To celebrate Thanksgiving, FrumForum asked our contributors to share what they are most thankful for politically this year. Former Bush administration appointee Zac Morgan is thankful that 2010 saw the tea party’s worst candidates smacked down by voters.? Shawn Summers is grateful the GOP’s “party of no” phase may finally be over.? Blogger John Guardiano looks overseas and is thankful to find Obama recommitted to winning the war in Afghanistan.? Two contributors looked at the bigger picture: Heartland Institute’s Eli Lehrer is thankful for divided government while Fox Business News analyst Brad Schaeffer is grateful for our electoral system.? Joe Marier is just relieved the midterms are finally over, while FF contributor and Johns Hopkins student Rachel Ryan is (sort of) thankful for the Dems’ health reform bill…
This year, I’m politically thankful for a return to divided government. I’m not expecting a reign of Republican sunshine and light (although, of course, as The Simpsons teach, Republicans live in haunted castles anyway) but I’m looking forward to a Congress that, after lots of nastiness, actually manages to pass some incremental legislation to move the country in the right direction.? (Fixes to Obamacare and spending cuts should top the list.) One party control under either party often results in big new programs intended to buy votes. Divided government with a Democratic President and Republican Congress, has actually tended to shrink government. Republicans are given to busting the defense budget and Democrats to upping domestic spending in every category.?? With one party controlling the executive and the other the legislature, overall spending restraint becomes a lot more feasible.
Even though my single-most favored candidate—outgoing Florida CFO Alex Sink, the only Democrat I’ve supported as a grownup—lost in a very narrow election for governor of Florida, I’m very pleased with the outcome of the election. Sink’s victory could have moved the Democratic Party in a decidedly pro-market direction; but it was not to be. And that may be just as well; both parties can’t really be just the same.? The defeats of Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle give a stern warning to members of the Republican Party who put conservative lip service above ability.
On balance, I’m feeling good about the Republican Party and conservative movement. Sure, Republican voters have elected a few crazies, haters, and others unqualified to be in Congress. (But that happens in every “wave” election.) Once the adrenalin of the campaign trail fades and party leadership safely locks away whichever members of the current class turn out to be the most insane,? Republicans will be able to get down to the bargaining table and drive the necessary hard bargains with President Obama. It isn’t going to be pretty. But it will sure be interesting and, I believe, good for the country.
- Eli Lehrer is a Senior Fellow and National Director for the Heartland Institute
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While I unfortunately didn’t get my election wish – Pat Toomey held on to his crumbling lead and managed to win the Pennsylvania Senate election with 51.6% of the vote – I am still nevertheless thankful for the outcome of this election season. Not merely that many Republicans won their races, but that (mostly) the right sort of Republicans did. Both Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell, neither of whom should have won an election for dogcatcher, let alone senator, went down in ignominious defeat.
I am hopeful that Speaker Boehner (a sure improvement over Speaker Pelosi) will rein in some of the bad instincts of Tea Party-affiliated freshmen and negotiate a positive agenda in good faith with the Democrats in the Senate and White House. Similarly, I’m grateful that the 2010 election must mark the end of the GOP’s post-2008 “party of (hell) no” phase. Though a cynical Republican leadership could use the GOP hold on the House and not the Senate as an excuse to throw up endless accountability-free obstruction, no one should be taken in if a GOP-controlled House digs in its heels and tries to blame Democrats for grinding down the wheels of government. Voters have given the Republican Party a temporary and easily revoked second chance, and will expect results. If they don’t get them, 2012 will arrive uncomfortably soon for the newly empowered GOP.
- Shawn F. Summers is an editorial assistant at FrumForum and an undergraduate at Georgetown University
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Whatever you think about the Democrats’ health reform bill, as a soon-to-be college graduate still hoping to bag a job, I’m politically thankful for being able to freeload off of my parents’ health insurance for the next five years!
- Rachel Ryan is a reporter for FrumForum and a student of political science at Johns Hopkins University
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I’m thankful for two things:
First, that Californians said no sale to the rearview-mirror energy bromides peddled by the proponents of Proposition 23, which would have killed the state’s law capping greenhouse gas emissions and dried up the inflow of capital for building up the state’s cleantech industries. Two of the heroes of the successful campaign to squash Prop. 23 were a fired-up Arnold Schwarzenegger, who went on a rhetorical tear against fossil fuel interests in order to protect his legacy, and George Shultz, President Reagan’s secretary of state, who harkened back to the Gipper’s confidence in the power of American innovation to fix big problems.
