election results
Topics: Elections
09 Nov 1994
From: "DG Ervan Darnell"
I cannot let a sea change like this election go without comment. Having
said that, I'm not sure I can add much to what is already pretty obvious.
The Republicans did not lose a single incumbent governorship, House seat, or
Senate seat. That combined with Clinton's popularity figures having been
the most reliable indicator before the election, makes the anti-Clinton
message unmistakable.
It is a definite trend in American politics that the mid-term election is
always bad for the party in the White House. The last numbers I saw showed
the Democrats losing 8 Senate seats and 51 House seats, despite an upswing
in the economy. For comparison, in Reagan's first mid-term election ('82),
in the middle of the recession, the Republicans lost 26 House seats and
gained 1 Senate seat. In his second mid-term election ('86), the
Republicans lost 5 House Seats and 8 Senate seats. Bush's mid-term election
saw the Republicans lose 7 House seats and one Senate seat.
Despite this, Clinton gave an anemic press conference (Paul Gigot described
him as looking like he had been hit be a stun grenade) in which he said, in
part, that the voters were frustrated that the Democrats had not delivered
what they promised. I think he has it backward. Voters saw the Democrats
try to deliver what they promised and got scared. I will admit to being
surprised on this because polls on particular issues generally show people
in favor of any government plan that comes down the pike. I also think the
Republicans who are crooning about a permanent realignment are kidding
themselves though. I see no momentum to actually roll-back the
interventionist government.
More good news is that the Republicans were by and large running on economic
issues (sometimes positively like the "Contract for America" and sometimes
negatively by bashing Clinton) and not moral issues. Obviously, a lot of
what they said was nonsense or pie-in-the-sky, but still the rhetoric was
refreshing for occasionally being in the right direction. Two candidates
which fought more traditional conservative campaigns based on moral issues,
Oliver North & Jeb Bush, both lost. There were other factors in both races
of course. But, the moral issue did not give them that much of a boost.
No Democrat was running on resusicating the Health Deform Plan. I take this
to be the best news of all. Once it was exposed as a socialist takeover,
even the normally very dense Medicare supporting type American was against
it. Health deform is dead for another two years at least. We should all
drink to another two years of being allowed to stay healthy :-) With any
luck, we can look forward to Bill Clinton and Bob Dole posturing against
each other and thus achieving total gridlock. Given the current
circumstances, that is the best that can be hoped for. I'm hard pressed to
think of a single thing Congress has done for the better. Gridlock for long
enough will allow the economy to grow out of its jail cell of regulation
with new technology (e.g. argue about ads on TV all day long, but keep your
hands off the internet!) then ship the regulated stuff overseas and escape
it that way.
There is plenty to be worried about too. The Republicans have a pathetic
record of delivering deregulation even when they promise it. We'll just
have to wait and see what happens this time. I'm reminded of one of the
Hutchison-Fisher debates. The interviewer asked Hutchison how she would
achieve her budget cuts, in particular what about social security?
Hutchison said "social security is not on the table." Doesn't sound like
the anti-government party to me.
No Republicrat candidate in any race has stood up for single civil liberty
of any sort. Instead, many of the Republicans won on crime as an issue,
promising the usual sort of snake oil based in large part on further
watering down of the Bill of Rights. The Democrats tend to settle for just
turning the crime issue into a pork barrel and/or racial quota goodie bag.
The Democrats have had a bad couple of years in this regard, everthing
ranging from the Waco fiasco (Freedom of religion and speech [no press
allowed] were totally trampeled and rights of the accused were warped almost
beyond recognition), to a plate full of TV regulations, to trying to restore
the extraordinarly un-"fairness doctrine", to warrantless searchs of housing
projects, to supporting the Clipper chip. Despite such a dismal record, I
think we can expect the Republicans to sink even lower and help in the
shredding of civil liberties.
Then for pure amusement, there was California's prop 187. Already today, a
judge has issued a restraining order against its implementation until it
properly winds it way through the courts. The order was not merely for the
school funding part, but for every piece of it. Meanwhile, the president of
Mexico blasted it as racist. While that may have been some people's
motivation, that was not the principle essence of the bill. If Mexico had
not had a screwed up corrupt socialist government for the last 75 odd years,
Mexicans wouldn't be bailing out to flee to the U.S. as illegal immigrants.
Don't blame that one on the U.S.! Even though immigrants' groups are really
upset about losing school funding, it's the best thing that ever happened to
them, having to leave the public schools. My radical prediction: if
illegals are allowed to start their own schools (which is unlikely), we'll
see other low income Californians pulling their kids of public schools to
send them to the private schools started for illegals! No wonder the NEA is
scared. They might have totally unregulated competition that they cannot do
anything to hobble.
For the record, I was against prop 187 and my record of voting for losing
candidates remains unblemished.
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