OPINION:
Tuesday’s Republican wave election was not just about the economy, repealing Obamacare, illegal immigration, failed foreign policy or the nation’s nearly $18 trillion debt.
It was about all of that, but it was really about electing adults to escort America safely off Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.
This is where multiple-choice exit polls fail to do justice. Obamacare’s unpopularity was huge, but how do you quantify public disgust with a ruling party’s lawlessness and arrogance, combined with lawless judges and a media that refuses to do honest reporting? You count the votes.
“Right track” and “wrong track” surveys do not quite do the job. Like a whale under the surface, the fear that we are no longer a self-governing nation is palpable.
Here’s why the voters threw a lot of the rascals out. Joblessness persists despite happy media reports. Power-mad bureaucrats order every aspect of our lives and want more. The president and attorney general flip the bird at any law they dislike, while calling their fellow Americans racists. The current Senate majority leader kills hundreds of bills while bemoaning the “do-nothing Congress” in between slanderous attacks on “the billionaire Koch brothers.”
The former House speaker may have motivated millions of voters just by threatening to return to power with her giant gavel. With all this cuckoo stuff going on, Republicans correctly calculated that just by showing up as normal, common-sense Americans, they could beat the wild-eyed socialists who have been wrecking the country.
As the public’s level of disgust for the president and his enablers dawned on them, the GOP’s rallying cry evolved from “Republicans: We’re not as bad as you think” to “Republicans: We’re not Democrats, and that’s all you need to know.” It was enough.
Many of the newly empowered Republicans understand the deeper meaning behind this historic election. It was a wholesale rejection not only of President Obama, but also of the worldview he represents.
Socialists have been at war with the church, the family and free enterprise since the left emerged out of the atheistic French Revolution. Since their heaven is solely on Earth, they work feverishly to build themselves a big government to manage us infantile citizens and to impose a new, immoral order on a hapless nation.
They even invoke the name of God to promote godless policies such as confiscatory taxation, abortion on demand and sexual anarchy. It worked for a while.
As the amazing results of the 2014 election continue to be sifted, though, it’s clear the jig is up. Americans want their country back before it’s too late.
Republicans, with honorable exceptions, rarely bothered to defend marriage, but they registered muted disapproval while the Democrats, like demented children, took a jackhammer to the moral order.
Voters in Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska and North Carolina elected Republican Senate candidates who opposed Obamacare and supported marriage, free enterprise, gun rights and other traditionalist causes.
Absent from most election coverage was the kingmaking role of evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics. “Self-identified conservative Christians made up 32 percent of the electorate and voted 86 percent Republican and only 12 percent Democrat,” according to a poll conducted by Public Opinion Strategies for the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “These voters contributed roughly 52.4 percent of all the votes received by Republican candidates.”
Furthermore, 82 percent of weekly churchgoing evangelicals voted Republican, as did 70 percent of weekly Catholic churchgoers, the poll found.
Faith and Freedom Coalition President Ralph Reed said his group operated in 46 states and distributed more than 20 million voter guides in more than 117,000 churches.
Maybe it’s not a good idea for the GOP to throw “the religious right” overboard in search of the elusive “independent” voter.
Near the end, incumbent establishment GOP Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts emphasized his pro-life credentials, got Tea Party backing and a key endorsement from primary rival Milton Wolf to defeat Democrat-in-drag “independent” Greg Orman.
In Maine, pro-life, pro-marriage, welfare and budget reformer Gov. Paul LePage stunned the pundits by defeating Democrat Mike Michaud, who had hoped to become Maine’s first openly homosexual governor.
In Colorado, incumbent Democrat Sen. Mark Udall’s “war on women” rhetoric backfired badly. In Northern Virginia, Democrat John Foust said that his 10th District congressional opponent, Barbara Comstock, who had worked on Capitol Hill and raised several children, had never had “a real job.” Mrs. Comstock buried him by 16 points. In the Texas governor’s race, conservative Republican Greg Abbott handily defeated the Democrats’ “Abortion Barbie,” Wendy Davis.
There’s much more here, but let’s end on this. Texas Tea Party favorite Sen. Ted Cruz was excoriated for “ruining the Republican brand” by daring to risk shutting down Congress. Taking the long view, he helped educate millions of Americans to the threats posed by Obamacare and big government.
If this election is any evidence of Mr. Cruz’s effect on “the brand,” Republicans just might want to take more of his unsocialized medicine.
Robert Knight is senior fellow for the American Civil Rights Union and a columnist for The Washington Times.
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