The Pnedulum Swings Back

A week after the election, and the changed realities in Washington are still settling in. The electorate has decided to throw the rascals and scoundrels out, and bring in a new crew of rascals and scoundrels.

The results are not really too surprising, given the partisan overreach of the first two years of the Obama administration. After all, slapping the label “liberal” on a candidate carries significant negative connotations with the public at large. Even the liberals agree with that, which is why they’ve tried to rebrand themselves as “progressives.”

Two years ago, the picture looked quite different. There was plenty of talk about a new New Deal, the assumption that Democratic Party gains signaled a mandate for a gigantic expansion of the power and reach of the Federal government. America was finally going to take its rightful place among the nations of Europe.

It turns out that most Americans don’t want to live in France, even if they could find it on a map. If they did, Massachusetts would be a lot more crowded.

Even more shocking were the pronouncements made about the Republican party. One pundit wrote that the GOP was doomed to be a “rump party of southern white males.” Astonishingly, just two weeks ago editorial writer DeWayne Wickham wrote:
"Don't be fooled by the political gains Republicans are expected to make in the midterm elections. The GOP is on the critical list. The wins it will score, possibly enough to give it control of the House of Representatives, will be short lived. They are the dying gasp of a political party that has become too intolerant and too white in a nation whose population soon will be dominated by Hispanics, blacks and Asians."

Sure, because if you think massive expansions in government programs, along with tax rates to match, it must be because you are racist. The last time I checked, to gain a majority in the House of Representatives, the Republicans had to have more than half the voters choose their candidate in more than half the Congressional districts in this country. That seems pretty egalitarian to me.

But I think the best riposte to the claim that to be a conservative is to be exclusionary is this: New Mexico elected a new governor this week. Susana Martinez is the nation’s first female Hispanic governor. She’s a Republican.