party may be fading away.
This is very poor economics, and flatly untrue. Try huge increases in the world demand for oil as a major reason, then you’ll sound more reasonable and less like someone who has memorized the Democrat’s talking points. High gas prices has nothing to do with Bush or the Republicans. Sorry.
Pelosi and the Democrats have run congress and blocked ALL of Bush’s proposals for two years. What have THEY done to lower the cost of gas?
Someone in the media should ask why the banks made risky loans to the very poor in the first place (hint: They were called racists for not loaning to them before.)
The Social Gospel is fine, but it’s only half the picture, just like focusing 100% on the moral issues is misguided.