The drubbing you witnessed at the national level was not the Democratic party winning but the Republican party losing. Sure, left-leaning voters were dissatisfied, but that was in the cards the moment Bush took office – they’re dissatisfied whenever their guy isn’t in control. Those on the right were dissatisfied that the ostensible conservatives in charge strayed from core issues for craven desires. Most voters were dissatisfied for no other good reason than those in power failed to show competent leadership. Tuesday was more about disgust at the hubris of power than about Iraq. (If the election had really been just about war, then anti-war/anti-gun Republican Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island would have won his race, and Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman would have lost.)
Pundit Michelle Malkin wrote “The GOP lost. Conservatism prevailed.” She notes those who worked as advocates for issues won for conservatives. Rush Limbaugh weighed in too, saying he feels “liberated”, that no longer must he carry water for people he doesn’t think deserve to have their water carried. “Republicans lost control of the House, and perhaps the Senate, because they abandoned their conservative principles and in the end stood for nothing.”
That describes Maryland’s result too, where voter disenchantment with the feckless Ehrlich administration delivered a resounding repudiation of Ehrlich’s centrist, risk-averse strategy of trying to look like all things to all voters. It wasn’t that O’Malley was able to rally so many more votes than did the Dem four years ago – he didn’t. Rather, one in five voters who elected Ehrlich four years ago simply didn’t show up for him this year. (Said another way: if each person who supported Bob Ehrlich four years ago voted for him this year, he’d have won this election by 9,000 votes.) While demanding loyalty from them, Ehrlich’s team taunted conservatives saying ‘where you gonna go?’ As we predicted, some disgusted voters answered ‘home!’ or left the top of their ballot blank. Others cast protest votes. Third party gubernatorial candidates credit Ehrlich for their 50% increase in votes as compared with 2002.
It’s hard to energize people by telling them what a candidate won’t do for them. Most folks still like Bob Ehrlich, but positives about the man don’t translate into endorsement of his performance. He clearly liked being governor more than he liked governing, and by subcontracting the job to political hacks he lost credibility as a spokesman for issues on which he once campaigned. As a result, voters cared about showing up for him just about as much as he showed he had cared for issues – not much. Once Ehrlich drained his voters’ capacity to care, the de-energized base wasn’t there to save many downticket candidates, and it became a rout for his party.
In truth, Maryland is more conservative than most admit. A conservative Ellen Sauerbrey won the popular vote in ‘94 (creative Baltimoron electoral arithmetic notwithstanding.) When four years later she launched her campaign by taking a dump on conservatives, she lost in a landslide. Conservative Bob Ehrlich talked the right game and won in 2002. Then he disenfranchised his base, while staff – half of them knee-breakers devoted to party over issues, the other half Schaefer administration retreads – insulated him from his base, yet demanding from them fealty while trashing promise after promise. Tuesday’s loss was the inevitable consequence, keeping a pattern true: if you give voters a choice, the conservative will win a popular vote. But offer voters only progressives, and they’ll choose the purest liberal every time. After all, why elect a cheap imitation liberal when you can have the real thing?
Lesson to GOP: you don’t win without the gun lobby. Lesson to Dems: gun control loses you more votes than it gains.