November 3, 2010
Will it really be a big change in Washington?
Maybe US politics have become “post-racial” after all
One of the worries before the US midterm elections (aside from the Democrat fears of a Republican “tidal wave”) was that the number of female elected representatives would drop. That may have happened, but the unexpected result is an increase in the number of minority candidates elected:
The Republican wave produced groundbreaking results for minority candidates, from Latina and Indian-American governors to a pair of black congressmen from the Deep South.
In New Mexico, Susana Martinez was elected as the nation’s first female Hispanic governor. Nikki Haley, whose parents were born in India, will be the first woman governor in South Carolina, and Brian Sandoval became Nevada’s first Hispanic governor.
Insurance company owner Tim Scott will be the first black Republican congressman from South Carolina since Reconstruction, after easily winning in his conservative district. Scott, a 45-year-old state representative, earned a primary victory over the son of the one-time segregationist U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond.
In Florida, veteran Allen West ousted a two-term Democrat to a House seat. He is the first black Republican elected to Congress from Florida since a former slave served two terms in the 1870s.
The last black Republican in Congress was J.C. Watts of Oklahoma. He left office in 2003. There were 42 black Democrats in Congress this term.
Liberty: consistency matters
James Delingpole, after suddenly discovering a man-crush on Marco Rubio, outlines how the Tea Party can still succeed:
[. . .] I’d suggest that the key lesson of yesterday’s mid-terms is this: it is simply not enough to stick a Tea Party label on any old candidate and hope that the US electorate’s growing antipathy towards Big Government will take care of the rest. Christine O’Donnell was more than proof enough of that. Not only did her candidacy allow the liberal MSM to tar the entire Tea Party movement as the natural home of anti-masturbation ex-witches and other fruit loops. But it demonstrated a worrying complacency and ignorance within the Tea Party movement about what it stands for and what it ought to stand for.
Christine O’Donnell puzzled me . . . if she’d actually been a witch, then her anti-masturbation activities made no sense. I’ve met lots of witches, and it’s hard to imagine any of them being anti-sexual in that kind of dogmatic manner. I didn’t follow the story, but I assume that she lost on the basis of both accusations influencing different voting groups.
So, if O’Donnell and other marginal candidates can’t depend on just wearing the “Tea Party” label to get elected, what do they need to do?
The Tea Party does not stand for: banning lesbian or sexually active single women from teaching at schools; discouraging onanism; banning abortion; keeping drugs illegal; God; organised religion generally; guns; or, indeed, Sarah Palin.
The Tea Party stands, very simply, for small government. So long as it understands this, a presidential victory in 2012 is guaranteed. If it forgets this — or doesn’t understand it in the first place — then hello, a second term for President Obama, and bye bye Western Civilisation.
In other words, Delingpole is calling for the Tea Party to be true to a minarchist vision: the least possible government to get the job done.
If you are against Big Government, you are for liberty. If you are for liberty you are also for free citizens’ right to choose whether or not they get out of their trees on cannabis, or indeed whether or not they have the freedom to terminate unwanted pregnancies or never, ever, go to church and in fact worship Satan instead.
Liberty is not a pick and mix free-for-all in which you think government should ban the things you don’t like and encourage you things you do like: that’s how Libtards think. Libertarianism — and the Tea Party is nothing if its principles are not, at root, libertarian ones — is about recognising that having to put up with behaviour you don’t necessarily disapprove of is a far lesser evil than having the government messily and expensively intervene to regulate it.
Monty: The flushing sound you just heard is California’s future
Monty pronounces the final doom of California:
That sound you just heard was the State of California irretrievably flushing itself down the toilet.
[. . .]
California’s most dire problems right now are related to public-employee obligations (pensions and healthcare). The power of public-employee unions in California have held the State and local governments in thrall for years, and with the election of Jerry Brown as Governor, the people of California have opted to spray kerosene on a blaze that was already threatening to overwhelm them.
[. . .]
Well, the die has been cast, California. You have placed your fate into the hands of a political party and a governmental machine that cares for nothing except what it can squeeze out of you to keep the party-train rolling. There will come a time in the not-too-distant future when you will have cause to bitterly regret what happened last night, and to wonder when the disaster truly became unavoidable. Well, now you know: it happened last night when you elected Jerry Brown as your governor. You chose to kowtow to the labor unions; you chose to believe comforting lies rather than the horrible truth.
You will reap the whirlwind.
Update: A couple of Twitter updates from Iowahawk sum things up nicely.
10:28: Boxer, Brown, no on Prop 19: congrats, California. You have officially gone Full Retard.
11:05: And as if California wasn’t already full of idiots, lunatics, and drug abusers, I’m flying there this afternoon.
