Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Who's calling whom arrogant?
According to liberal logic, Republicans should act like losers when they lose and act like losers when they win. President Bush, having run on an agenda of staying the course in Iraq, making his tax cuts permanent, and injecting a measure of private ownership in the Social Security system, should abandon all three goals.
David Limbaugh: I'm struck by the irony of the liberal punditry warning Republicans not to interpret their sweeping victories as a mandate because such "arrogance" could lead to a voter backlash.
In the very process of obsessing over what Republicans might do and become in the future, liberals are blinding themselves to what they have already done and become.
They are lecturing Republicans about copping an arrogant attitude when they are so deeply steeped in one themselves they can't accurately interpret their own reflection in the election mirror.
A recent Chicago Tribune headline reads: "Beware perils of overreaching, GOP is warned. Analysts say agenda could backfire." The article quotes Illinois Democratic Congressman and former Clinton insider Rahm Emanuel as saying, "If you don't think you are going to be accountable and there are no consequences for what you do, it'll lead to overreaching."
For a while I thought some liberals were beginning to grasp that for now, at least, they are the ones who are out of step with the American people; they are the ones who ought to be engaging in self-evaluation rather than projecting their losses onto Republicans.
But they still don't get it. They can't get past the political gamesmanship of it all -- an indelible stain on their psyche from the Clinton years. In their mind's eye the election results were all about political strategy and packaging rather than the merits of the issues -- about form over substance.
Happily, the liberals' failure to come to terms with their own predicament is leading them to put all their future hopes on Republicans imploding rather than making the necessary adjustments to make their own message more palatable, in substance not just appearance, to the voters.
I'm not one who believes the election is definitive proof of a major voter realignment, but if liberals continue to delude themselves by diagnosing Republicans as the ones who are arrogant rather than themselves, who knows what the future holds?
According to liberal logic, Republicans should act like losers when they lose and act like losers when they win. President Bush, having run on an agenda of staying the course in Iraq, making his tax cuts permanent, and injecting a measure of private ownership in the Social Security system, should abandon all three goals.
David Limbaugh: I'm struck by the irony of the liberal punditry warning Republicans not to interpret their sweeping victories as a mandate because such "arrogance" could lead to a voter backlash.
In the very process of obsessing over what Republicans might do and become in the future, liberals are blinding themselves to what they have already done and become.
They are lecturing Republicans about copping an arrogant attitude when they are so deeply steeped in one themselves they can't accurately interpret their own reflection in the election mirror.
A recent Chicago Tribune headline reads: "Beware perils of overreaching, GOP is warned. Analysts say agenda could backfire." The article quotes Illinois Democratic Congressman and former Clinton insider Rahm Emanuel as saying, "If you don't think you are going to be accountable and there are no consequences for what you do, it'll lead to overreaching."
For a while I thought some liberals were beginning to grasp that for now, at least, they are the ones who are out of step with the American people; they are the ones who ought to be engaging in self-evaluation rather than projecting their losses onto Republicans.
But they still don't get it. They can't get past the political gamesmanship of it all -- an indelible stain on their psyche from the Clinton years. In their mind's eye the election results were all about political strategy and packaging rather than the merits of the issues -- about form over substance.
Happily, the liberals' failure to come to terms with their own predicament is leading them to put all their future hopes on Republicans imploding rather than making the necessary adjustments to make their own message more palatable, in substance not just appearance, to the voters.
I'm not one who believes the election is definitive proof of a major voter realignment, but if liberals continue to delude themselves by diagnosing Republicans as the ones who are arrogant rather than themselves, who knows what the future holds?
