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Tuesday, September 07, 2010
What the Pollsters,
Pols, and
Pundits Can't Quite Figure Out
Pundits Can't Quite Figure Out
It's called gridlock. And at the moment it's the American Dream.
CLARIFICATION. They're all experiencing consternation, poor dears. Why are so many people planning to vote Republican in the fall even though the same polls that tell us this also tell us people still don't trust Republicans any farther than they could throw Denny Hastert if he were still around?
The Dems think this represents a ray of hope for them. The Repubs think this means America is waiting to hear which particular government activist plan they would propose in place of Obama's socialist jihad. The pundits think it means Americans are all confused and everything.
Calm down, everybody. They're all wrong. There's an easy answer that doesn't require any political science maven to discern. The American people are foursquare (110 percent, to use an appropriately cliched sports metaphor) in favor of at least two years of gridlock.
THEY WANT IT ALL TO STOP. They want the whole insane Washington circus to grind to a screeching halt. It's the ultimate limited government statement they're planning to make. The government which does the least does the least harm. And if you don't trust anyone to do little harm, what do you do? You follow Newtonian physics. The exorbitantly destructive force of the Obama agenda has to be counter-balanced by an equal and opposite force -- an obstructionist Republican congress. When that is achieved, neither side will be able to do much of anything, which buys an exhausted electorate two years to think things over.
That's the most they think they can expect or should want for now. They don't want Dems to make the debt and deficit worse with more spending. They don't want Repubs to make the debt and deficit worse with reflexive tax cuts. This election is not about a mandate either way. The plan is that nobody really wins for once but the American people.
Which means both parties, and every single national politician on the stage, win or lose in November, are on ultra-double-secret probation till 2012. I don't care how many seats change hands or don't, or what interpretation the pundits impose on the final 2010 numbers. My election analysis is already the right one, the only one that fits the facts and the mood of the country. Everything the government has done with the economy for the last eight years, at least, has done nothing but make things worse.
The people, in their infinitely ignorant brilliance, have decided that what's needed is for the government to stop doing things so things will stop getting worse. So they'll elect some kind of Republican firewall against Obama's nutty delusions, and that doesn't have to mean they're turning Republican for more than one day in November. They're not deciding the game. They're trying desperately to return to Square One so they can start over. There are no contradictions or paradoxes to be sniffed out here. It all makes perfect sense. Unlike everything that's been happening in Washington, DC, for, well, a long time now.
Any part of this you don't understand, O you inside-the-beltway geniuses? Does this change any of the advice you're presently giving to Democrats and Republicans? It should. But it won't. The right advice is just as unacceptable to the self-proclaimed illuminati as the idea that the American people are smarter than all of you.
The
right campaign platform for both parties in 2010.
Told you you wouldn't like it.
