Summing up Tuesday’s election, David Espo of the Associated Press wrote, “Obama won the popular vote narrowly, the electoral vote comfortably, and the battleground states where the campaign was principally waged in a landslide.” It’s a good line and an accurate one — but the real landslide on Tuesday was broader and deeper than the presidential race. Up and down the ticket, from candidate races to ballot initiatives, a liberal landslide swept the country.
In Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin became the first openly gay US senator, and the biggest story about the race is that her sexuality didn’t turn out to be a big story. Gay-marriage proponents won in all four states where the issue appeared on the ballot — Maine, Washington, and Maryland became the first states to approve legal gay unions; voters rejected a Minnesota initiative to outlaw them. The surge surprised many strategists working on the issue. Going into the night, only Maine was considered a strong bet.
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Ugh these are not "conservative" Republicans. Conservatives do not dip into the waters of individual choice. This is the problem with the Republican Party today. I keep hearing folks go, "We're not conservative enough." You are not conservative at all. What was the simple premise that Goldwater laid down for conservatives,
"The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process."
Is that what today's Republican Party is based upon. No, not even close. We stumble around in the wilderness like some prophet of old calling out the people's sin. It is none of our business what these people do. "Conservatism" is a philosophy that seeks to retain those things of the past that are good and improve upon them. It is not a philosophy of "no government" or "'morality government" or "no change, no progress". But today's Republican Party doesn't have conservatives it merely stole the name. In the long run unless this Party returns to a true conservative agenda it will die and good riddance.
Agree. The modern republican party is not conservative. It is a pastiche of biases and echo chamber recieved wisdom that doesn't really hang together ideologically. What that party needs is a deep thinker like Willilam Buckley to emerge. Unfortunately, they are intellectually guided by some horrible thinkers, hacks like William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Karl Rove, and I guess you could include the Fox News guys like Hannity and O'Reilley, too. Not to insult my republican friends, but these guys are almost sad to read or listen too. And as you say, as soon as someone wants to legislate the private behavior of American citizens, they should be forbidden from calling themselves conservative. The hypocracy is just too great.
Liberal landslide might be an exageration. But I do think a growing number of voters are sick and tired of republicans trying to legislate personal behavior, and they were willing to use their vote to express this. If the republicans are smart they'll drop the social issue warfare and worry about delivering a functional government. Time will tell.
Agree. It is what "conservatives" do best. Make that which is, efficient, productive. Conservatives are not opposed to change for oppositions sake. But see it more as an incremental action as opposed to a sudden shift of human nature. As much as I liked RR he let the crazies get their nose in the tent and I think it will be very difficult to get them out and clean up what they left behind.
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"Liberal Landslide" indeed. I'm happy to see that the Globe has decided to end the use of the term "progressive" to mask liberalism for so many years. Its great to have the term back "out" and about if for no other reason that it ends the phony use of "progressive" liberals hid behind as anything, previously, deemed "liberal" was.....what? Too "extreme", no? Now liberal is "back" and we'll see how long it takes before the inevitable failure of liberalism/socialism/progressivism makes liberals embrace some new formulation from which they can hide when the worm turns. How "courageous" of the Globe....kind of like speaking "truth to power" and all that.
When do we "conservatives" get our label back from the Republican Party since they sold us out to the religious right, right wing social engineers and libertarians.
Maybe socially liberal fiscal conservatives should pick up the mantle of progressive then. I'd back a party that dropped the hate, dropped the religious right and dropped the social platform in favor of strong economic scrupples without over emphasizing non important social issues. Let's get people back to work, then we can fix Peter's inability to marry Paul.
Joshua, by "marriage equality," do you besides SSM also mean the right of people to have multiple spouses? Or marry a same-sex relative? Or are some people's marriages more "equal" than others? And why is the last sentence in your article something worth celebrating, as you seem to think it is? Also, one of the Democratic districts here in RI was gerrymandered this year, so please don't think its a Republican thing.
