Of all of the races yesterday, the most interesting for me was the Missouri Senate race. Senator Claire McCaskill was one of the least popular members of the Senate and a virtual guarantee for defeat until Rep. Todd Akin delivered victory from the jaws of defeat. Akin’s infamous rape remarks made him completely toxic to the entire nation and the GOP leadership quickly called for his withdrawal from the race. Akin treated the suggestion as absurd and allowed two deadlines to pass that would have allowed his party to repair the damage that he caused. At one time, politicians would put the interests of their party and their country before their own. However, we live in a different time and Akin is the face of the times: egotistical, selfish, and extremist. Linda MacMahon in Connecticut cut the same intensely egotistical image: spending $100 million of her own money in two unsuccessful efforts to make herself a Senator despite a fairly toxic personality and image associated with professional wrestling. Despite the sound defeat in the last election, MacMahon spent even more of her own money as the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment to secure a second defeat. The question for the GOP is whether the disaster this election will cause anyone in the party to consider the eradication of moderates in their party and the loss of what we once called “Rockefeller Republicans.”
In the end, Akin appears to have been unable to even break 40 percent of the vote.
Had Akin withdrawn, the GOP would have likely secured the seat in Missouri. Not only Akin but the entire Tea Party worked last night to the great benefit for the Democrats — alienating moderate voters and securing wins across the country.
Akin will be left to history as a sad clownish figure who refused to accept the obvious reality that his own comments and extremist views destroyed any chance for election. MacMahon will fill another footnote on the amount of money someone is willing to spend in pursuit of egotism. Notably, MacMahon never appeared to have any particular vision or idea or cause — she just wanted to be a Senator and thought she had the money to guarantee it like some choreographed WWF bout. They are not the only such figures in this election.
The question is how we end up with such caricatured candidates in national elections and the overall low quality of politicians in this country. I have long blamed the monopoly of the two major parties on our politics. I still hold that view. However, Akin also represents a sad cultural reality today. It is not just the loss of moderation in politics but a loss of a sense of personal integrity and responsibility. Akin immediately blamed others and refused to stand aside for the benefit of his state and party. He is for me the face of what is wrong with our politics: an anti-intellectual extremist who ultimately shows little sense of duty or calling beyond himself.
Source: USA Today
Elaine:
Obama only won by a couple of million votes. that is around 2% of the voters who turned out this election. I wouldnt say it was a barn burner.
Also if you look at a county by county map of the voting you will see most states, county by county, went for Romney. And this is the way it was in the last election and in the Bush v. Gore election.
Democrats win in the big cities, that is pretty much it.
The only thing conservatives need to do is to get rid of the Romneys and Aikens in our party and start running people like Gary Johnson of New Mexico. Libertarian leaning republicans. I am pretty sure we would attract conservative democrats and women and minorities. I think we also need to tell the evangelicals that abortion cannot be an issue any more. If they dont like it, fight it by changing people’s minds and leave it out of politics.
Although with that being said, I would vote for a democrat who was a free market proponent. But then that would be a libertarian.
BTW and FWIW, in 2010 Scott Brown(R) defeated Martha Coakley(D) in the special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s vacant Senate Seat. If Coakley had won, Elizabeth Warren would not be a Senator-Elect today.
I think Coakley was a flawed and selfish candidate; based upon her own statements. Whatever “pain” progressives may have endured by having a dummy like Brown in office, I think it was worth it to have Warren instead of Coakley for the next six years, and Warren will probably be there as long as she wants to be.
A person following the “lesser of two evils” strategy would have elected Coakley in 2010, and would have been forced to vote for the incumbent Coakley again in 2012. That is the flaw in the “lesser of two evils” strategy; it leaves no room for improvement and provides no incentive for improvement.
Blousie, you’re right, there was an initial attempt to get Aiken t step aside, but over time, when he didn’t, more was called for to strongly delineate the issues at stake. It wasn’t forthcoming, and eventually it seemed like the repubs just tried to finesse the matter and hope it would go away
Bron,
Maybe Romney lost because so many Americans finally came to know and understand the Romney that we here in Massachusetts have known for years. Why do you suppose Romney lost to Obama by more than 20% of the votes cast (60,8% to 37.6%) in the state where he has his main residence and once served as governor?
