Against the Status Quo

It’s been a day of meetings, and I have never done meetings well (yes, yes, I know they’re necessary).  So, to help pass the time without fidgeting, tapping the table or bouncing my leg, I turn to my iPhone (glad I didn’t have one of these in high school) when what to my wondering eyes should appear but this op/ed piece in today’s WSJ.  The premise is simple:  voters don’t want to be governed from the left, right or center. They want Washington to recognize that Americans want to govern themselves.  Read it again.  We want to govern ourselves.  Somewhere along the way the compassionate conservative who exploded the size of government and the social engineer who now wants to reinvent culture and society – and their respective parties – who comprise a new class of bipartisan political elites have forgotten this.  The author of the editorial, Scott Rasmussen (President of Rasmussen Reports) offers this analysis:

As a result, Democrats face massive losses in tomorrow’s midterm election. Based upon our generic ballot polling and an analysis of individual races, we project that Nancy Pelosi’s party will likely lose 55 or more seats in the House, putting the GOP firmly in the majority. Republicans will also win at least 25 of the 37 Senate elections. While the most likely outcome is that Republicans end up with 48 or 49 Senate seats, Democrats will need to win close races in West Virginia, Washington and California to protect their majority.

There will also be a lot more Republican governors in office come January. It looks like six heartland states stretching from Pennsylvania to Iowa will trade a Democratic governor for a Republican one. A common theme in all the races is that white, working-class Democrats who tended to vote for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in 2008 are prepared to vote for Republicans.

But none of this means that Republicans are winning. The reality is that voters in 2010 are doing the same thing they did in 2006 and 2008: They are voting against the party in power.

This is the continuation of a trend that began nearly 20 years ago. In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected president and his party had control of Congress. Before he left office, his party lost control. Then, in 2000, George W. Bush came to power, and his party controlled Congress. But like Mr. Clinton before him, Mr. Bush saw his party lose control.

That’s never happened before in back-to-back administrations. The Obama administration appears poised to make it three in a row. This reflects a fundamental rejection of both political parties.

Read it all.