{"id":221,"date":"2008-11-05T11:25:18","date_gmt":"2008-11-05T16:25:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/?p=221"},"modified":"2008-11-05T11:25:18","modified_gmt":"2008-11-05T16:25:18","slug":"post-mortem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/post-mortem\/","title":{"rendered":"Post Mortem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finally it is over.\u00a0\u00a0 One of the worst aspects of this whole campaign has been how long it lasted.\u00a0 For almost all voters who have clearly developed political philosophies and beliefs, or even just clear party affiliations, their minds were made up long before the rest even began thinking about the election.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is especially true for those like myself who saw serious problems with both candidates.\u00a0\u00a0 Now, at least it is over.<\/p>\n

I was never a huge supported of the current president.\u00a0 While not as moderate as is father, I saw him as a moderate – conservative\u00a0 who would increase the size of government and thereby cause the party to loose in the future.\u00a0\u00a0 I turned out to be correct in that analysis.\u00a0\u00a0 While far better than Obama, McCain would have been worse than Bush.\u00a0\u00a0 So while I would have preferred a McCain victory as it would have been better for the country, I can at least take some solace in the fact that I will not be put on the spot of being asked to defend\u00a0 the expansion of global warming laws, etc.<\/p>\n

As to why we lost? There are many reasons.\u00a0 Bush’s failure to defend much less aggressively defend himself and his policies are a huge factor.\u00a0 One question I frequently hear is “Why doesn’t he defend himself”\u00a0 or “Why doesn’t the White House get this information out.”\u00a0 The closest thing to an answer is that the President supposedly does not want to fight old battles.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

While it may be ok for Bush to trust in the judgment of history, and I do in fact think that Bush will look far better looking back in a few years, that does little good for the party that must continue to fight on. \u00a0It is as if quarterback who was retiring, decided to simply go through the motions during the second half of the game.<\/p>\n

Still a good candidate could have overcome that.\u00a0\u00a0 That brings us to McCain. \u00a0McCain was the wrong candidate at the wrong time.\u00a0 Limited by his own campaign finance reform laws, \u00a0and estranged from the base of his own party, McCain ran a campaign the elites have been seeking,\u00a0 a positive campaign that for the most part avoided negative attacks. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The elites pushed McCain because they all thought this was going to be a election on the war and foreign policy,\u00a0 and because they wanted to get rid of all those pesky conservatives.\u00a0 \u00a0As it turned out foreign policy wasn’t even an issue.\u00a0 One thing that often plagues Republicans is their success.\u00a0 Bush has been so successful defending against terrorism and the surge has worked so well, that these have ceased to be issues.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Even with this McCain still could have won, because Obama has his own serious flaws.\u00a0 What ultimately tipped the balance was the press coverage. \u00a0Going back as far as I can remember, (i.e., the 1960s) the press as always tilted to the left.\u00a0 But this year it flat fell over, and ceased any pretense of objectivity.\u00a0\u00a0 In fact as a recent Pew Research Report<\/a> showed, the only major network that showed any sense of balance was actually the nemesis of the left Fox News, which had equal percentage of negative\u00a0 stores on McCain and Obama, and slightly higher percentage of positive stores for Obama.\u00a0\u00a0 On the other hand on MSNBC over 70 pecent of the McCain stories were negative, compared to only 14 percent for Obama.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is a simple rule I teach in critical thinking: if most of what you hear about something is negative, you will tend to have a negative view, if most of what you hear about something is positive you will tend to have a positive view.\u00a0\u00a0 The Pew report showed that in press coverage, except for Fox which was balanced, the press for Obama was mostly neutral or positive, and for McCain was mostly negative.<\/p>\n

Even worse than the bias coverage is what didn’t get air time. \u00a0One of the reasons the war on terrorism, and the war in Iraq were not a more important factors was that they are going so well that they don’t get covered lest it support Republicans.\u00a0\u00a0 Thus the\u00a0focus was on the economy which does have serious problems, \u00a0but even here the reason for those problems\u00a0 was not covered, for at its core the current problems go to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Democrats. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thus with all these negatives, what is amazing is that was as close as it was, and that the predicted Democratic blowout did not occur.<\/p>\n

