California Conservative

Let’s examine where the notion of a wave election originated. Here’s the first article that showed up when I googled “wave election articles”:

There’s probably no way congressional Republicans can lose this fall, no matter how unpopular President Bush is or how unhappy the voters are with the war in Iraq. That’s the prevailing view in Washington today.
But it’s wrong.
If history is any guide, we’re heading into a major political storm. And that means we could see a national tide in November that will sweep the Democrats back into the majority.

The article, written by Thomas Mann, bases this impending ‘wave’ on “history”. He didn’t even have the confidence to say that it will happen. He could only must up a “we could see a national tide in November…” That sounds awfully speculative, doesn’t it? That article was dated “Sunday, July 16, 2006″.

Let’s see if we can detect a media ‘wave’ building. We needn’t look further than Larry Sabato’s foggy Crystal Ball ‘readings’:

But now, with a quarter of time elapsed between that pulse-reading and the election, surer signs are emerging that something more substantial than a “micro-wave” is heating up this summer. Historical trends and big picture indicators, generic congressional ballot tests and approval ratings of President Bush’s job performance in particular, have always been heavily stacked against the GOP in this “sixth year itch” cycle, but aggregations of more race-specific indicators are now suggesting that Republicans are headed for their most serious midterm losses in decades.

That report is dated August 3, 2006. Notice the flimsy things Sabato bases this opinion on: “Historical trends and big picture indicators, generic congressional ballot tests and approval ratings of President Bush’s job performance”.

Historical trends weren’t a good predictor in 2002 or 2004. In fact, they were utterly unreliable. Which “big picture indicators” is Prof. Sabato talking about? The generic ballot? National moods? Those are utterly subjective. They’re also utterly unreliable predictors.

Let’s summarize the foundation that these articles are built on: Thomas Mann saying that a wave might happen and Larry Sabato relying on generic ballots and big picture indicators. Forgive me if I’m not persuaded by this ‘evidence’. Mssrs. Sabato and Mann should be ashamed of themselves for writing this junk. That type of ‘reasoning’ wouldn’t get a political science student a passing grade in demanding colleges.

Let’s fast forward to Sabato’s next offering:

But frontrunner challengers in primaries can feel the wrath, too: voters ultimately deep-sixed the bids of candidates whom retiring representatives Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), Joel Hefley (R-CO), Marty Sabo (D-MN), and Major Owens (D-NY) had endorsed (and in some cases hand-picked) to succeed them. When voters go wild, when they want to lash out, they can strike any available target. Since the Republicans control all federal branches, they will suffer most from the electorate’s surly mood, but no one is guaranteed an exemption.

Moderate Kolbe was replaced by Randy Graf, a conservative that the activists support. He’ll win going away. Why? because he’s a charter member of the Minutemen who won’t vote for amnesty for illegal aliens. Graf’s campaign website posted this slogan:

Send a Minuteman to Congress

That sells in AZ-8 because they’re overrun with illegal immigration issues. Gabrielle Gifford is supposedly walking away with this race. Again, the ‘conventional wisdom stupidity’ couldn’t be more wrong.

Minnesota’s DFL picked Keith Ellison over Mike Erlandson, Sabo’s hand-picked choice to succeed him. Erlandson is the former DFL state chairman and Sabo’s chief of staff. Meanwhile, Ellison’s been imbroiled in one scandal after another. Erlandson would’ve won walking away but Democrats did like the Palestinians: They didn’t miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

The moral of this is that candidates matter far more than “big picture indicators” and “historical trends.”

I’d suggest further that Mann’s and Sabato’s analysis is flawed in another aspect. I’d suggest that they’d do better if they heeded that House District’s demographics, the power of incumbency, cash on hand and the power of visceral issues like illegal immigration and preventing terrorist attacks, are better predictors than anything Mssrs. Mann and Sabato have suggested.

Conservatives were rebellious when President Bush sided with Ted Kennedy and John McCain on immigration (non)’reform’. Now that was a wave-sized rebellion. In fact, it’s likely to sweep Randy Graf into office and wash Bob Casey away. Those candidates that espouse support for the fence will do far better than those advocating ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ because voters know that ‘CIR’ is code for amnesty. Amnesty’s an issue that fails by a 70-30 or 80-20 margin.

What’s intriguing to me is that the articles keep coming in spite of a noticeable movement heading in the GOP’s direction:

“There will be a Democratic wave. It’s clearly going to be at least a medium wave, it might even be a high wave,” said political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia. Another prominent political analyst, Charlie Cook, has spoken of “a category five hurricane” that will likely strip the Republicans of their majority in the House of Representatives, unless the war in Iraq and various political scandals suddenly disappear from the news.

Actually, this article gives us a significant glimpse into a liberal’s mind. Consider this: Cook and Sabato think that the Foley fiasco and Iraq are the dominant issues. They aren’t even significant issues to the GOP. Topping that list are (in order of importance): National security/preventing terrorist attacks, illegal immigration, taxes and confirming President Bush’s judicial nominees. I’m talking often with my church friends and they’re telling me that ‘Foleygate’ won’t affect their vote. PERIOD.

Iraq and Foleygate are only important issues with the Nutroots idiots. That’s only a portion of the minority party. The last time I looked, you didn’t win wave elections with a sliver of the minority party ‘leading’ the way.

I hope that this ‘mini-timeline’ has helped establish the ‘credentials’ of this year’s ‘wave election’. After all, the Agenda Media created it out of thin air. The least I could do is ’save it’ for the history books.

Technorati Tags: Election 2006, Thomas Mann, Larry Sabato, Generic Ballot, Illegal Immigration, Demographics, Incumbency, Terrorism

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 22nd, 2006 at 2:54 am and is filed under Activism, Author: Gary Gross, Corruption, Elections, Homeland Security, Immigration, Iraq, Liberals, Terrorism. 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.