Bron’s question regarding Aiken and Mourdock comments is a thought provoking query. Since the Republican Party publicly repudiated Aiken’s remarks strenuously, I tend to think that those who used his remarks as justification for an Obama vote were just looking for an acceptable excuse.
But Mourdock is another story entirely. He was a surefire win from the getgo and after defeating longtime senator Dick Lugar in the May primary, he was seen as the GOP’s future grace on its road to retake the Senate. In Mourdock’s own county Romney won by a good margin but Mourdock lost. Joe Donnelly, his opponent, is the first democrat in more than a decade to win a statewide race in Indiana.
If Donnelly performs well and takes good care of his constituents he might be reelected in 6 years which would make the damage Mourdock did to the GOP permanent.
However, I must agree with SwM in the point she made regarding the impact of Aiken and Mourdock’s comments on young voters. The damage to the GOP there is also permanent.
Aiken threw away a certain win over McCaskill, Mourdock threw away a certain win over Donnelly which makes Warren’s not so easy win over Brown all that more important. King’s win of Snowe’s seat in Maine was expected but the wide margin he enjoyed was not. As an Independent his constituents expect him to caucus with the Democrats. His Republican opponent was a pisspoor campaigner.
All in all the GOP took a big hit and in the case of Aiken and Mourdock, permanent damage to the state and national arm of the party was done.
“In a tortured way it’s kind of like the legal ‘respondeat superior’.”
Interesting. I’m not so sure that equating respondeat superior to guilt by association is that tortured though. Politically speaking it’s not a bad analogy at all.
Bron, I don’t have an idea of the numbers either, though perhaps some post hoc analysis will tell us. But I too believe that Aiken and Mourdock clown show was big for (against) Romney, mainly because he was not out front, nor his surrogates, refuting the message. Not that one would expect such refutation, even from the serial flip flopper, basically hemmed in by the neanderthal repubs,on women’s rights issues. He even made an ad for Mourdock I believe. That’s a mighty big vacuum of anti-woman attack left unrefuted.
In a tortured way it’s kind of like the legal ‘respondeat superior’. Romney just left these noxious attacks on women’s rights just hanging out there. Vote meet vacuum.
Republican Reckoning Begins After Revealing Defeat
By Jon Ward
Posted: 11/07/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/republican-reckoning-defeat_n_2090510.html
Excerpt:
BOSTON -– Republican Party leaders on Wednesday began picking up the pieces of their movement, trying to figure how to put them back together.
The GOP was blindsided Tuesday, but also revealed. The Democrats’ ground organization was beyond anything they’d imagined, pulling in new voters with stunning effectiveness. It exposed a major weakness in the Republican approach to winning elections, practically and intellectually.
“I don’t think anyone on our side understood or comprehended how good their turnout was going to be,” said Henry Barbour, a Republican committee man from Mississippi. “The Democrats do voter registration like a factory, like a business, and Republicans tend to leave it to the blue hairs.”
But President Barack Obama’s triumphant get-out-the-vote program also pulled back the curtain on the GOP’s looming demographic demise. The exposure was so severe that there will be few inside the party who can deny the need to work toward immigration reform, as well the need to make a broader effort to communicate to parts of the electorate that the party has not tried to in the past.
There was a quick move to embrace the need for change, from the ranks of the party’s next generation of elected leaders, as well as from its online flame-throwers.
“The conservative movement should have particular appeal to people in minority and immigrant communities who are trying to make it, and Republicans need to work harder than ever to communicate our beliefs to them,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla).
Erick Erickson, founder of RedState.com, a conservative blog, said Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s approach to Hispanic voters was “atrocious.”
“Frankly, the fastest-growing demographic in America isn’t going to vote for a party that sounds like that party hates brown people,” Erickson said.
However, the day after was not all self-reflection for those on the right. Some struck a far more combative tone.
“We are in a war. We’re in a war to save this nation,” said Michael Needham, chief executive of Heritage Action, an arm of the conservative Washington think tank, The Heritage Foundation.
