The election of 2010 seemed to herald the awakening of a sleeping giant as Tea Party and conservative republican voters were elected in historically high numbers. The presidential election of this year, on the other hand, seems to indicate that the giant had fallen back asleep.
I know that well-meaning left-leaners fill the media with the notion that the failure of the right is a result of the right moving right; but it’s hard to understand how what produced overwhelming victories in 2010 can then be blamed for overwhelming losses in 2012. Neither do the numbers really bear out the theory that the nation has suddenly lurched left and rejected conservatism. The analysis of the vote does not show a movement of support from right to left, but rather a Democratic party more adept than the Republicans at getting out an uninspired electorate. Both parties suffered declining voter rates, but the main defections for the Republicans were less to the Democratic candidates, as to their own couches.
In the end, advertising can’t sell a bad product. The early success of Tea Party types along with their disdain for “politics as usual” led to the nomination of several monumentally inept candidates. In general it was their ineptitude that cost them the elections more than their conservatism. On the other end of the spectrum, was the insistence of the GOP in putting up another old guard, tried and true, white-bread candidate for the top of the ticket. Didn’t work with Dole, didn’t work with McCain, didn’t work with Romney. Bush the elder was elected once, but his conservatism didn’t stick, and neither did his success. Reagan and even the bumbling Bush the younger managed to parlay their conservatism into two terms apiece.
And so, while all the wishful thinkers from Chris Matthews to Nancy Pelosi hope to paint the recent election as the death of the Tea Party and the conservative movement in the Republican Party, the negotiations on the fiscal cliff show that they remain a force to be reckoned with, even on the tails of a catastrophic election; the reports of their death have been greatly exaggerated! If there is a lesson to be learned it is that the lesser of two evils is not enough to get people to the polls, even intentionally inoffensive candidates can be painted as villainous by clever enemies, and people are generally uninspired by the uninspiring… and turned off by the inept.
IMHO: The difference between the 2010 election and the 2012 one is two-fold. First, the candidates put forward were not generally very good ones. Romney only got the nod by attrition, as candidate after candidate self-destructed, and the GOP again picked an establishment candidate not on the basis of charisma or even popularity, but because it was his turn. The second difference is that Presidential elections bring out the less informed voters who are reached less by political ideas, and more by present realities. These are more susceptible to being “organized”, and do tend to vote Democrat when they are. Republicans may have thought they didn’t have to try to oust as flawed a candidate as Barack Obama. They may have thought the rampaging giant they saw in the 2010 rout would continue its march on Washington in 2012. Their caution and complacency in their nomination and the following campaign was less than inspiring, and lost them not only a presidential bid they should have won, but also lost them the excitement and invigoration they needed to move forward in the Senate and House votes. If there is a civil war in the Republican party, it is hard to imagine the Romney/McCain/ Boehner wing coming out the victor. The giant that ruled the 2010 election is not dead, it is only sleeping, and it took the GOP establishment to do that. Continuing failures by the administration, education and grassroots organizing, and competent inspiring candidates will revive the party; not more consternation, moderation and vacillation… yawning Republicans don’t vote.