Also, I’m thankful Lisa Murkowski plowed Joe Miller under in a come-from-behind write-in victory. That feat should earn Lisa an asterisk in the history books that will make for a fun trivia contest answer a century from now. More importantly for those of us alive today, Murkowski blocked the Senate door to Miller, the gaffe-prone, thin-skinned fount of goofball notions who had no business sitting in what is still – for all its institutional dysfunction of late – the world’s greatest deliberative body. And the delicious dessert of this Thanksgiving feast is that Lisa smoked an acolyte of Sarah Palin in the Quitter’s backyard.
- Jim DiPeso is Vice-President for Communications of Republicans for Environmental Protection
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I’m thankful the GOP managed to elect Mark Kirk in Illinois and I still hold out hope that he and Susan Collins can form a true GOP “Mod Squad” in the Senate. I have also been encouraged to see that Scott Brown is making news again by?cooperating?with Sen. Ron Wyden on a possible fix to the individual mandate. We all of course know what happened to the last GOP Senator who tried to work across the aisle with Wyden, but I commend the serious approach to policy being shown.
I am also thankful to see that Sharron Angle crashed and burned in Nevada because she ran a terrible campaign. (As Politico explained in this?post-mortem). While it is a shame that Harry Reid will return to the Senate, it’s reassuring to know that in some cases, truly terrible candidates failed in their efforts to be elected, even in an anti-incumbency wave election.
- Noah Kristula-Green is an editor at FrumForum
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What I am thankful for is that the integrity of the American electoral system, warts and all, once again showed its resilience on November 2.? Not because of the results of the elections per se, although I do think we took a step in the right direction after a frightening dalliance with already historically failed systems/theories.? Rather, I?am in awe of my country?because the long tradition of peaceful transfer of power that has sustained us since Washington willingly resigned his commission to Congress in Annapolis in 1783 was upheld yet again.
Such changes in the guard sans bloodshed and mayhem we take for granted… but the long violent history of mankind shows that we are the exception, not the rule.? It is an amazing act of solidarity that a nation so large, so diverse, so powerful has maintained this Enlightenment era tradition—even as the world at large often burned around us.
So I am thankful for the Framers who in their wisdom designed a system that though imperfect still works over two centuries later.? And I am thankful for the American people who have in the end, despite our squabbling and sometimes confrontational overtones, despite fringe groups on both sides who distort the national debate, maintained faith in the?process that places the ballot box over the cartridge box and once again accepted the verdict of the electorate as the final authority — grudgingly for many, but ultimately and unequivocally for the good of all.
- Brad Schaeffer is co-founder and CEO of INFA Energy Brokers, LLC and an energy analyst to Fox Business News
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For reform-minded conservatives such as myself, it’s easy to get despondent, because there’s always so much that has to be done, but which isn’t getting done because of entrenched, bureaucratic interests.
So it is important to give thanks at least once a year for what has been achieved: because we conservatives do have a lot to be thankful for. Herewith, then, is my list:
(1)? President Obama’s Cautious and Deliberative Nature. Yes, Obama’s a liberal Democrat who campaigned as an anti-war candidate. But Obama also is an extremely cautious and careful man not prone to reckless and rash decision-making. Thus he has wisely refrained from closing Guantanamo Bay and, more importantly, refrained from abruptly withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
In fact, Obama has significantly increased the number of troops in Afghanistan and, to everyone’s surprise, seems committed to winning the war there. Indeed, American troops, he declared last week in Lisbon, Portugal, will remain in Iraq and Afghanistan for many years to come in order to conduct counterterrorism operations.
For his cautious and deliberative nature, and for wisely heeding the advice and counsel of his military advisers — especially Generals Petraeus and McChrystal re Iraq and Afghanistan — all Americans should give thanks and praise this holiday season. We are all safer and more secure as a result.
(2)? The Republican House of Representatives. Two years ago the political cognoscenti were discounting the Republican Party as a spent political force with no real future. Yet, 62 House seats later, the GOP has scored the biggest Congressional gain in 62 years.
Sure, the Republicans still have myriad problems to overcome. But their stunning victory has reshaped the political landscape and put the far left on the defensive.