Needham spoke in a direct-to-camera video as martial-sounding music swelled in the background. Persuasion as a political strategy did not appear to be on his mind.
Similarly, an assortment of conservative groups sent representatives to the National Press Club to vent their anger at the Republican Party “establishment.”
“The battle to retake the Republican Party begins today,” railed Richard Viguerie, a veteran of the conservative movement, who called on “the failed Republican leadership” to resign, and then named the leaders of the GOP in the House and Senate, as well as the head of the Republican National Convention.
However, figures like Viguerie have limited influence within the GOP these days. The real lightning bolts being thrown on Wednesday were by the party’s super donors, who played a historic role in this election after a 2010 Supreme Court decision allowed them to give unlimited amounts to outside groups.
@Mike S: Part of the Conservative movements work since Goldwater has been to run for schoolboard elections to influence educational policies, censor curriculum and impose their version of patriotism.
Many of the teacher movements and unions, including my sister’s (a public school gifted/talented teacher for 15 years), has been countering that trend for decades, including in courts. I believe that struggle has been hard, and on several fronts the (enlightened) teachers have lost ground; particularly in evolutionary science and sex safety education.
So I can see some merit in trying to stock the school board with progressive liberals. But isn’t that just a liberal vs. conservative political fight that has been going on for 30 years or so?
The Conservative school board strategy may have worked in the past, but I do not think it will translate into the future. I think it depended heavily on the Republican political machine promoting compliant Conservative candidates “up the ranks” to city council, justice of the peace, various state legislature offices, etc., combined with the Republican voter propensity to take the intellectual shortcut of pulling the lever for the Republican Party. I think it depended on their gullibility, and the corrupt incentives to the candidates recruited.
Maybe it is just me, but I think that approach is less viable today than yesteryear, and inherently less viable for recruiting non-sociopaths.
I am not trying to rain on your parade, I am actually trying to keep you from wasting time and energy on what I believe is a fatally flawed approach. To me the fatal flaw is the direct approach of trying to change the quality, integrity, intelligence and character of candidates.
I personally think that if the direct approach was going to work, it would have worked already. It hasn’t. The Chris Hedges Lament is right; and the situation gets ever worse, with income inequality, political inequality, class inequality and corruption and blatant lies on the rise one election after another. The self-serving sociopaths have infiltrated the media too, and partner with the politicians for monetary gain in their spin and lies. (It can still be a cutthroat pack of lions that will slaughter their own injured for a cannibalistic meal; there is no honor among sociopaths. Only a weighing of rewards.)
I think if there is a solution, we need to think outside that direct approach box. I do not think it is possible to cultivate and/or elect trustworthy progressive champions with a success rate that can remotely stem the tide of sociopathy. The few that have made it to office certainly have not done that.
Tony,
Two simple points to peruse. The first is that Texas, because of its large size, pretty much controls the schoolbook market in terms of content and its book buying policies have been dumbing down the Nation’s textbooks for years. Second, is I’m not call for a political party, but a movement that will influence both political parties. While I do believe the political process here must be opened up, the change of that process is years away. The preliminary steps must first be taken in the manner that I previously outlined. Change, without violent revolution is a quite hard and painstaking process and does not begin with party politics, when both are corporatist in nature.
Great video, Woosty.
Smom:
thanks, I am going to see if I can track down some stats about how many women changed their minds based on Aiken and Mourdock. I am thinking that if 10% of women who were going to vote for Romney changed their minds, it would have been enough to give it to the Pres.
Woosty:
Maddow generally has it right. [holy shlt, did I just say that?]
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/11/republican-rape-caucus-crumbles Here you go, Bron.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMLcbTTdBGQ
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMLcbTTdBGQ&w=560&h=315%5D
🙂
Bron
1, November 8, 2012 at 8:00 am
Woosty:
you go girl, are you still drunk with the intoxicating emotion of victory?
——————————
YES!!!! …but no…..
it’s not Victory that I feel. It is an overwhelming sense of relief alike to what you feel when a child falls down a flight of steps but rises unhurt. I once almost ran over my brothers dog in the driveway, (she was loveable but not terribly bright…)…and I was ecstatic that I did not cause her death and she was relatively unhurt…(she did not however learn to NOT sleep behind the car….
