Ed Vitagliano
AFA Journal news editor
January 2011 – There was no doubt that the November midterm election was a big win for Republicans and a stinging defeat for Democrats.
Strictly by the numbers, the GOP took control of the House of Representatives by winning at least 60 seats (with some races, as of press time, still too close to call). It was one of the biggest turnovers of political power in that chamber in U.S. history.
In the Senate the results were less dramatic but still satisfying for the GOP: The Republicans slashed the Democrats’ lead by winning six seats. With only a 53-47 lead in the Senate, Democrats will certainly be denied the freedom to pass anything too radical – such as cap and trade legislation.
Moreover, on the state level there was a GOP tsunami. According to Monica Davey and Michael Luo of the New York Times, “Republicans gained more than 690 seats in state legislatures (leaving them with numbers last seen more than 80 years ago), at least 5 more governor seats, and, perhaps most significant, across-the-board power in the legislatures and governor’s offices of at least 20 states – more than twice as many as before the election.”
Such control on the state level will undoubtedly grant the GOP huge advantages when it comes to redistricting after 2010 Census information is released, as well as result in a plethora of state measures that will please cultural conservatives.
“Among the possibilities: a new flurry of proposed state prohibitions on abortion, same-sex marriage and illegal immigration,” said Davey and Luo.
All that being said, however, here are three reasons why Christians should keep working hard to restore America’s godly foundations.
▶ Voters were anti-incumbent, not pro-Republican
Conservatives who are smug over the political blowout might want to recall the triumphalism that followed the 2004 reelection of George Bush. After that victory, Republicans suffered two consecutive political disasters when Democrats won control of Congress in 2006, and in 2008 added to their lead and also sent Barack Obama to the White House.
There’s no doubt that this year’s election was infused with a deep-seated anti-incumbent anger. A poll released by Rasmussen Reports just days before Election Day found that 65% of likely voters would, if they could, vote to dump every member of Congress and start over. A whopping 78% of independents said they wanted to give the boot to every incumbent.
But that anger was a repudiation of incumbents in general – most of whom were Democrats, of course – and not a declaration of true love for the GOP. The Rasmussen poll revealed that only 29% of all voters viewed Republicans in a favorable light, while 54% viewed them unfavorably.
Moreover, even after the GOP cleaned up on November 2, the level of enthusiasm for Republicans did not match up well with two other big off-year elections that saw a dramatic shift in Congress – 2006 and 1994.
According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted during the week following the 2010 midterm election, 48% of adults said they were happy with the fact that the GOP had won control of the House, while 34% were unhappy.
However, “four years ago, 60% said they were happy the Democrats won full control of Congress, compared with just 24% who were unhappy,” said Pew Research. “That mirrored the public’s reaction in December 1994 to the GOP winning control of Congress for the first time in 40 years (57% happy vs. 31% unhappy).”
Bruce Drake, contributing editor of Politics Daily, said, “These kinds of findings, coupled with the fact that nearly all polls in the past year showed voter disapproval of both parties, have fueled analyses that the so-called ‘wave’ election does not necessarily signal a massive or long-lasting political realignment.”
The same thing was true, of course, after Democrats won big in 2006 and 2008, when, Drake noted, “many had forecast … enduring changes” in the political landscape – which obviously did not come to pass then, either.
Recommendation: Avoid past political blunders by assuming a big win means the electorate favors conservative principles.
▶ The economy was issue #1
The signature slogan of the 1992 presidential election – “It’s the economy, stupid!” – came back in 2010 to bite the Democrats. For the last several years the economy has ranked at the top of the list of voter concerns, and a Rasmussen poll the week of the election revealed that 82% of likely voters had the economy uppermost in their minds as they went to the polls.
That spelled trouble for the Democrats, who were perceived by many as focusing instead – almost obsessively – on passing healthcare.