That in itself is a major achievement and something for which all Americans should be thankful: Because without their House majority, the Left won’t be able to initiate and push destructive legislative proposals such as “comprehensive national health insurance.” For at least the next two years, then, the far left will be left out. Hallelujah!
(3)? Supreme Court Justices Antonia Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. The state and federal judiciary are major political battlegrounds, unfortunately, and ones which ought to worry all conservatives. Left-wing judges and left-wing justices, after all, are bound and determined to usurp the political prerogatives of the people and their elected representatives.
They first must contend, however, with four of the most intellectually formidable Supreme Court justices ever to grace the high court.
Justice Scalia is the supreme and unrivaled leader of the Constitutionalists and an intellectual force of nature unto himself. And although Scalia and the Constitutionalists lose a disconcerting number of cases by an excruciating 5-4 margin, they nonetheless have had, and continue to have, a profound effect on the court’s jurisprudence — as well as a profound effect on the political and legal dialogue in America. And for that we can and should give thanks.
- John Guardiano served as a Marine in Iraq and once worked on the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) modernization program. He blogs at www.ResoluteCon.com (www.twitter.com/JohnRGuardiano)
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While 2012 remains a bit of a mash-up, as a young conservative I am thankful that the Republican bench looks to be coalescing around a promising crop of figures who could significantly emerge for 2016.
While 2010 was surely the year of the Tea Party, for better or worse the tectonic shifts in the Party have planted seeds for a very promising new generation of Republican office holders. The shining star is Marco Rubio, but Kelly Ayotte, Susana Martinez, Scott Brown, Brian Sandoval and the continuing emergence of Paul Ryan can all go a long way toward re-establishing the Party as the big tent in American politics. I’m thankful that 2010’s conservative chaos yielded what may ultimately turn out to be positive long-term results.
- Corey Chambliss is a government research analyst in New York
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Rand Paul’s victory in the Senate race in Kentucky fulfilled my unenthusiastic pre-election wish, which was driven by aversion to Paul’s opponent, the guy with the Aqua Buddha commercial.
One thing I’m thankful for politically is that the Intelligent Design movement remains politically moribund, five years after the landmark Kitzmiller decision ruled ID a form of creationism that has no place in public-school science classes. Yes, there are still skirmishes at textbook boards and local school boards as creationists try to insert anti-evolutionism under the guise of “academic freedom” without offering a theologically based alternative. Overall, though, public-school science classes have been confirmed as places where science is taught.
And yes, the abovementioned Rand Paul declined to comment on the age of the Earth during the election campaign. Fortunately, it’s a topic Sen. Paul doesn’t need to know much about.
- Kenneth Silber is a senior editor at?Research, a magazine for financial advisors, and blogs at Quicksilber
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I am thankful for the chastisement of the Tea Party movement by the voters of Colorado, Nevada, and Delaware. ?Those races illustrated that even in the most desperate of times, in the biggest Republican wave in at least half a century (and at all levels: federal, state, local), candidates who promote “Evil U.N.” conspiracy theories or think citizens may soon need to consider “Second Amendment remedies” will not be accepted.
Granted, we need to see if that temperance holds. ?Another two years of economic near-depression could lower the threshold for pulling the lever for less stable candidates. ?For now, a message was sent on election day: Yes, we don’t like the President’s policies, but we also want people who are serious about governing. ?This is a good message. ?As a bonus, the obliteration of the Angle and O’Donnell campaigns was a rebuke to the Jim DeMints of the world: it exposed the message of ideological purity as a recipe for permanent minority.
While I would have preferred the Republicans to win, this message of “Be serious!”, if the party listens, will help us build a lasting conservative majority.
Sadly, my midterm wish (the defeat of Jim Moran) did not happen, and given the economic conditions of Virginia’s 8th (pretty damn good), had no real chance. ?Maybe someday!
- Zac Morgan is a former Bush Administration political appointee and is currently attending George Mason University School of Law
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I am thankful that the Republicans outperformed my expectations in the House.
I am thankful that the voters of the North Carolina 2nd Congressional District deigned to honor the only (tiny) donation I made this year, and elected Renee Ellmers as their new congresswoman.
I am thankful that we were all disappointed that we didn’t gain 9 Senate seats.
And finally, I am thankful that the 2010 midterms are over. Except for those recounts…
- T. Joseph Marier blogs at Going Noble.
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