Things are getting bad, really bad, in Virginia (elsewhere too). The needed realization arrived -- parents woke up and understood that those in power want to take away their children. I've long been saying that the NRA is successful because its members don't want to lose their guns to the government. It's been strange that people don't feel at least as possessive about their kids. But at last, that seems to be changing, with Glenn Youngkin's win over Terry McAuliffe as the decisive event in this awakening.
I'm not sure what it would take for Republicans (and those voting anti-Democrat) to incentivize those to whom they give the win to get moving and start a real reform in government: to make them understand that getting elected is the first, not last, step in their mission. I have my doubts about whether Youngkin is the one to accomplish an overturn of leftist policies. He seems to have stumbled on his victory in spite of his conventional Republican politics.
I fear that the normal thing for our Republican citizenry is to channel fed-upped-ness into one voting spree and then go back to business as usual. In some ways, it's understandable, because real life isn't about politics; yet, if politics get out of bounds, real life becomes intolerable.
But I am pretty sure that one part of the solution would be to get a little slap in the days after the election. Mark Steyn provides that slap:
Vote Youngkin, and, God and the 3am ballot boxes willing, drag him across the finish line as a rebuke to an almost parodic reductio of a Democrat hack (McAuliffe) and a third-rate mammy singer of an incumbent (Northam). But remember Milton Friedman's dictum: this guy is just a wrong man who happened to find himself in the right place, and he will have to be forced hard to do the right thing every day of his term. What matters is what you do on all the non-Election Days.
Read the whole thing: Power and Office
The problem is also that those who tend to vote Dem, Catholics included, place a higher premium on political objectives and expend a lot of energy to implement them. They also have CLEAR objectives, something those who tend to vote Republican lack. (They also have less scruples about cheating.) No governmental role is too small for the Dems: school boards, library boards, park boards, etc... while these low hanging offices are largely ignored by Republicans. The official Republican party has largely relegated itself to the underdogs fighting against overreach and is quite comfortable in that role.
ReplyDeleteSay what you will about Trump, (and people do), but he made actual headway in policy. Good policies that have been now rolled back, as evidenced by my gas tank bill, the open southern border, and the absolute debacle in leaving Afghanistan. (Which I still can't believe has already gone out of the news cycle.) Love him or hate him, he just wasn't your typical Republican.
Anyway, I hope Youngkin's win motivates Republicans to finally not be afraid to embrace actual positive stances. Parental rights is a winning issue. They should own it.
And my last comment is that I'm starting to think giving women the right to vote wasn't as wonderful as people claim. It's logically politicized EVERYTHING subsequently.