Marriage equality is almost universally used to describe the equally available and protected marriages of same-sex couples who otherwise meet a state's requirements for marriage. It has never been used, in my reading (which is wide on this topic), to include multiple spouses. The only marriages that are 'more equal' are straight ones because of the federal DOMA, which will likely be taken up by the Supremes, is motivated only by animus, is clearly unconstitutional, and will, sooner or later, fall. By 'equally available' I mean available through the same means that straight couples would use (eg, through town clerks). Clear enough for you, ricon?
By the way, aren't conservatives in favor of less, not more, government intrusion into privacy?
But how important of an issue is this? Really? Not being able to marry is not akin to slavery, it's not akin to the civil rights movement where an entire group of people were physically, legally and emotionally presecuted... I'm all for equal marriage rights but let us put it in its appropriate place behind economic policy, foreign policy, education policy, infrastructure initiatives, health care and just about every policy issue other than gun rights. It's a nice to have issue...but not a neccessity.
The following paragraph from Green's piece is representative of his logic overall: "And the broad Republican effort to suppress minority voting surely had a real effect. An election-night survey by the AFL-CIO and Hart Research found that 9 percent of whites had to wait more than 30 minutes to vote. By contrast, 22 percent of blacks and 24 percent of Latinos had to wait that long. Many simply gave up." If there were a Republican effort to suppress minority voting as Green contends (there was not, and Green provides not an atom of evidence that there was), and if that effort "surely had a real effect" as Green further asserts, then why was the percentage of blacks and Latinos who had to wait more than 30 minutes to vote so much greater than the percentage of whites who had to do so?
Seeb: If your reading on "this topic" were as "wide" as you boast that it is - to say nothing of being as wide as it should be- then you would know that DOMA is not "clearly unconstitutional" as you incorrectly contend, and that it is certainly not, as you further incorrectly maintain, "motivated only by animus". In point of fact, the definition of marriage, since the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, has been understood by all peoples, races, cultures, and religions to mean the exclusive and permanent union of one man and one woman. It has not been defined as the union of a man and a man, of a woman and a woman, or of a man and a dog. Why is it that now, after marriage has been thus understood for millennia, those who continue to defend that traditional definition are all of a sudden to be considered by people like you as somehow bigots or as "motivated only by animus"? One other thing. Regarding "marriage equality", an additional difficulty many of us have with so-called same sex marriage is this: Why has the state chosen - in the absence of a thoroughly developed body of empirical data showing that the same sex domestic configuration advances the common good - to extend to that particular configuration, as against all the other possible conjugal arrangements, the special protections and privileges accorded to traditional marriage?
Seeb: If your reading on "this topic" were as "wide" as you boast that it is - to say nothing of being as wide as it should be- then you would know that DOMA is not "clearly unconstitutional" as you incorrectly contend, and that it is certainly not, as you further incorrectly maintain, "motivated only by animus". In point of fact, the definition of marriage, since the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, has been understood by all peoples, races, cultures, and religions to mean the exclusive and permanent union of one man and one woman. It has not been defined as the union of a man and a man, of a woman and a woman, or of a man and a dog. Why is it that now, after marriage has been thus understood for millennia, those who continue to defend that traditional definition are all of a sudden to be considered by people like you as somehow bigots or as "motivated only by animus"? One other thing. Regarding "marriage equality", an additional difficulty many of us have with so-called same sex marriage is this: Why has the state chosen - in the absence of a thoroughly developed body of empirical data showing that the same sex domestic configuration advances the common good - to extend to that particular configuration, as against all the other possible conjugal arrangements, the special protections and privileges accorded to traditional marriage?
Gee. LeoTheLion4 is apoplectic. He's in terrible denial and can't seem to accept that the right-wing wave in on the decline.
It's funny how some people jump through mental loops and stretches to preserve their preconceived dogmas.
There's no doubt about it. We're going to disagree, argue and support different solutions to the country's problems, as we always have. We're liberals, though, and we're coming back.
Scared are you? We're not monsters. We're very friendly and we don't think you should be executed. Just relax. Liberals actually like people, even people who we disagree with. We're not crazy about people who are filled with hate, but we even put up with them.