“Democrats who voted for their party’s signature domestic achievement [Obama-
Care] dropped like flies throughout the evening, adding credence to Republicans’ claim that the American public wants them to repeal healthcare reform,” said Julian Pecquet of The Hill, a congressional daily newspaper.
In fact, of those who voted on November 2, Rasmussen found that 59% wanted the new health care law repealed.
Moreover, Rasmussen found that “only 40% of voters think the president should continue to pursue the same agenda [and] 56% say Obama should change course in response to the election results.”
Perhaps as a warning to Obama and other Democrats in the run-up to the 2012 elections, 66% of respondents told Rasmussen they expected the president to refuse to change course.
This reality, however, poses two challenges for Republicans. First, GOP members in the House of Representatives and those in charge of state political apparatuses must make headway on the economic problems facing the country in order to stay in power. The voters will hardly be in a better mood vis-à-vis incumbents in 2012 if the economy is still in the toilet.
Second, social conservatives will be back with their list of issues, and the GOP has to be willing to talk ‘culture war turkey’ with them. While these issues were on the back burner somewhat in 2010 – and, no doubt, most social conservatives were also worried about the economy – the next election will cover a broader agenda.
In a Washington Post column, Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said, “[T]he relative absence of hot-button social issues from the election debate will not last. The issue of same-sex marriage will inevitably be nationalized within the next two years, in the courts if not in Congress. The issue of abortion will not go away, nor will human embryonic stem cell research and a host of other controversies. Even as these issues are reshaped by new developments, you can count on them coming back to the forefront. …”
Recommendation: Don’t back down from this debate, and force the GOP to re-engage social conservatives on these issues.
▶ Voters don’t know what they want
Voters decided they didn’t like the Democratic Party’s agenda – but that’s all they decided.
“The see-saw nature of the nation’s politics raises a question: How can the country solve its long-term problems – deficit spending, an under-funded Social Security system, spiraling health-care costs – when voters seem so uncertain which party should lead the charge?” asked the Wall Street Journal’s Neil King Jr.
Steve Ellison, a commercial real-estate broker who hosted a campaign event for an unsuccessful Republican challenger in Indiana, addressed the apparent voter “schizophrenia” this way: “We know what we don’t want better than we know what we want.”
On the one hand, voters want the economic mess fixed; but who wants to tell irritated voters that sacrifices will have to be made in order to fix it?
Neither side of the political spectrum wants to allow its own golden calf to be butchered. Do Republicans want to agree to tax increases or cuts in defense spending? Do Democrats want to abolish the Department of Education or end funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? Does either party want to mention austerity measures when it comes to Social Security?
Each political party has clearly marked off a single spot on the political spectrum – Democrats on the left, Republicans on the right – making voters who cohabit with them as happy as clams.
That leaves most American voters, however, in the middle. “The result is a larger and more restive bloc of unattached voters, razor-thin margins in presidential votes, and frequent upheavals in control of Congress,” King said.
This makes being a principled politician tricky business. To keep your base happy, you must commit to supporting their political views; to win elections you must appeal to that “bloc of unattached voters.”
Recommendation: Work hard to persuade larger numbers of Americans to see the issues from a conservative perspective.
Of course, it’s always easy to simply assume that a big win means the battle is over. It’s not. America is still in the middle of a historic ideological conflict – one that will have tremendous consequences for the future.
Will we be a secular, progressive and statist country, or an America that is religiously-oriented, traditional and essentially free market?
The ‘mushy middle’ of the electorate is still up for grabs, and conservatives must do a good job making their case – and we’re talking about making that case, not just over the next 2 years, but the next 20 years.
In any case, even when a shift in the political or cultural landscape has occurred, it’s always transient.
“[T]here’s nothing permanent about power,” said Peter Daou, an Internet strategist and former Internet adviser to Hillary Clinton. “The tide will turn again…. [P]ower and electoral success are ephemeral.”
We should remember that, even after an election that probably makes most Christian conservatives very happy. The hard work is never done. 
