Certainly not. Falling trees do not make noises…they make waves. Until those waves are received by a listening device (like our ear) they are silent.
If voters claim they profoundly dislike the ideological policies of this administration and there is no democrat around to hear it, is it true? Apparently not…
Unfortunately for the democrats, there were plenty of other people around to hear it.
Katrina Vanden Heuvel’s WSJ analysis of the recent election is stunning in its failure to “hear the noise”. She says “Conservatives in both parties who claim the vote represented an ideological shift to the right are plain wrong”. She wants this to be true. Democrats need this to be about economics or communication and not values. If she can make this case, it allows the progressives to think they are still in step with the American people. After all, who isn’t worried about the economy? And really…if they can simply say the American people “don’t get it”, they can continue to proclaim the virtue of their policies. And…if they are “in step” with the American people, all they need is more time.
I won’t argue her point that this was an unearned win for the republicans. Elections are generally against something more than they are for something. In fact, as much as Ms Vanden Heuvel might like to claim we voted for “hope and change” two years ago we probably didn’t. We voted against a tired republican administration that seemed ineffective, unresponsive and secretive. “Hope and change” was nothing more than an alternative to that. To see any electoral victory as a mandate is to misunderstand the dynamic. An electoral victory is nothing more than an opportunity to do things better than your predecessor.
She continues to say “the quickly congealing conventional wisdom is that President Obama tried to do too much and was too liberal. The opposite is true: Voters were alienated because they didn't believe his team had fought aggressively enough for the interests of working- and middle-class citizens” I can only scratch my head. I am a poster child for middle class America…therefore all my friends are middle class as well. We have never thought what she claims we think. It is far more accurate to suggest that no matter how much Obama cares for the middle class, and he may, his policies have resulted in a greater burden for us. The middle class wants an administration that will try something else.
She makes my case when she reveals her solution for our economic woes. She wants a tax on more than a trillion dollars of corporate cash reserves. I realize getting her hands on money in that amount is very tempting but its not the government's money to take. It’s stealing. By this reasoning progressives could come into our houses and confiscate some of the money under our mattress (our cash reserves)…simply because they believe they can put it to better use than we can. Never mind the fact that it is not their money. She can call theft a “tax” but it’s still theft. And she thinks this is about communication? She is communicating fine. I hear her clearly and I don’t like what I hear. Her values are not my values. Most Americans believe in private property. She and her friends do not. So…I don’t trust them.
So, it has to be about the economy…or failure to communicate. This mantra has become so pervasive that it has become a form of tinnitus for democrats. It has become a continual noise in their ears…resulting in damage to their political hearing. I, for one, am fine with this. Progressive tinnitus pretty much ensures they will learn nothing and will remain poles apart from the rest of America in their ideology. As long as they continue down this path the future looks bright for conservatives.
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