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| 5 Myths About an Election of Mythic Proportions |
| 2008-11-18 |
| By Chris Cillizza The 2008 presidential election ended less than two weeks ago, but the mythmaking machine has already begun to churn. President-elect Barack Obama transformed the face of the electorate! The Republican Party will be a miserable minority in Congress for the next century! Cats and dogs are now living together! Below we explode the five biggest myths that have already sprung up around the election that was. 1. The Republican Party suffered a death blow. There's no question that losing six Senate seats and 24 House seats (not to mention the White House) wasn't a step forward for the Grand Old Party. But there are two good reasons to believe that Republicans will be back on their feet sooner than many people expect. First, much of the Republicans' permanent political class has concluded that electing Sen. John McCain as president would have amounted to applying a Band-Aid to a gaping wound. Given the state of the party -- bereft of a signature new idea and without many fresh faces -- plenty of Republican operatives have come to subscribe to what I'd call the Ra's al Ghul theory of rebuilding: Ghul, a villain in the movie "Batman Begins," advocates destroying the city of Gotham to rebuild it from the ground up. "It is beyond saving and must be allowed to die," he says -- a sentiment echoed by many Republicans these days, who argue that hitting rock bottom was the only way to allow new faces and ideas to emerge. |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #4 That's a really good point, JosephM. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-11-18 22:48 |
| #3 It's the exact same slander, Verlaine, not merely connected: the besliming of those who sacrifice to protect and serve the rest of us instead of choosing to advance only themselves. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-11-18 22:39 |
| #2 Mccain was also not helped by the angst of many Arizona and SW US Voters on the steady rise and influx of illegals into the region, as coupled wid the "virtual border/border fence" fracas = voter-perceived lack of willingness on the part of Public Govt to even try to [seriously]stop the illegals. LOCALS > IFF MCCAIN, RICHARDSON, + OTHER POLS CAN'T RESOLVE SERIOUS PROBS OR ISSUES AFFECTING THEIR OWN AREAS, HOW CAN THEY PER THE NATION AND WORLD? This kind of Voter anger played well to the already anti-Dubya/GOP MSM. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-11-18 22:34 |
| #1 Perhaps a quibble, but the "8 years of the Bush administration" were so bad they produced Bush's re-election and an atypical pick-up in House seats during his first mid-term election. So it wasn't 8 years - it was 1 or 2, maybe 2.5, starting in 2005. Plus, gotta love this MSMer casually referring to the "poisonous" atmosphere facing the GOP. Gee, guy, who do you think was responsible for a major part of that poison? For all of Bush's failings (limited, but important), and his utter and inexplicable refusal to defend or explain his policies or, really, engage in politics while in office, it is the outlandish distortion and bias of the media that are the more important and more enduring problem. We're now essentially conducting an experiment on how a modern democratic society operates when it has limited access to accurate information or analysis. First result - the empty suit president-elect. Aside from all that, the treatment of Bush by the media, and more broadly by the society (and not just the cultural or educational swamps - but the electorate), has been a contemptible and inexcusable thing, and has forever changed my feeling about the country. And I'd argue you can't separate the casual and despicable slander of Bush by so many public figures from the ease with which our military is slimed and insulted. |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2008-11-18 21:42 |