Freedom's Truth

Some lessons from this election.

Lesson number 1 - Elections have consequences: Don Rumsfeld, you were a great Secretary of Defense, Thank you; now enjoy your retirement. The ACLU is thrilled, Pelosi can get those drapes after all.

Lesson number 2 - Every vote counts: Latest news shows the final vote tally gives Webb the edge of Allen. In 2002, the GOP got all the breaks in the close races (save one, in North Dakota) and surprisingly gained. In 2006, a reverse shock - Webb beat Allen by 7,000 votes; Tester beat Burns by 3,000 votes; McKaskill over Talent by about 30,000 votes. In MO and MT, the Libertarian candidate got more votes than the margin of difference. Had 40,000 votes changed to the GOP, the Republican Senate would have been solid. That margin being Libertarian Party voters begs a question - Is the libertarian vote the swing vote that swung away from the GOP in 2006?. There were similar close races in the House - Fitzpatrick in PA, for example.

Lesson number 3 - if you want to not lose again, Learn from mistakes:

"After 1994, we were a majority committed to balanced federal budgets, entitlement reform and advancing the principles of limited government," said Rep. Mike Pence, an Indiana conservative who wants to be the next minority leader. "In recent years, our majority voted to expand the federal government's role in education, entitlements and pursued spending policies that created record deficits and national debt."

That's pretty much dead on. Bush manfully took his medicine, taking responsibility for this week's electoral debacle and then letting Donald Rumsfeld go. It's time for congressional Republicans to do the same.

Rush feels liberated enough to be a conservative critic again, ready to fire fussilades from Bush's right flank:

By an 11% margin, voters who voted yesterday believe that Republicans are "the big government party now." How can you blame them?

This was a Republican loss, but not a conservative one; many Democrats ran as conservatives, and the hardest hit Republicans (Nancy Johnson, Jim Leach, Sue Kelly, Mike Fitzpatrick) that lost were the "RINO" Republicans, joined by Senate RINOs DeWine and Chaffee. Yet more than a few conservatives joined them.

But the driving force was not the spending or immigration, they merely played the backdrop of leaving the GOP base voters less enchanted with their own Congressional slate than they otherwise would be. The driving force was the corruption and personal issues.

Consider a "TEN STEPS TO A MINORITY" plan of action. If you were Hastert and Bush 18 months ago, what would you do to maximize your losses in the election. You might:

1) Let a major lobbyist (Abramoff) with Republican connections get convicted of fraud and finger legislators who did favors in return for contributions.

2) When that happened, instead of going whole-hog to clean out the stables, get the bad apples bounced out pronto, and reform the system fully ... you make a stab at half-measure reforms and leave the fingered Congressmen to determine their own way. Oh, and hope it will blow over because there are Democrats fingered and 'everybody does it'.

3) Let a major personal scandal erupt 1 month before the election, that gives one seat to the other party and make the leadership look like they protected a pervert.

4) Forget your party's principles regarding fiscal discipline and restrained spending.

5) Fail to take credit for the great economy built on tax cuts, and instead let negative stories on the economy become the theme. And fail to mention that the Bush tax cuts will be terminated or curtailed under the Pelosi Congress.

6) Let your competence get questioned again and again, without responding, over matters like Katrina, etc.

7) Split your own party by going left on immigration. After not getting what you want, pass a fence bill at the last possible moment, but then undermine it's political impact by calling for 'comprehensive' bill.

8) Have an inarticulate House leadership that can't make the case for what they've done very well,

9) Fail to have a national message and campaign to counter the Democrats' successful attempt to nationalize the campaign around Iraq and personal issues. That campaign should have been around the economy, the war on terror, and the overall values issues. But it wasn't.

10) When a Democrat has $90,000 in bribe money in a freezer and his Congressional offices are being searched under warrant, jump up and defend his 'immunity' publicly against Dept of Justice's investigation.

Having contemplated the list, and looking at some of the races, there is a sense that some of the punishment was well-deserved. I would have hoped, though, that the Democrat margin of victory would not be that great.

Lesson 4 - Consequences redux - elections can have consequences that go beyond our shores. There was little the Democrats ran on other than Iraq that will have as far-reaching a consequence.

The Democrats didn't win because we were 'losing' in Iraq; that is too abstract. (We are in fact winning in Iraq, losing in Sudan, have issues in Pakistan that are not being dealt with, succeeded well diplomatically in North Korea, and are completely stymied with Iran, while Afghanistan slips into the mode that Iraq is in already.) Iraq was a winning issue for Democrats because soldiers are dying, and there was a segment who are ready to throw in the towel. We know that would be a disaster for the middle east; it would embolden Iran, it strengthen terrorism, and it would make any US ally distrust us for many years. It's a recipe for disaster as big as Vietnam.

This was the matter that was debated in 2004, but decided in favor of Bush at the time. Yet also at the time, the 'end of the tunnel' looked a lot closer. Iraqi elections would secure the political basis for Iraq, and the training of Iraqi army units would eventually be enough to give it all to Iraq. In the beginning of 2005, it was 18 months to 2 years out.

Here we are 2 years later, with a more capable Iraqi army than ever, yet an insurgency that is still inflamed and violence is worsened by sectarian death squads. This is not a 'fiasco' nor disaster. But deadly violence that is killing Iraqis and our soldiers is not looking better than before, and so faith in 'progress' in Iraq is at a low ebb.

The change in Iraq, the Democrats now signal post haste, will not be sudden and final, and now - after a campaign season of backseat driving, they are will to let Bush be CinC on this. They decision will not be "do I stay or do I go?" but: "how do we stop the dying of American soldiers?" The Democrats' Nancy Congress has already impacted who will be Secretary of Defense - Gates, an alum of the Bush 41 inner circle, and another 'realist', meaning not a neo-con ready to remake Iraq.

Baker-Hamilton commission is already set to remold our policy. We may have a 'change of mission' to training will be the muddy compromise between 'stay the course' and 'withdraw'. In the best of worlds, the reflection will be a tune-up of our policy; in the worst of worlds, we will make the mistakes we made before, of exhibiting the lack of will to do what is necessary to win wars, with the consequence that we ended up losing them, at bitter cost. Our best assurance on this matter is President Bush's consistency in overall vision in securing Iraq's democracy.

Yes, a horrible election for Republicans, but most horrible for the 'big-Government Republicanism' and its corrupt dark underbelly (earmarks and the like). There is much good the Republican Congress did that wasn't recognized and may be forgotten:

"The evil that men do lives long after them, The good is oft interred in their bones." - Shakespeare, Julius Ceasar

The best chance Republicans have of regaining power is to quickly retool and relearn the art of getting back to conservative principles and articulating them and living up to them. The voters sent a message to 2 parties, and we will see which one of them can listen the best.

"When the well's dry, we know the worth of water." ~ Benjamin Franklin ~