A recoil against liberalism

Little-Acorn

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One of Will's best columns. The Nov. 2010 election was a rebellion by the American people against the overarching big government the Democrats have tried to impose.

And the best news? Democrats don't believe it. And so they will keep trying to impose more and more Big Government... paving the way for an equally disasterous (for Democrats, but good for America) electoral crushing in 2012.

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http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will110410.php3

A recoil against liberalism

By George Will
Nov. 4, 2010

Unwilling to delay until tomorrow mistakes that could be made immediately, Democrats used 2010 to begin losing 2012. Trying to preemptively drain the election of its dangerous (to Democrats) meaning, all autumn Democrats described the electorate as suffering a brain cramp, an apoplexy of fear, rage, paranoia, cupidity - something. Any explanation would suffice as long as it cast what voters were about to say as perhaps contemptible and certainly too trivial to be taken seriously by the serious.

It is amazing the ingenuity Democrats invest in concocting explanations of voter behavior that erase what voters always care about, and this year more than ever - ideas. This election was a nationwide recoil against Barack Obama's idea of unlimited government.

The more he denounced Republicans as the party of "no," the better Republicans did. His denunciations enabled people to support Republicans without embracing them as anything other than impediments to him.

He had defined himself as a world-class whiner even before Rahm Emanuel, a world-class flatterer, declared that Obama had dealt masterfully with "the toughest times any president has ever faced" - quite a claim, considering that before the first president from Illinois was even inaugurated, seven of the then-34 states had seceded. Today's president from Illinois, a chronic campaigner and incontinent complainer who is uninhibited by considerations of presidential dignity, has blamed his difficulties on:

George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, the Supreme Court, a Cincinnati congressman (John Boehner), Karl Rove, Americans for Prosperity and other "groups with harmless-sounding names" (Hillary Clinton's "vast right-wing conspiracy" redux), "shadowy third-party groups" (they are as shadowy as steam calliopes), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and, finally, the American people. They have deeply disappointed him by being impervious to "facts and science and argument."

Actually, as the distilled essence of progressivism, he should feel ratified by Tuesday's repudiation. The point of progressivism is that the people must progress up from their backwardness. They cannot do so unless they are pulled toward the light by a government composed of the enlightened - experts coolly devoted to facts and science.

The progressive agenda is actually legitimated by the incomprehension and anger it elicits: If the people do not resent and resist what is being done on their behalf, what is being done is not properly ambitious. If it is comprehensible to its intended beneficiaries, it is the work of insufficiently advanced thinkers.

Of course the masses do not understand that the only flaw of the stimulus was its frugality, and that Obamacare's myriad coercions are akin to benevolent parental discipline. If the masses understood what progressives understand, would progressives represent a real vanguard of progress?

Of course the progressive agenda must make infinitely elastic the restraints imposed by the Founders' Constitution and its principles of limited government. Moving up from them - from the Founders and their anachronistic principles - is the definition of progress.

Recently, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter decided, as the president has decided, that what liberals need is not better ideas but better marketing of the ones they have: "It's a sign of how poorly liberals market themselves and their ideas that the word 'liberal' is still in disrepute despite the election of the most genuinely liberal president that the political culture of this country will probably allow."

"Despite"? In 2008, Democrats ran as Not George Bush. In 2010, they ran as Democrats. Hence, inescapably, as liberals, or at least as obedient to liberal leaders. Hence Democrats' difficulties.

Responding to Alter, George Mason University economist Don Boudreaux agreed that interest-group liberalism has indeed been leavened by idea-driven liberalism. Which is the problem.

"These ideas," Boudreaux says, "are almost exclusively about how other people should live their lives. These are ideas about how one group of people (the politically successful) should engineer everyone else's contracts, social relations, diets, habits, and even moral sentiments." Liberalism's ideas are "about replacing an unimaginably large multitude of diverse and competing ideas . . . with a relatively paltry set of 'Big Ideas' that are politically selected, centrally imposed, and enforced by government, not by the natural give, take and compromise of the everyday interactions of millions of people."

This was the serious concern that percolated beneath the normal froth and nonsense of the elections: Is political power - are government commands and controls - superseding and suffocating the creativity of a market society's spontaneous order? On Tuesday, a rational and alarmed American majority said "yes."
 
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That is a great column. And lets hope the delusional commies (aka BO & Dems) continue being delusional...

