Anyone who is unclear on this point should compare the hopefulness of many online conservatives and libertarians with the sobering election odds displayed on Intrade. Republicans may score big gains in the coming election cycles, but they may not. And even if they win big there is no guarantee that they will behave better in office than they did during the Bush years. Meanwhile the Left, having rampaged through the universities and media, is now very deliberately restructuring the federal bureaucracies and writing legislation whose destructive effects won’t be fully apparent for years. You can bet that the inept Loony Left appointees who have garnered public attention are only the tip of the iceberg. Thousands of others, less flamboyant but equally committed, are doing their best behind the scenes to entrench themselves in power and make it difficult for their ideological opponents to reverse the changes.
5 thoughts on “Conservative Overconfidence”
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I have no sense that the current irritation with the Donks translates into much liking for the GOP. I sense a populism that has no clear center, and which detests both parties. If that is so, then the Ds will stay in control, and the anger will be directionless and ineffective.
Very true.
Two days ago I spent 4 hours on a seminar about new local Energy codes most likely coming into effect in January. The lecturer stumbles for a second while displaying slides about Global Warming on his prepared PowerPOint presentation – but only for a moment. “The oceans are rising, despite some inconsistencies with data”, he said,- “so this new code is very timely and in accordance with Mayor Bloomberg’ pledge to bring the city to Zero Emissions in 2030”.
They go full speed ahead, they do.
I’m a former republican with no liking for the present leadership of the GOP. But I think dissatisfaction with the present government will quite likely end up with a lot more votes going to the opposition which right now happens to be the republican party. My guess is that the GOP will do much better in 2010 than most people suspect- in fact I think they could even get control of congress. But whether or not they will know what to do that success is another question.
My guess is that they will continue to f*%k up. Hey, I hope I’m wrong about that. But I’ve been waiting a long time to be impressed- and I haven’t been.
If the GOP takes over congress after the failure of the democrats and botches it- then the public might well be left with no mainstream choice at all.
I’d rather not speculate about what would happen after that.
The Tea Party people I know are pretty libertarian. There was an interesting You Tube video of an interview with a tea party organizer in which the interviewer tried pretty hard to provoke him into “hard right” expressions but failed. I have searched Google and Dogpile but can’t find it. The best tactic for tea party people is to run for GOP committee seats and run in primaries. It remains to be seen if they are willing to do that.
I guess the appropriate response is prayer.