I just feel good that the knowledge that we are a better and more enlightened place than the current physical reality expresses has been affirmed….and that the progress, at least in those ideological places that we call ‘foundational’ is not corrupted…. 🙂 THAT’s why….. 🙂
gbk:
from the book Capitalism the Creator 1940:
“The ultimate success of autarchy is at best
doubtful. The whole drift of modern times, and especially through
the last hundred years and more of the colossal development, seems
to belie the possibility of success in a policy of self-sufficiency. For
more than one hundred and fifty years world trade has been steadily
growing, at a rate even more rapid than the volume of total production.
Seriously interrupted by the war, this growing interdependence
of peoples is now greater than ever. No industrial power, nowadays,
requiring various raw materials from many regions of the earth, can
approach national self-sufficiency except at an enormous cost.
But the economic policies of the dictatorships does not stop here.
For the purpose of increasing the military power of the state, all
industry is regimented, all truly economic aims subordinated.
Production is directed by the state for military purposes. Preference in
the allocation of capital, raw materials, and labor, is given to firms
working on army orders. The rates of wages of labor are held down,
profits are restricted, and their use is controlled. Nor does labor,
whether in agriculture or in industry, have the right to choose its
employment. In a real sense, labor and industry are enslaved in the
dictatorships as in the communist state.
A large proportion of the national income is diverted to state
purposes. Under such circumstances, it is impossible to provide
capital for private enterprises, except those that serve military needs.
Even without this provision of capital, the share of the productive
output of the country available for general consumption has fallen
sharply. As a consequence, the hours of labor have been increased;
but even with longer hours and greater production, real wage rates have fallen. And this, to my mind, is one of the ineluctable effects
of autocracy. The heavy taxation and borrowing, to say nothing of
outright inflation, deprive labor of the consumption goods necessary
to maintain high living standards, and they deprive management of
the capital goods needful to maintain economic progress.
The key to the prevailing trend towards dictatorships lies, if I
mistake not, in the steadily growing ascendancy of the crowd, directly
a product of what the French writer Gustave LeBon has aptly
termed “crowd psychology.” As LeBon takes note, this is essentially
a kind of grown-up child psychology, craving a highly paternal type
of government. The mass of the people, apparently, do not value
independence, liberty of thought, freedom of action, opportunity
for individual enterprise. They submit rather to the rule of the
omnipotent father, and seem content if only they are assured their
daily bread. Otherwise it is difficult to understand how a country
with great universities, a splendid literature and art, a proud record
of scientific and industrial achievement, could endure the tyranny
of a regimentation maintained by coercion, imprisonment, and assassination.
It can only be that a large part of the population is still,
as Dr. Hooton insists, essentially neolithic in character and in intelligence.
The interest of all this for countries like the United States and
Great Britain, where the tradition of economic and political freedom
is old, is in regard to their own peoples. Will these also succumb to
the propaganda and leadership of kindred fanatics, men of a distinctly
neurotic mentality, and often with obsession of a ‘mission.’
Is there danger that the traditional economic and political systems
of these countries will be replaced by dictatorships molded after the
Continental fashion? Not an idle question.
For one, I can not believe that in the English speaking world
the spirit of independence, the precious gift of freedom, is to be
lost through the diablerie of paranoidal maniacs, lusting for selfaggrandizement, and dependent upon the supine submission of a
people. But it would be dangerous to overlook the effects that economic
desperation may produce, what long depression with wide
unemployment may do. It would be a weird outcome if the truly
marvelous burst of industrial progress within the last century and a
half should eventuate in such a monumental fiasco.”
Smom:
It is just a small sampling.
What do you think? Do you think the remarks would have that much effect?
You seem to have empirical evidence, Bron.
Smom:
The reason I ask is that I know some women who were going to vote for Romney prior to those remarks.
Upon reflection, I dont think it is unreasonable to say it cost Romney the election.
The GOP actually did what I previously thought was impossible: it UNDERESTIMATED the intelligence of the American people!! 😛