2006 Thumping
Did Republicans Deserve to Lose
By Daniel Muniz

Did the GOP deserve to lose in the 2006 elections?

That is a question that a lot of Republicans are asking themselves. It wasn’t long ago that a Democrat imagining winning 15 additional house seats was nothing more than a pipe dream. The same thing was said about the senate because after all because the electorate was fairly well entrenched.

But how did everything fall apart?

Of course, the natural answer from many conservatives is the hostile media. Admittedly, the press incessantly hammered away at the Bush administration ever since day one and more so with his reelection.

We are in the middle of a red hot economy with the Dow constantly breaking records, the lowest unemployment in years, the highest home ownership ever, along with lots of other economic indicators showing that this country is doing great. However, every time you picked up the paper or saw the news, it was the same old story about how awful the economy was doing and polls saying how people thought that the country was going in the wrong direction.

Back in the 90’s, the media endlessly harped on how well Clinton managed the economy when the Dow hit 11,000 but there was hardly any noise about the accomplishment of reaching 12,000 on Bush’s watch.

Yes, the press deserves a lot of the blame but Republicans have won before even with plenty of Liberal bias. That just comes with the territory.

However, the president has been a real disappointment ever since he was reelected. Although it is easy to say that it is not directly his fault because of the unfriendly media that is still not a sufficient answer. Public opinion is a juggernaut and it is shaped and influenced by numerous external forces. Bush was simply unable to harness those forces and that resulted in him being defined by press and by his opponents.

For instance, hurricane Katrina was actually a normal storm and the immediate response to it was perhaps the largest and fastest rescue effort ever mounted. Instead, the media depicted it as the abandonment of our government. In fact, nearly all the assertions made by the press and by Democrats were wrong but they were repeated often enough that a lot of people assumed that they were true. And that allowed the incompetent New Orleans Mayor Nagin to be reelected.

The same goes with foreign policy. America has foiled numerous terrorist attacks on our soil and this country has been relatively safe. There have been tremendous accomplishments in Iraq now that they have a functioning government, free elections, and a growing infrastructure but the press is only concerned with bad news.

Issues like the economy, hurricane Katrina, national security, and a host of others need a president willing to forcefully toot his horn because the press isn’t going to do it for him. In that respect, Bush failed and his failure hurt the party because these external forces were given free rein to define him in particular as well as the GOP in general.

Clinton was a master of touting his accomplishments even if a lot of them were insignificant or trivial. Dick Morris once noted that Clinton had to work his tail off during that time because he knew he was a goner unless he was always in the limelight.

In contrast, Bush failed to effectively highlight the positive accomplishments which are quite significant. And in failing to assert himself in the public eye instead of just to his supporters, he sank into abysmal approval ratings even though the country is doing great even at a time of war.

Now the party deserves just as much blame.

The GOP grew complacent in feeling that retaining complete control of Congress was a given.

On the other hand, Democrats recruited the best and brightest candidates to run for office even if meant abandoning party loyalists and hard core Liberals. These candidates were well funded and highly motivated and they clobbered complacent office holders.

Loyal conservatives also felt disconnected with the party and they had every right to be. Instead of being the party of fiscal discipline, Republicans went on a decadent spending spree. The purpose of most of government spending is to buy votes but after all of the earmarks and wasteful spending, what did the GOP gain from it?

They definitely didn’t end up with more affection and more popular support. Instead the result was a push to towards the other party who can spend more lavishly on pet projects.

And it wasn’t just spending but other core issues like immigration that alienated conservatives.

But even more to the point, the party lost sight of its vision. The federal government needs tremendous reform. It is a sloppy inefficient bureaucracy but it was business as usual. There are real problems facing this country like a desperate need for a long term energy policy and the oil crisis would have provided an excellent platform for it. Instead, the press and Democrats pummeled Bush over high gas prices. And now it looks like reforming social security is not going to happen for a long while.

I don’t want to take away from the good things that the president and the Republican congress accomplished but the sad truth is that there were way too many wasted opportunities to shake things up and truly reform the government and make the economy even better. All we got was a lot of empty rhetoric.

But not all is lost if the GOP can get its act together.

I vividly remember the days after Bush senior losing to Clinton in which Republicans were downtrodden about their future prospects. Many Republican office holders at the time, including Liberal ones like Susan Molinari from New York, insisted that the GOP needed to have their “Council of Trent” to define their agenda and their vision for the future. That was in 1992 and by 1994; a dramatic sweep had taken place. The “Contract with America” was simple, clearly defined, and very effective.

The Democrats didn’t have that this time. In fact, they relied on Blue Dog Democrats to win a few districts while they exploited the bad luck of the GOP and the hostile media. But if Republicans can articulate another authentic message of conservatism and actually stick to, then they got a real shot of undoing what happened.

Now is the time for the GOP to get the disgruntled rank and file party members and those who want to form a third party back into the fold and start acting like a party that is committed to fiscal and personal responsibility. And perhaps it is time for our next Council of Trent.

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