>> exit polls show almost no one voted on this issue anyway. <<
No, they show that few people voted only on this issue, but a very large number of people were energized to vote by the issue. I personally know several people who voted straight party line for the democrats as 'punishment' for the republicans over the attempted coup via show trial. That is why the republicans had such a huge drop just before the election, when they heated up the impeachment talk.
However, the media will not report it this way because they were complicit in the Clinton hunt.
This election said two things load and clear:
1. Few people like loud, accusatory prigs, as the republican politicians positioned themselves for this election. People don't like the dirty tricks campaigns anymore either, and folks have gotten very sensitive antennae for detecting this kind of thing over the last thirty years. (An education started by G. Gordon Liddy, and continued in by the Internet scandal mongers and operators along with Ken Starr.) We know what this stuff is like we now know what a product show in a movie is.
2. Republicans can not run on their current issues as indicated by the interests of their own factions - you can't even get the republicans to agree among themselves when the issues are abortion-as-murder and beggar-thy-neighbor economic issues.
Conclusion: the republicans are screwed for the near term, unless they change fast.
I hear them talking about concentrating on the 'core' issues again - as if those weren't what they had to run away from before: tinkering with social security, private schools, guns for everybody, abortion, fundamentalist christianity.
It would be amusing to see them sell the rest of the package we have come to know them by as well: international indifference, business before jobs, tax cut lies, hypocritical hatred for 'government', no minimum wage hike, blasé support for dictatorships, old money business as usual, thinly disguised racism.
One should just let the republicans stew in their ignorance, and hope they run on those issues. Hope they try to win popularity by labelling 2/3 of americans as 'liberals' because they have some common sense. The party will go swiftly downhill and break into pieces or become vanishingly tiny within a few years if they actually do that.
Still, it would be better for there to be at least two parties with real responsibility and intelligent, progressive agendas, doing the peoples work. So I hope that the republicans will pull their heads from the sand and see if there aren't a few valid issues not taken by the demos. I guarantee you, if you ever look around, folks, you will find thousands of things that need addressing.
For instance, natural conservation used to be a conservative issue, before conservatives sold out to big business. It would be nice to have a real choice of ideas now that the environment is falling apart everywhere. Right now the demos are still selling out on this. Take it away from them. Demand full support for international treaties. That would blow their minds.
Another is small business. I can tell you as a small business person that we mostly feel that neither party represents us. In fact the democrats come closer than the republicans for many of us. But in any event, Perot's party has been where many small business people fled, but they are not happy there. Why not try helping small business, for the first time in 60 years, and creating a lot of jobs. That is an idea the big parties pay lip service to but do nothing about. In fact both of them now sell out the small businesses constantly.
It's not the party of Newt and Army and their bitter crowd that will have a chance in the future. It's the party of Lincoln, of self sacrifice, of hope, that the republicans once were.
Cheers,
Chaz |
