{"id":22545,"date":"2010-11-05T11:58:44","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T17:58:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=22545"},"modified":"2010-11-05T11:58:44","modified_gmt":"2010-11-05T17:58:44","slug":"heartland-headache","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=22545","title":{"rendered":""Heartland Headache""},"content":{"rendered":"

National Journal<\/a>:<\/p>\n

After Tuesday, Democrats, incredibly, hold a majority of the congressional delegation in only three states\u2014Iowa, New Mexico, and Vermont\u2014that don\u2019t directly touch an ocean. Republicans similarly routed Democrats in gubernatorial races across the Midwest and the border states, from Ohio and Tennessee to Wisconsin and Iowa.<\/p>\n

So Democrats emerge from this week confronting a huge demographic hole: their meager performance among all white voters except women with college degrees (who tend to be both more socially liberal and more receptive to activist government). And they face a huge geographic hole: a collapse in the interior states, which tend to be whiter and older than the coastal states, with fewer college graduates. After the first red-blue map entered our consciousness following the 2000 presidential race, I wrote that it was possible to drive east for three days from San Francisco without crossing a county that voted Democratic; it is now possible to do the same thing with House districts. Still strong (if somewhat diminished) on the coasts, but routed in the heartland, Democrats look like a bridge with two pillars, but no span in between.<\/p>\n

Democrats don\u2019t need to win most white voters or most interior states to compete. But they can\u2019t get annihilated on those battlefields either, and that\u2019s exactly what happened as the party stumbled to its historic collapse this week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Frankly, I think the Tea Party \/ classical liberal message will eventually make inroads among the minority group coalition the Dems count on to hold their voting bloc together — especially once it’s had time to further distance itself from the GOP establishment. And that’s because not only does the ideology resonate with people who wish to be governed<\/em> by their peers rather than ruled<\/em> by elitist despots — individual autonomy, a smaller, less-intrusive government, private property rights, equality under the law — but because it further clarifies the differences between Democrats and establishment GOP candidates, who heretofore of late have been barely indistinguishable, save for the poor branding the GOP enjoys, despite an election strategy that seems to be always on the defensive, and always looking to show they can pander almost as well as the Democrats.<\/p>\n

But why take a chance on a second-rate client-state party when you can have the real thing for free? Why vote for the GOP — and endure the stigma that the Democrats have managed to attach to doing so — when you can simply vote for the Dems themselves?<\/p>\n

There has to be a clear distinction between the parties — and the Dem caucus, which is now hard left, will either move to the center as a result of having to confront classically liberal opposition, or else they will hold their ground, assert the progressive\/socialist impulse that defines their ideology, and give the American people the kind of stark choices they haven’t had in quite some time.<\/p>\n

The strategy moving forward, then, has to be that classical liberal ideals — the ideals upon which this country was founded — are what will win out in the marketplace of ideas<\/a>, and that we must now go full bore in selling those ideals to a public long ago made jaded by politicians who seem nearly indistinguishable, save for the letter in front of their names.<\/p>\n

Those who continue to preach that our strategy should begin and end with the number of “our” candidates we can seat in Congress — without care that “our” candidates are ours only inasmuch as they run under the GOP banner — need to be shouted down, mocked, and shown up for the phony “realists” and “pragmatists” they pretend to be.<\/p>\n

Because what they really are are anything but — and in fact, they show time and again that they are willing to sell out the principles they ostensibly advocate for in exchange for whatever kind of temporary power they can collect. As should be obvious by looking at who exactly supports their narrative.<\/a><\/p>\n

I don’t stand for the Republican Party<\/a>. I stand for constitutional principles. And I won’t back another candidate who doesn’t do the same.<\/p>\n

If that leaves me in the political wilderness — as some have warned<\/a> — so be it. But I don’t think it will, and I’m willing to fight to make sure it does not, precisely because I believe<\/i> in the rectitude of the ideals I have come to cherish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

National Journal: After Tuesday, Democrats, incredibly, hold a majority of the congressional delegation in only three states\u2014Iowa, New Mexico, and Vermont\u2014that don\u2019t directly touch an ocean. Republicans similarly routed Democrats in gubernatorial races across the Midwest and the border states, from Ohio and Tennessee to Wisconsin and Iowa. So Democrats emerge from this week confronting a huge demographic hole: their meager performance among all white voters except women with college<\/p>\n

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