Thursday, November 8, 2012

What Republicans Can Do

Nationally, most Republican election analysts called it wrong. Moments following the election,Dick Morris repented in sackcloth and ashes. He had missed something that one might call the New Democratic Majority, which is on the order of missing Gibraltar while sailing the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula:
 
“By the time you finish with the various demographic groups the Democrats win, you almost have a majority in their corner. Count them: Blacks cast 13% of the vote and Obama won them 12-1. Latinos cast 10% and Obama carried them by 7-3. Under 30 voters cast 19% of the vote and Obama swept them by 12-7. Single white women cast 18% of the total vote and Obama won them by 12-6. There is some overlap among these groups, of course, but without allowing for any, Obama won 43-17 before the first married white woman or man over 30 cast their vote. (Lets guess that if we eliminate duplication, the Obama margin would be 35-13) Having conceded these votes, Romney would have had to win over two-thirds of the rest of the vote to win. He almost did. But not quite.”

Behold the New Democratic Majority – Blacks, Latinos, voters under 30 and single white women allured by Obama’s promise of a Planned Parenthood abortion center in every pot.
Sean Trende’s analysis in Real Clear Politics is much different than Morse’s. Trende does not deny the importance of capturing neglected minorities but, he points out, Romney’s challenge suffered most from a lack of white voters.
The imminent arrival of what Republicans used to call, a note of disapproval in their tone, the Nanny State -- a federal government octopus that wipes every tear with dollars taken from the idle rich while directing the flow of business in what has been quaintly called the private economy -- is supposed to hold this alliance together.

Parts of the alliance will fall away as the country limps along on crutches that date from the election of 1912, the high tide of the Progressive assault on common sense and the entrepreneurial spirit of the country. One likes to think that the powers of resistance of the average American to warmed over socialist schemes floating in the brain of Eugene Debs will survive the next four years in good repair; we are not Venezuela yet, even though Hugo Chavez, along with the progressive President of Russia Vladimir Putin, has given the thumbs up to Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, all promoters of the New Democratic Majority. The New Democratic Majority has been forged in the crucible of Chicago politics. Whether all or some of its component parts will survive after Mr. Obama and Mr. Axelrod leave the scene is very much an open question.

On the home front, Connecticut, far more than the national government, has become a one-party state. The template for the one party state may be found both in Venezuela and Connecticut’s major cities, Bridgeport serving as the state’s Ohio. As Connecticut’s major cities go, so goes the state.

Polls show that Dannel Malloy, the first Democratic governor in Connecticut since the administration of former Governor William O’Neill and the architect of the largest tax increase in state history, remains unpopular. However, voters who prefer an“Anyone but Malloy” candidate in 2014 may be looking at a “No Exit” sign. The governor has put together his own “New Connecticut Democratic Majority.” And the way in which his last budget was passed leaves little room for doubt that Mr. Malloy can cobble together a tax and spending plan without including the state’s Republican minority in the General Assembly. The architects of Connecticut’s last budget were Malloy and his Malloyalists, a Democratic majority in the General Assembly that pre-approved Mr. Malloy’s first budget and then invested the governor with plenipotentiary powers to readjust it, and state unions, dubbed by this writer at the time as Connecticut’s “third political party.”

Connecticut Democrats need surpluses to keep tax consumers well fed and to convince those unfamiliar with the way economies actually perform in the real world that the governor can easily create jobs by giving away millions in tax dollars to large profitable companies adept at crony capitalist bribery.

The jobs Mr. Malloy has claimed to produce in Connecticut do not grow on a jobs tree in the governor’s mansion adjacent to the money tree from which the governor, the Malloyalists and Democratic progressives in the state legislature pluck their millions to support grateful crony capitalists. Every dollar consumed in Connecticut taxes is a bucket of water taken from the deep end of the pool and poured into the shallow end by political shysters who hope to convince a majority of voters that the operation will increase the net amount of water in the pool, thus opening the door to unparalleled prosperity.

The surpluses Democrats will need to perpetuate this political fraud must come from somewhere, and taxpayers in Connecticut, already saddled with the largest tax increase in state history, cannot afford further increases – which means Mr. Malloy and the Democrats will do one of two things come budget time: either slash spending deeply, not likely, or pass on the tax burden to municipalities by cutting state support.

The loyal opposition in the General Assembly should begin soon to confront the imposture. They have only their chains to lose, and a world to win.

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