The Washington Times featured an interesting post election analysis that showed that Republican Senators gave far less money to struggling candidates than did Democrats. I believe that this is relatively true in the House races as well. It was not that they soberly calculated that they were going to lose in a landslide and decided not to throw good money after bad. They just threw their candidates, who were within fractions of a percentage point of winning, under the bus. Why?
I wonder if this is a symptom of a fundamental “survival of the fittest” instinct among Republicans – Colleagues and constituents just have to suck it up and get it done without aid or bailouts. This seems to be one explanation why conservatives raided the Treasury with a massive increase in Earmarks and no-bid contracts in Iraq and New Orleans. I sometimes wonder if the War in Iraq was merely a payback to the business interests of the Military-Industrial Complex. It seems to me that they did all of this because they could.
Alpha Males in Congress (like Tom Delay) manipulated rules to avoid accountability for questionable ethics, Pay-go rules were suspended to allow the country to go further into debt while cutting taxes to the rich, most of whom support the GOP. If Democrats and the disadvantaged were ignored, that was just tough. It almost seemed like a mob mentality. Normally wholesome people like Senator Frist and Speaker Hastert got swept up in the feeding frenzy. Even moderate Senator Chafee admits that he did not stand up to the frenzy of power because he didn’t want to risk damaging the interests of Rhode Island.
This disappoints me because I believe that power corrupts and the Democrats also can easily fall back under its spell. But the GOP does not seem to be preparing to make a credible effort to convince moderate voters that they can collaborate, cooperate and govern. Their plan, as far as I can tell, is to thwart Democratic progress.
Meanwhile, I received an email recently from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee asking me about my priorities and if I had any suggestions to them for keeping and expanding their control of Congress.
That’s the way to court moderates.
Born 1950, Married, Living in Austin Texas, Semi
Retired Small Business owner and investor. My political interest
evolved out of his business experience that the best decisions come out of an objective gathering of information and a pragmatic consideration of costs and benefits. I am interested in promoting Centrist candidates and Policies. My posts are mostly about people and policies that I believe are part of the solution rather the problem.