Now that the dust from the 2010 elections has settled, let’s
examine some of the facts:
By Bradley T. Harrington
br**@***********ie.com
“In a passive, indifferent way, the majority of the Russian people were behind the White army; they were not for the Whites, but merely against the Reds; they feared the Reds’ atrocities. I knew that the Reds’ deepest atrocity was intellectual, that the thing that had to be fought – and defeated – was their ideas. But no one answered them … The Reds won.”
– Ayn Rand, discussing her experience in the Russian Revolution in
“The Lessons of Vietnam”
Now that the dust from the 2010 elections has settled, let’s examine some of the facts:
In the Senate, the Republicans picked up six seats, shaving the Democratic majority down to 51 to 47 (with two Independents).
In the House, the Republicans turned the tables completely, winning a landslide 64 seats to achieve a large majority of 242 to 193, their largest gain since 1948.
In state governorships, six Republican wins (with Minnesota still undecided as of this writing), including the key states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Iowa, flipped the board to 29 Republican and 19 Democrat (with one Independent).
In the state legislatures, Republicans gained over 650 seats, picking up an additional 19 state chambers for a total of 55 (with New York’s state sensate results still pending). This will also have a profound impact on next year’s congressional redistricting, as such boundary determinations generally favor the party in power.
So, it’s no leap of the imagination to refer to the 2010 election, in the words of President Obama, as a “shellacking.”
Yet, despite such Republican landslide victories, it was found in exit polls that hardly any voters “have a favorable view of either the Democrat or Republican parties.” (“Exit poll: Economy dominant issue for voters,” Associated Press, Nov. 2nd.)
Given the data, only one conclusion is possible: the American electorate was not voting for the Republicans, but against the half-socialist, half-fascist agenda of the Democrats. Not the same thing, and the ramifications for the Republicans are far-reaching indeed.
For, in the same way that the Russian people rejected the Reds in 1917 but found no affirmative political manifesto in regard to the Whites, America’s electorate has yet to find any positive articulation on the part of Republicans in regard to what they are for.
And, in Russia, the Reds ultimately won – for they had an agenda and the Whites did not.
In order to gain the respect and support of the American people, therefore, it is now the job of the Republicans to present such a positive articulation. Which is going to be difficult at best, since the Republicans are nearly as responsible as the Democrats for the creation of the “welfare” state now busily bankrupting the country. Which explains why so many of us have such a negative view of them.
And the fact is, the country simply cannot take any more of the stupidity that both Democrats and Republicans have been engaging in for decades. With our national debt piling up into the trillions, our economic performance grinding to a halt and the dollar becoming more worthless every day, we no longer have the luxury of fooling ourselves into believing that half-pregnancies are possible. The statist snowball, once small, slow-moving and way off at the top of the mountain, has grown exponentially in mass and speed as it has plundered its way down into the valley, and is now in the process of flattening the entire country.
What America truly needs, and what it is that Republicans truly need to stand for, is the social system that made our nation great in the first place: capitalism. Not “crony” or “bankster” capitalism, which is really just fascism in disguise, but the real McCoy – true, honest, red-blooded free-market capitalism, the kind with real hair on its chest, as in:
– An abolition of the Federal Reserve;
– a return to a gold-based dollar;
– huge cuts in taxes, huger cuts in “welfare state” spending and budgetary surpluses;
– a re-privatization of key industries such as energy, transportation and education;
– an end to our stupid, stifling regulatory nightmare; meaningful and property-rights-based tort reform; and a restoration of our national defense along protective, not invasive, lines.
For starters.
So, Republican “winners” – think you’re up to the task? Here’s your last chance to win our trust. And you’d better not blow it – for if you do, the fate of the Whites will be ours as well.
Bradley Harrington is a former U.S. Marine and a writer who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming; he blogs at www.timeforeverymantostir.blogspot.com
