This week will be devoted to any number of questions raised--and some tentatively answered--by the tremendously encouraging November 2 results. Why is this necessary?
For one thing, there is a fierce counter-offensive by pro-abortion Democrats and various of their buddies in the "mainstream media" to misrepresent and minimize President Bush's against-all-odds victory. We'll try to straighten out various crooked accounts.
For another, there are going to brutal battles in the upcoming 109th Congress, impelled by an almost claustrophobic sense on the part of pro-abortionists that the electoral walls are closing in. They have made their bed with the most unrelenting abortion-now-and-forever crowd and they are paying the price for being on the wrong side of history.
Tomorrow, we'll begin to get in to many nitty-gritty details. Today I'll offer a couple of quick reflections on President Bush's 51% to 48% victory. There are two basic ways to analyze this.
First, let's look at the "positive" dimension. As William Kristol wrote in the Weekly Standard, "On November 2, 2004, George W. Bush won more American votes than any other presidential candidate in history--8 million more than he won in 2000, as a matter of fact. He was the first presidential candidate since 1988 to win more than 50 percent of the popular vote. He was the first incumbent since 1964 to win reelection while simultaneously expanding his party's representation in both houses of Congress. He had coattails, in other words; Republicans were elected to no fewer than six Senate seats that had previously been occupied by Democrats, for example, and in all six of those states, Bush ran well ahead of the rest of his party's ticket.â€
Writing in the Los Angles Times this morning, Ronald Brownstein both laid out the dimensions of the Bush victory and half-heartedly attempted to minimize his triumph. But the operative paragraph was extremely insightful:
"In all, Bush increased his margin of victory in 20 of the 30 states he won last time and reduced the Democratic margin in 11 of the 20 states he lost in 2000. With turnout surging, he won more popular votes than any of his predecessors."
Then there's looking at the elections from the "negative" side--what Bush had to overcome. Brownstein noted that Bush “attracted this support in a difficult climate marked by an uneven economic performance at home and a grueling war in Iraq." But while true, this doesn't begin to touch on the other tremendous hurdles President Bush had to overcome.
Writing on his blog this morning, Hugh Hewitt pointed out, "President Bush won in the face of the most intense opposition an incumbent has ever faced, and in the face of a huge, super-funded 527 effort against him. He won with nearly all of the MSM [Mainstream Media] arrayed against him..." That Mr. Bush carried 286 electoral votes in the face of vicious opposition which would stop at nothing is a tribute to his principled stands on issues such as abortion, and his uncanny political skills.
More tomorrow. In the meanwhile, I hope you'll drop me an email with your thoughts.
This week will be devoted to any number of questions raised--and some tentatively answered--by the tremendously encouraging November 2 results. Why is this necessary?