l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that a good catchphrase could stop
thinking for 50 years. One of the often-repeated catchphrases of our time —
“It’s the economy, stupid!” — has already stopped thinking in some
quarters for a couple of decades.
There is no question that the state of the economy can affect elections. But
there is also no iron law that all elections will be decided by the state
of the economy.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt was reelected for an unprecedented third term
after two terms in which unemployment was in double digits for eight
consecutive years.
We may lament the number of people who are unemployed or who are on food
stamps today. But those who give the Obama administration credit for coming
to their rescue when they didn’t have a job are likely to greatly outnumber
those who blame the administration for their not having a job in the first
place.
An expansion of the welfare state in hard times seems to have been the
secret of FDR’s great political success in the midst of economic disaster.
An economic study published in a scholarly journal in 2004 concluded that
the Roosevelt administration’s policies prolonged the Great Depression by
several years. But few people read economic studies.
This economy has been sputtering along through most of the Obama
administration, with the unemployment rate hovering around 9 percent. But
none of that means that Barack Obama is going to lose the 2012 election.
Even polls that show “any Republican” with more public support than Obama
do not mean that Obama will lose.
The president is not going to run against “any Republican.” He is going to
run against some specific Republican, and that Republican can expect to be
attacked, denounced, and denigrated for months on end before the November
2012 elections — not only by the Democrats, but also by the media, which is
heavily pro-Democrat.
We have already seen how unsubstantiated allegations from women with
questionable histories have dropped Herman Cain from front-runner status to
third place in just a couple of weeks.
In short, it takes a candidate to beat a candidate, and everything depends
on what kind of candidate that is.
The smart money inside the Beltway says that the Republicans need to pick a
moderate candidate who can appeal to independent voters, not just to the
conservative voters who turn out to vote in Republican primaries. Those who
think this way say that you have to “reach out” to Hispanics, the elderly,
and other constituencies.
What is remarkable is how seldom the smart-money folks look at what has
actually been happening in presidential elections.
Ronald Reagan won two landslide elections when he ran as Ronald Reagan. Vice
President George H. W. Bush then won when he ran as if he were another
Ronald Reagan, with his famous statement, “Read my lips, no new taxes.”
But after Bush 41 was elected and turned “kinder and gentler” — to
everyone except the taxpayers — he lost to an unknown governor from a small
state.
Other Republican presidential candidates who went the “moderate” route —
Bob Dole and John McCain — also came across as neither fish nor fowl and
went down to defeat.
Now the smart money inside the Beltway is saying that Mitt Romney, who is
nothing if not versatile in his positions, is the Republicans’ best hope
for replacing Obama.
If conservative Republicans split their votes among a number of conservative
candidates in the primaries, that can mean ending up with a presidential
candidate in the Bob Dole–John McCain mold — and risking a Bob Dole–John
McCain result in the next election.
The question now is whether the conservative Republican candidates who have
enjoyed their successive and short-lived boomlets — Michele Bachmann, Rick
Perry, and Herman Cain — are prepared to stay in the primary race to the
bitter end, or whether their conservative principles will move them to
withdraw and throw their support to another conservative candidate.
There has probably never been a time in the history of this country when we
more urgently needed to get a president out of the White House, before he
ruined the country. But will the conservative Republican candidates let that
guide them?
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2011
Creators Syndicate, Inc. |
|
