Election 2014: Huge victory for GOP
When it became obvious, Democratic pundits did everything to spin it as anything but what it was.
By election day itself, the New York Times reported that ‘Washington was the biggest loser.’ As in, ‘everyone is disenchanted with the whole crowd in government. We don’t trust anyone. Throw all the bums out.’ That way, it wasn’t a referendum on the president, or any favored candidates, as much as a disgruntled public unhappy with the whole lot of them. Trouble is, it wasn’t exactly true.
Even as results started coming in to newsrooms doing live coverage on election night, some in-house Democratic strategists claimed that there was an ‘anti-incumbent’ sentiment among voters across the US on election day. But the results pouring in showed that GOP incumbents mostly held on to their seats, while Democratic incumbents lost theirs.
On the Fox News election team, Democratic commentator Juan Williams, in apparent denial, claimed ‘It has to do more with Republican obstructionism than a wave of anti-Democrat sentiment.’ Longtime Washington correspondent Brit Hume responded ‘I don’t think it has anything to do with being obstructionist. Nor is it a vote against Obama as a person. It is, however, a wave of sentiment against policies. People have not felt, personally, any relief from an economic recovery for instance. There’s been a string of other crises this president hasn’t handled well…’ And his remarks were almost inaudible at that point.
Another commentator on the team questioned ‘If this was an anti-incumbent election, why would some incumbents who spent twice what their challengers spent lose their elections?’ Good question. It was a way to tease out the obvious. This was a referendum on the president’s policies and his party’s handling of their control of the Senate, and the complete lack of willingness to compromise or even listen to other ideas that has marked the past several years of business on Capitol Hill.
My computer homepage is a Google aggregator of top news headlines and blog posts I’ve customized to stay on top of current affairs and breaking news and the latest coverage of important national and international issues. The top box is the New York Times. As election night advanced, all top five NYT headlines were about GOP victories in major races against Democratic incumbents or challengers. Republicans needed to pick up a net gain of six new seats in the Senate to take over as the majority. Before the night was late, they had gained seven.
Respected political commentator Charles Krauthammer said ‘This election was not about Republican ideas, it was about an end to Obama governance.’
And it was more.
Krauthammer continued: “I think this is the end of the ‘war on women’, and the Democrats have been defeated’. “I think the Democrats are going to learn a lesson from this.” One can only hope, given that the party spent their last convention in the summer of 2012 celebrating abortion all week, and have driven the message of birth control and abortion rights into the ground, underestimating women in great magnitudes. Ever since the January 2012 announcement the the Department of Health and Human Services issued the mandate that employer health care insurance coverage must provide access to drugs like the ‘morning-after pill’ among other abortifacients, prompting dozens and dozens of high profile lawsuits by companies and institutions against the government for violation of the Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it’s been one long battle between the people and the government over basic rights involving religious liberty and radical redefinitions of rights.
The results on Tuesday bore witness to the truth that the so-called ‘war on women’ was both a trumped up ploy, and it was over.
“This has much less to do with the Republicans than it does with the self-destruction of the Democrats,” said Krauthammer of the results of Election 2014.
Even in the president’s state, known for ‘machine politics’, in which Democratic party politics rule and rule out any challengers, the Republican candidate for governor beat the sitting Democrat. ‘Illinois is extraordinarily debt-ridden, as close to an Argentina as we’re going to get here,’ said political analyst and commentator George Will, to punctuate the point of how bad things had to get to get to these results of this election.
In one of the victory speeches of the night, Wisconsin’s embattled but victorious governor Scott Walker announced ‘Tonight, we’re all Americans more than we are Wisconsinites.’ It did seem like a new day had begun.
In fact, in the middle of the evenin
g, the announcement came out suddenly that the president had called for a bi-partisan meeting this Friday.
“The results of the Obama presidency have not been good.” Brit Hume, in grand understatement as is his style, and this came late in the evening when results poured in showing just how badly the results of this presidency have struck engaged Americans.
Finally, those who went to the polls to elect pro-life leaders who would uphold, protect and defend the sanctity and dignity of all human life, celebrated the victory of having at last a pro-life Congress.
Until they are sworn in for the new session in January, the lame duck Congress and its lame duck president are rumored to be considering a number of moves to push their agenda forward while they can. That somehow seems less likely at the end of such a sweeping election victory for Republicans, sweeping key members of the Senate, among others, out of office, by the will of the people.
Watch this space. It’s a new day in American politics, it’s going to be very interesting, and the next presidential campaign season will probably begin just after this new Congress is sworn in, if not sooner.
