Scott Withycombe
Perspectives Assistant
Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., said it best when in his scathing book he declared that the Democratic Party is “a national party no more.” The truth of that simple phrase became quite apparent Nov. 2 when President George W. Bush comfortably earned a second term — winning 51 percent of the popular vote and capturing 286 electoral votes. Couple this stunning electoral victory for the president with significant gains in both houses of Congress for the Republicans and the defeat of Democrat Sen. Minority Leader Tom Daschle, and the message is quite clear: the Democratic Party, the Party of Michael Moore, George Soros and Howard Dean, is dead.
This should come as no surprise. Anyone who believes that hardworking, tax paying, decent American citizens politically align themselves with Whoopi Goldberg, Paul Newman and Jon Bon Jovi is out of his or her mind. Americans, at least the majority of those living east of the California coastline and south or west of New England, have values and ideals not shared by the far-left wing that has dominated Democratic politics in recent elections. The polls after the Nov. 2 election clearly point to this fact. Americans are value voters and in America traditional values rule.
The left has responded to the rebuking they received from America last week by using the same tactics that helped the DNC lose significantly in the past two national elections. Left-wing lunatics like Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd and Molly Ivins, who, along with the rest of the major media establishment, have been waging a war against President Bush since his election in 2000, are joining their liberal buddies in Europe in chastising the “crazy, religious” voters in America and their dunce of a president. It is too bad Americans cannot vote them off The New York Times’ editorial staff. Perhaps they should wise up to the fact that this “dunce” president cleaned their clocks in spite of all they threw at him, including reporting on falsified documents about his National Guard service, delivering misinformation about “missing” armaments in Iraq and leaking misleading exit polls early in the campaign.
There is so much hate in the Democratic Party, for Bush and for the people who voted for him, that it is killing their ability to effectively campaign and govern. Rather than clearly defining their policies and effectively connecting with voters, Democrats have spent the past four years berating Bush.
They have called him stupid, making fun of both the way he talks and the way he walks. They complain about how he is not as enlightened as his European counterparts and how his direct style of addressing issues is not sensitive or modern. They criticize his religious nature, calling it unsophisticated and dangerous. They talk about how abortion is an absolute constitutional right and yet they call the death penalty cruel and unusual. They despise people who like guns and applaud people who burn flags. They talk of social and economic classes and how there are two Americas. In all of this they forget about middle-America. They forget about the traditional values of both the Party and the nation and about moderation and the spirit of cooperation.
The problem is that “they” are not the ones voting in either the Democratic or the Republican Party. While there certainly are extreme voters in the Democratic Party, the traditional base is not in the far left-wing, creating an interesting disconnect between the Party’s public faces and talking heads and its average voters.
The Democratic Party leadership must distance itself from these left-wing zealots who are creating a value gap between where voters perceive the party to be and where its actual platform is. Democratic leadership must move away from the politics of Hollywood and the Op-Ed page of The New York Times and back to the middle where the real politics of America play out.
Of course, the Democratic Party will not totally disappear if it does not moderate or take some time to reconnect with America. Rather, it faces becoming an opposition party, much like the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom has become since Labour under Tony Blair developed a platform that connected with the needs and ideals of a vast majority of Britons.
While the election sends a strong message to the Democratic Party concerning the radicalization of their politics and the need to reform, it sends an equally clear message to the Republicans who now find themselves in power. While Nov. 2 marked a significant political realignment in the United States and granted the GOP a stunning mandate to rule, the Republican Party must look at what has happened to the DNC and recognize that Americans politically live in the middle of the road and extreme politics will land them in the dog house.
It is my hope that in pushing the agenda America elected him to pursue, Bush will not forget the spirit of compromise, that he will not neglect Democratic voice and that he will not allow the Party to become dominated by the far-right ideologues that have been waiting in the wings of the Republican Party for the opportunity to enjoy prime-time coverage.
Voters have given the GOP a chance to change America — to cut taxes and stimulate growth, to strengthen national defense, to improve public education and, most importantly, to put on the bench Supreme Court Justices that will faithfully and strictly apply the Constitution. The Republicans must take note of what happened in this election and not betray the values and the voters that got them elected.
11-11-2004
