It will be a few days at least before the final numbers are in. Colorado, I suspect, we will know about later today, ditto Washington, but who knows when they’ll sort through the 160 Mr & Ms Write Ins in Alaska.
This much clear clear now, however: the American voters have indulged in a violent but purgative episode of reverse peristalsis with respect to the Obama-Reid-Pelosi stew of statist, high-tax, politically correct European-style government bureaucracy.
Yes, Harry Reid and Barbara “call me Senator” Boxer are still stuck there in the public craw. Who knows where Barney Frank is lodged. I, too, regret it. But it is seldom that any one bout of regurgitation is 100 percent effective. Let us draw a veil over this unpleasant spectacle and concentrate instead on the deeper meaning of last night’s activity.
If you look at the headlines, you’ll see lots variations on this AP banner: “Republicans ride voter unrest to control of House.”
But it wasn’t “unrest” that was on view last night. It was disgust tinctured with condign anger, fear, and contempt. And it was only incidentally the Republican party that rode this wave of nausea. Republicans were, en masse, merely the vehicle. The cause was the rumbling, grumbling, visceral feeling of being betrayed by an arrogant and overweening government. Perhaps somewhere along the corridors of power, someone is reciting Kipling to the President, the former speaker of the House, or the Senate Smaller-Majority leader:
“The Saxon is not like us Normans, his manners are not so polite
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right
When he stands like an ox in the furrow with his sullen set eyes on your own
And grumbles ‘This isn’t fair dealing,’ my son leave the Saxon alone.”
The point is that most of the headlines, like most of the stories, from the Legacy Media, miss the point. The election was only incidentally about Republican gains in the House and the Senate. More basically, it was, as Charles Krauthammer put it, a resounding, a definitive expectoration of the Obama agenda. The real story goes far beyond the huge gains in the House, Senate, and Governors’ Mansions. As Erick Erickson at RedState.com observes, yesterday’s election was a veritable tsunami whose significance will be measured as much in changes in state legislatures across the country as in Washington. It’s not just that Republicans picked up some 65 seats in the House — more than at any time since 1948; it’s not just that Republicans — with 47, 48, or possibly even 49 Senate seats and joined by a passel of Democratic Senators who, up for reelection in two years and cognizant of the scalps of their colleagues who supported Obama’s statist agenda — will have tremendous influence in that chamber. It’s also the extensive tributaries etched out by this tsunami. Some observations from Erickson:
- The North Carolina Legislature is Republican for the first time since 1870.
- The Alabama Legislature is Republican for the first time since 1876.
- The entire Wisconsin and New Hampshire legislatures have flipped to the GOP by wide margins.
- The State Houses in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Montana, and Colorado flipped to the GOP.
- The Maine and Minnesota Senates flipped to the GOP.
- The Texas and Tennessee Houses went from virtually tied to massive Republican gains.
And so on.
This was a tide, as Erickson notes, that reaches right down to the municipal level. In 1994, the Republicans made massive gains in Washington. In 2010, the American people made massive gains in rejecting statism and returning America to a more traditional political posture. It’s not, as Winston Churchill said of an earlier struggle, the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Care for a cup of tea?
Roger, I love it! What’s the title of the Kipling piece? It’s *so* appropriate!!! Thank you for finding it!
It’s Norman & Saxon–A.D. 1100
http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_normansaxon.htm
It’s worth reading, just 6 stanzas. It’s pretty anachronistic. I can’t imagine any Norman taking that line less than 2 generations after the Conquest. It’s really just advice to any modern republican or democratic (note lc “d” and “r”) politician: don’t act like an elite.
I’m as ebulliently positive nationally as Roger but am pessimistically disgusted locally as Carl Paladino must be. New York State and California have turned the term “progressive” on its head, with few exceptions returning same-ole same-oles to DC, Albany, and Sacramento. Though both states are headed for bankruptcy (and New York is considered the 50th best state in the union–i.e., the worst–in which to do business), voters in these two states remain clueless: Virtually every seat in both state legislatures remains in the same hands. The rest of the country seems to have got the news, but our coasts remain intransigent in their XIX Century Fabianism and now clearly shackled in XX Century unionism. New York and California continue to look misty-eyed at the old France and the UK (which even the current France and UK eschew). This is what is meant by the term “ideologue”–one who believes religiously in what he’s read in a book or heard from the lips of an academic despite the real life staring him in the face. The more Europe fails, the more the ideologue clings to those failed policies. This is why we should ban any Ivy Leaguer from holding public office for the rest of the century.
Both California and, eventually, New York will soon look to the federal government for bailout, militantly supported by the public unions which would alone benefit from such bailouts. The current and (I hope very) temporary president and his Democrat ideologues will hasten to help. Only the newly-elected under the banner of Republican stand between this and that.
One happy local and national note: the re-election of Harry “The surge has failed” Reid has at least prevented a much greater human and political tragedy than his defeat: Majority Leader Charles Schumer. That’s the beginning and the end of the local good news.
Good stuff! I travelled to England this summer and had my first ever afternoon tea with scones , and it was so delicious I decided to try and make my own last weekend. I might have deviated from the norm though – I found a site full of random scone recipes here and made 5 different kinds! My friends were so happy when I invited them round for tea and scones. Great fun!