I particularly like this part of Will's column;

Today's president from Illinois, a chronic campaigner and incontinent complainer who is uninhibited by considerations of presidential dignity, has blamed his difficulties on:

George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, the Supreme Court, a Cincinnati congressman (John Boehner), Karl Rove, Americans for Prosperity and other "groups with harmless-sounding names" (Hillary Clinton's "vast right-wing conspiracy" redux), "shadowy third-party groups" (they are as shadowy as steam calliopes), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and, finally, the American people. They have deeply disappointed him by being impervious to "facts and science and argument."
 
Its funny to watch the Republicans act like they just had the nation vote them as the supreme party and that the libs should just bow down to them now...funny 2 years ago, the Dems Crushed them...in the house...Senate...and white house....so when they get one house back....some how its them in charge now....and When the voters voted for Dems to have all 3 branches....when they moved on what they had placed as there goals for what they would do if elected...they where not listening to to the people....but with a much much smaller win...we should listen only to republicans now....

They claim no compromise, just hard core tea party brand conservative is what the voters called for...of course ignoring that hard core tea party members also got bounced when had to run in whole state elections like the Senate, not in carefully drawn districts formed by the parties to make it hard for the other side to win based on its demographics...

People want both sides to work together....the Republicans decided to just say no to everything....and for the next 2 years, to focus not on fixing anything...but attacking Obama....and have basically sent out the threat to all republicans to never work with the dems, never compromise...or they will lose in the primaries to angry tea party members..

in 2 years, the people will have seen what these people do when they actually have to put ideas on the floor, and do something rather then scream and lie and raise money on fox while not responding to questions.

you have 1 of 3 branches...your not in power..if you show no compromise ...you will find 2012 not pretty ...Clinton, Reagan and others got smacked around in the 2nd year, they all came back...the republican party acts like they have won 2012 already...
 
Its funny to watch the Republicans act like they just had the nation vote them as the supreme party and that the libs should just bow down to them now...funny 2 years ago, the Dems Crushed them...in the house...Senate...and white house....so when they get one house back....some how its them in charge now....and When the voters voted for Dems to have all 3 branches....when they moved on what they had placed as there goals for what they would do if elected...they where not listening to to the people....but with a much much smaller win...we should listen only to republicans now....

They claim no compromise, just hard core tea party brand conservative is what the voters called for...of course ignoring that hard core tea party members also got bounced when had to run in whole state elections like the Senate, not in carefully drawn districts formed by the parties to make it hard for the other side to win based on its demographics...

People want both sides to work together....the Republicans decided to just say no to everything....and for the next 2 years, to focus not on fixing anything...but attacking Obama....and have basically sent out the threat to all republicans to never work with the dems, never compromise...or they will lose in the primaries to angry tea party members..

in 2 years, the people will have seen what these people do when they actually have to put ideas on the floor, and do something rather then scream and lie and raise money on fox while not responding to questions.

you have 1 of 3 branches...your not in power..if you show no compromise ...you will find 2012 not pretty ...Clinton, Reagan and others got smacked around in the 2nd year, they all came back...the republican party acts like they have won 2012 already...
Oh come now. I don't think it's quite as dismal for conservatism as you make it out to be. Yes there is a lot of chest thumping going on right now in the ranks but are you surprised? Are you offended? The leftest collective has been beating the drum of victory with a sledgehammer for two years now. You can speculate all you want on the eventual outcome but the message sent is crystal clear. The majority cleaned out the House and made it much tighter in the Senate. Why? Because this runaway train needed some brakes and we finally got a chance to install them yesterday.
However, I do agree with you on one aspect of all this. If conservatives squander this opportunity to do whats right, they will again get what they deserve, as they have in the past. We shall see if they have learned anything from their mistakes. It would appear that this administration has not yet.
 
People want both sides to work together....the Republicans decided to just say no to everything....and for the next 2 years, to focus not on fixing anything...but attacking Obama....and have basically sent out the threat to all republicans to never work with the dems, never compromise...or they will lose in the primaries to angry tea party members..

