Why Bush Won
Bible Belt proves to be a more of a Bible Vest
Of course, the tremendous GOP victory on Tuesday is already being decried by radical liberal die-hards as a triumph of those poor, uneducated rednecks — the very people the Democratic Party is supposed to champion.
Make no mistake, Tuesday’s victory was a victory for middle America. Rural Americans made their voices heard loud and clear. “Realignment” is the code word of the day, and 60’s radicalism is dead, dead, dead.
Even the Dems know this, as there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the left today:
The next day, all any of my liberal New York activist colleagues could talk about was what a swaggering, arrogant, macho prick Bush came off as. After all, in our circles, men who don’t exhibit empathy and interpersonal communication skills aren’t very well thought of (though they do seem to get laid at about the same rate as the rest of us). However, what most of us artsy middle-class professional PoMo bohemian/yuppie types, with our highlighted hair and carefully-chosen thrift-store ensembles, failed to realize is that Bush’s base of support goes beyond the ‘I got mine’ conservatives with their SUVs and $400,000 tract homes that they can’t afford to furnish, the gun nuts with their AR-15s, and the Christian theocrats with their red-letter Bibles open to Genesis 19. Bush couldn’t have won as big as he did without the support of ordinary people who work in offices in fear of their bosses and their mortgages and getting laid off.
Swaggering? Macho prick? Note to self: when the Democrats identify you as a “swaggering, arrogant, macho prick,” they really mean that you came off as a genuine, effective leader.
No surprise that the radical left is lamenting their demise. Obama and Edwards now seem to be the new heart of the Democratic Party – a face that is more moderate and more reflective of the Clinton era than the Ted Kennedy liberals of the past. Realignment is right.
What’s more is that locally, the Spotsylvania GOP came into its own. 10,000 more votes that the previous election, beating the increase of population by 3,000 votes. Stafford put up similar numbers, and in the left-leaning City of Fredericksburg, the GOP won two of the four wards. Statewide, Virginia carried by 55% – good news for Kilgore and RPV.
Overall, a tremendous election and great news for the conservative cause. Congratulations all!
UPDATE: Sen. Christopher Dodd is lamenting the Democratic Party’s current state of affairs:
“We Democrats better think long and hard about what happened … and how our party is going to connect with the hopes and aspirations of the people,” Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., after watching Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., an 18-year Senate veteran, go down in defeat. “We have lost the ability to connect with people’s value systems and we’re going to have to work to get that back.”
Don’t worry, the Dems are smart enough to re-evaluate and get back to work.
UPDATE x2: Not to pat myself on the back or anything, but it looks as if I called the election almost perfectly sans Hawaii. Thanks to Jon Street for the props!
UPDATE x3: Virginia Democrats are in a tailspin after their stinging loss on Tuesday that had many pundits convinced otherwise, and congratulations to the Caroline GOP for carrying their county for the Republicans for the first time since 1972!