{"id":645,"date":"2010-05-24T07:30:11","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T14:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/?p=645"},"modified":"2010-05-25T11:19:18","modified_gmt":"2010-05-25T18:19:18","slug":"seizing-the-moment-or-not-hughhewitt-com-05-23-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/2010\/05\/24\/seizing-the-moment-or-not-hughhewitt-com-05-23-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Seizing the Moment – Or Not | HughHewitt.com | 05.23.10"},"content":{"rendered":"

The question around Washington this past week \u2013 in the air, even when it wasn\u2019t on the lips \u2013 was, will the Republicans make the same mistake the British Conservative\u2019s made? \u00a0Will they fall short of the electoral triumph that appears to be waiting for them?<\/p>\n

In a recent Wall Street Journal<\/em> article (see: http:\/\/tiny.cc\/pvdi9),<\/a> Henry Olsen of the American Enterprise Institute argues that Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair offered a kind of Americanization of Britain, with policies that favored enterprise and mobility, saying to the British people, you are not subjects; you are citizens. \u00a0The newly elected Prime Minister David Cameron, Olsen says, didn\u2019t and still doesn\u2019t understand this fact, which is why he won an only tentative victory, forcing him to agree on making Liberal Democratic Party leader, Nick Clegg, his deputy prime minister. \u00a0In other words, the Conservative Party leadership does not understand its own country.<\/p>\n

After Rand Paul\u2019s meltdown over his views on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (for pity\u2019s sake), the question has arisen, have too many elements of the GOP failed to understand their country, or even their congressional districts and states?<\/p>\n

For years, the GOP\u2019s national leadership has been all but clueless about the disenchantment growing around the nation. \u00a0But now, in talks with senior Republicans around town and beyond, I increasingly sense that the message of 2006 and 2008 is sinking in. \u00a0Not with everyone, but among the more astute. They understand that the GOP Congresses of George W. Bush\u2019s presidency and the President himself totally dropped the tax and spending ball, and this is why voters turned them out.<\/p>\n

In many respects, those who switched from Bush in 2004 to the Democrats in 2006 and 2008 and are now returning to the Republicans share the concerns of Henry Olsen\u2019s swing vote in Britain. \u00a0They highly prize individual autonomy and enterprise. \u00a0They are emphatically citizens, not subjects, and are showing themselves to be super sensitive to what they see as Obama Administration moves to subject them to the whims of an overreaching government. \u00a0More broadly, they see astronomical increases in Federal spending (and the taxes that will inevitably go along) and vast expansions of Federal power as threats to the national character, in particular to democratic self-government and the freedom to chart one\u2019s own course in life. \u00a0Increasingly, as I say, the most astute leaders in Congress understand this.<\/p>\n

But with Rand Paul\u2019s meltdown, these same leaders are now wondering if the party\u2019s new elements understand other parts of American life, those parts that in one way or another they will need to bring into any winning coalition. \u00a0They look not just at Kentucky but at candidates in Colorado and Florida \u2013 states Republican Senate candidates should take handily in November. \u00a0They worry that the autumn elections will not produce the victories needed to stop the Administration-backed legislation that voters like those who have shown up at Tea Party rallies have mobilized to halt and reverse.<\/p>\n

At the same time, I have been hearing nearly opposite worries from party leaders outside of Washington. Not long ago, I attended a small dinner with a young statewide elected official. \u00a0It was an off-the-record meeting, so I won\u2019t identify the official beyond saying that this was the kind of person whom critics of Washington would admire. I expect to see this official move to Washington after the current job.<\/p>\n

But this state office holder worried not that the party would do too poorly in November but too well. \u00a0\u201cWe don\u2019t have a program,\u201d this officeholder said. \u00a0\u201cWe are not ready to take over the government. \u00a0We can\u2019t afford to waste another time in control of Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was Victor Hugo who so famously said that there is no power on earth equal to an idea whose time has come. In this Sunday\u2019s New York Times<\/em>, Thomas Friedman wrote (see: http:\/\/tiny.cc\/8he7m)<\/a> of the disappearing room for fiscal error in the United States today. There is much Friedman will never understand (he works for The New York Times<\/em> after all), but if he has started to grasp this truth, the truth that drives the Tea Party crowd and the American swing vote, if even he understands it, we may be witnessing the arrival of an idea\u2019s time.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the rub. These past few weeks, I have heard similar worries from GOP leaders inside and outside of Washington, from those who were concerned we wouldn\u2019t do well enough in November and those worried we would do too well. \u00a0They all come down to this: \u00a0What if our time arrives and, for whatever reason, we aren\u2019t ready?<\/p>\n

The British Conservatives were not ready to seize a moment that was begging to be seized. \u00a0American Republicans worry that they, too, could fall short in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The question around Washington this past week \u2013 in the air, even when it wasn\u2019t on the lips \u2013 was, will the Republicans make the same mistake the British Conservative\u2019s made? \u00a0Will they fall short of the electoral triumph that appears to be waiting for them? In a recent Wall Street Journal article (see: http:\/\/tiny.cc\/pvdi9), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-commentary-general","tag-hugh-hewitt"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":647,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions\/647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}