The leftwingers shut the republicans out of everything in two of the ugliest years of the US congress. Now, because they got their ass kicked at the polls, they've suddenly become born-again advocates of compromise. :D The election was an utter "no" vote from the american people on the leftwing extremist lunatic policies. It's not just the "party of no", it's the COUNTRY of "no" to obozo's failed, disastrous leftwing extremism. The republicans have PLENTY of >>REAL<< solutions to the country's problems, poor-loser leftwing lies to the contrary notwithstanding. The leftwingers have spent two years being tone deaf to poll after poll that showed the people didn't want their statist takeover of healthcare. Now that they've been b___slapped by the electorate, their only response is to dribble out standard anti-Tea Party defamation, and whimper for compromise, when what's needed is yanking out all the disaster they've caused root and branch.
 
The leftwingers shut the republicans out of everything in two of the ugliest years of the US congress. Now, because they got their ass kicked at the polls, they've suddenly become born-again advocates of compromise. :D The election was an utter "no" vote from the american people on the leftwing extremist lunatic policies. It's not just the "party of no", it's the COUNTRY of "no" to obozo's failed, disastrous leftwing extremism. The republicans have PLENTY of >>REAL<< solutions to the country's problems, poor-loser leftwing lies to the contrary notwithstanding. The leftwingers have spent two years being tone deaf to poll after poll that showed the people didn't want their statist takeover of healthcare. Now that they've been b___slapped by the electorate, their only response is to dribble out standard anti-Tea Party defamation, and whimper for compromise, when what's needed is yanking out all the disaster they've caused root and branch.

Sssshhh Rick, we want the libs to stay in the dark on this. They really believe all kinds of stupid sh*t. Lets let them continue to believe in lies so in 2012 they get their ass kicked again.

The death of liberalism is at hand. Yippee!!!!

Finally democrats, moderates, and independents are waking up to this horrendous left wing kookiness that is BO and the CPA (Dems). Finally....
 
you have 1 of 3 branches...your not in power..if you show no compromise ...you will find 2012 not pretty ...Clinton, Reagan and others got smacked around in the 2nd year, they all came back...the republican party acts like they have won 2012 already...

Pockets, Considering the states that are considered "blue" leaning, went red, is a testament that it's not Republicans that turned the tide in Congress.

it's not just the REPUBLICAN party that voted. It's the AMERICAN PEOPLE! and they voted against the liberal agenda, not just people. You can pull names and administrations and past policies out of your ass forever, and the bottom line is the same. America is not as liberal as you want it to be right now. Pretty simple.
 
The notion that the American people want the parties to work together, doesn't stand up under scrutiny. Republicans treid to "work with" the Democrats from 2000-2006. They increased spending, enacted new entitlements, etc. And how did the American people react? They voted few and fewer Republicans back into office, in particular kicking out the ones who were the most accommodating to the leftist extremists, and finally booted them out of all majorites in 2006.

Only when the Democrats went wild, enacting hugely socialistic policies and spending at levels that made the Republicans look frugal, did the American people turn on them as they had turned on the Republcans... but much more so, kicking out more Democrats than has been done since the 1930s. And at the same time, the people rejected a number of "moderate" (i.e. liberal) Republicans (Crist, Angle, Whitman etc.) who had said the would work with the leftist extremists.

The American people do NOT want Republicans to "work with" the Democrats. They know from bitter experience, that Democrats never "work with" Republicans, but only push greater and greater degrees of extreme-left policies. And that's what the people demonstrably DO NOT WANT.

The American people want lower spending, less regulation of everything under the sun, lower taxes, and in general less government. They have had it with the Democrats. Republicans, who have spent big in the past and enacted more government, are very much under probation: They have promised to mend their ways, but talk is cheap. If they STICK TO their promises, and genuinely become conservative (a marked change from what they ahve been for the last 10 years), and go back to their longstanding small-government ways, then they might be allowed to keep their seats, instead of getting booted out as they were (deservedly) in 2006.

The ball is in the Republicans' court. They'd better not fumble it, as they did after the 1994 elections... or they will never merit people's votes again.

And working with the Democrats, as the losing party fervently hopes, is the fumble the now-majority Republicans must avoid like the plague.
 
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Don't you just love it when the lib media and lib politicians claim the American people want the Ds and Rs to work together? This is so much tripe...but the useful idiots believe it.

The American people do not want socialism. They do not want politicians working together to institute socialism. That is evident with this election. Now the Rs need to understand this and I am afraid many of them do not. Many of them intend to work with the commies - Dems.

2010-11-05-digest-cartoon-1.jpg
 
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