So where do we go from here.\u00a0 One good thing is that the Republican party will need to reform, and there is currently no clear heir apparent for 2012.\u00a0 I think the move to the center, with McCain will been seen as the mistake that it was. While the Left constantly likes to speak of the demise of conservatives, The simple fact is that we have not had a really conservative President since Regan.\u00a0 Bush 41 was nominated as Reagan’s VP and Bush 43 as Bush 41’s son, and neither was really conservative.\u00a0\u00a0 Nor was McCain.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the closest thing to an heir apparent would be Palin, and as a result the relentless attacks on her will continue.\u00a0 In fact I expect that before long the elites will be saying how McCain would have won if only he had not picked Palin. \u00a0\u00a0As a fairly conservative woman, she would be a real threat and therefore must be destroyed by the left.<\/p>\n

Whoever the next candidate is, if they hope to win, they will need to be able to go around the press to speak effectively to the American people.\u00a0 A leader must be able to communicate their vision of where they want to take America and what they hope to accomplish and not just\u00a0 during the campaign.<\/p>\n

One danger I do see is a repeat of the Clinton years. Clinton won in 1992 and like now, the democrats controlled Congress.\u00a0 After two years things were so bad that the Republican won control of Congress for the first time in 40 years.\u00a0 Then the Republican Congress turned things around so well that by the time 1996 election Clinton was able to take credit and won reelection.<\/p>\n

As for the two big fears I had with Obama,\u00a0 the war in Iraq seems to be going so well that hopefully his\u00a0 withdrawal will not actually have much effect.\u00a0\u00a0 The other concern was the Judges.\u00a0 There is little hope in the short term there.\u00a0 The only hope of retaining the constitution will be for some future President and Congress, to force a constitutional crisis that moves the court back into is constitutional role of judging rather than making the law.\u00a0 But then frankly I have been moving more and more in the direction of that belief even before this election. \u00a0Barring that, we will increasingly cease to be a democratic republic , and instead be ruled by a council of Kings, who fundamentally set the policy for the country, while the President and Congress will be relegated to merely working out the details and administering their decrees. \u00a0<\/p>\n

One final positive, will be clarity.\u00a0\u00a0 For months now there has been the Obama of his supporters, or should I say the many Obamas as Obama was so many things to so many people.\u00a0 Then there was the Obama that his detractors saw.\u00a0\u00a0 About the only thing his supporters could agree on was that the detractors were wrong. But they could never really tell us who Obama was.\u00a0\u00a0 Now we will find out.\u00a0 Frankly, I think that over the next few months it will many of his supporter that are surprised at what is about to happen and the change that is coming.\u00a0 But either way, over the next six months, we will finally get to see the real Obama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Finally it is over.\u00a0\u00a0 One of the worst aspects of this whole campaign has been how long it lasted.\u00a0 For almost all voters who have clearly developed political philosophies and beliefs, or even just clear party affiliations, their minds were made up long before the rest even began thinking about the election.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is especially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[296,1999,448,692,838,844,934,968,2016],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election","tag-clinton","tag-election","tag-election-2008","tag-iraq","tag-mccain","tag-media-bais","tag-obama","tag-palin","tag-terrorism"],"yoast_head":"\nPost Mortem - Politics and Religion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/post-mortem\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Post Mortem - Politics and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Finally it is over.\u00a0\u00a0 One of the worst aspects of this whole campaign has been how long it lasted.\u00a0 For almost all voters who have clearly developed political philosophies and beliefs, or even just clear party affiliations, their minds were made up long before the rest even began thinking about the election.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is especially […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/post-mortem\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Politics and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-11-05T16:25:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elgin Hushbeck\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elgin Hushbeck\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/post-mortem\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/post-mortem\/\",\"name\":\"Post Mortem - 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