California Conservative

Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter’s column on Rahm Emanuel misses the point when he talks about nationalizing the ‘94 elections:

In 1994, the big issue powering the Gingrich Revolution was widespread dislike of Clinton.

That played a part in the revolution but it was hardly the thing. More than anything else, 1994’s revolution was spurred by Newt’s vision, something that the Democrats sorely lacked. The truth is that this result started in 1978 when the late great Pat Moynihan admitted that Democrats stopped being the party of ideas. It simply took time, Ronald Reagan’s friendly demeanor and Newt’s challenging governing theories left and right to finish the transaction.

Another factor in 1994 was the rash of major scandals that told Middle America that Washington didn’t play by the same rules that they did. When they heard about the abuses in the House Bank and House Post Office, most people were appalled. The fact that they could write checks to the House Bank when they knew they didn’t have sufficient funds in them without risk of getting a single overdraft charge made the ’special privileges card’ stick.

Once that stuck, it was easy to characterize Democrats, Tom Foley among them, easy prey. Once Newt’s crew found that opening, they exploited it by showing the corruption in the House Judiciary Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee, especially focusing on Dan Rostenkowski’s ethical challenges. They became poster children for people out of touch with ‘Joe Sixpack.’

By contrast, people aren’t appalled at the NSA ’scandal’ because they just see President Bush doing his utmost to protect them from some very dangerous people. It connects with their wishes. Similarly, people aren’t appalled that they haven’t found WMD’s because they believe Bush acted in good faith. (By the way stay tuned to breaking developments as I look at the translations of the ISG tapes.)

These are scandals only inside the Beltway. Most people living in the Heartland understand the difference between scamming people and making honest mistakes. That’s where Democrats go wrong. Democrats see scandal written all over these things, which means that they’re out of touch with Joe Sixpack again. That’s Rahm’s biggest obstacle to overcome, something that he shouldn’t be expected to do.

In the end, that’s what will doom them in November.

Cross-post at LetFreedomRing

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 19th, 2006 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Domestic Policies, Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.