Failure of the Republican Party

In the spirit of full disclosure, I consider myself a fiscal conservative and a social moderate, maybe even leaning a little left. If a gay couple wants to get married, go for it. If I can get married, why can't they. If a woman wants to get an abortion, feel free. Frankly, I think it's rather absurd that any politician wants to legislate such an issue. For the most part, none of them even have a uterus, so their opinion really shouldn't matter.

That being said, if the Republicans ever want to win an election again, they need to do some serious self examination. Traditionally, Republicans stood for smaller government and restricted spending. Over the last 8 years, the government has grown faster than at any point in history and spending has increased significantly. While the creation of Homeland Security was probably a necessity after September 11 attacks, I have a hard time justifying the rest of the governmental expansion. We have seen millions upon millions spent on earmarks that pay farmers not to grow crops, ect.

While I tend to take what is said on the campaign trail with a grain of salt, I do believe that McCain would have restricted spending, especially earmarks. As he said, we don't need higher taxes, we need more controlled spending.

But I see three main reasons why the Republicans lost the Presidency and lost more ground on the house and senate. First off, Obama ran a better campaign. Time and time again, I saw Obama volunteers walking around my neighborhood handing out information about Obama's policies, as well as where and how to vote. Not once did I see anyone from the Republican party. Even though I am a registered Republican, I got calls on my home and cell phones from the Democrats asking if I would be supporting Obama. While I said no to them, at least they called. No one from McCain's campaign ever contacted me, and I live in a battleground state that voted for Bush in the last election, but Obama won this time. Maybe McCain assumed my support, but it sure seems like they could have used better turn out at the polls.

Secondly, weather McCain isn't as smooth a speaker as Obama, or the people running the campaign weren't on their game, the messages that needed to be delivered weren't getting there. Why didn't McCain hammer the "tax cut for 95% of Americans" statement when 45% of Americans don't pay any taxes. Or the fact that Obama is going to let the Bush tax cuts expire and go back to taxing us at the levels during the Clinton administration and he doesn't consider that raising taxes. If I am going to pay more taxes in 2010 than I am now, that is a tax increase. Or the misconception of lowering capital gains taxes for small business, when they don't pay capital gaines tax....they pay income tax. This was a huge failure of the campaign. I think McCain really did have some of the right messages, but they didn't get delivered in a very effective way. Hell, "Joe the Plumber" was more successful and effective in getting Obama to talk honestly about his policies than anyone associated with the Republican party. Now Joe seemed like a pretty smart guy, but when regular civilians are better at playing the political game than the people running the Republican party, that's a huge failure.

And third, if you go back over the course of history, you will find with almost 100% certainty that if the economy is doing well, the incumbant party will stay in office. If the economy is suffering, we tend to vote them out. We've heard a lot in recent weeks and months about red states and blue states, but we are all truely green states. If we are all making money and doing well financially, we don't want to buck the trend.