After 2008: Whither the GOP?
Post-Election ’08, there’s plenty of talk about the hard times for Republicans nationally as Democrats have now gained the White House and expanded their Congressional majorities.
I’m of the “swinging pendulum” school of thought that holds that it’s foolish to assume that, because one party’s up and one party’s down, that dynamic will extend indefinitely into the future. It wasn’t so long ago (2004, to be exact), that lots of people were wondering if the Democrats could ever recover their mojo….
I’m joined in my sanguinity by columnist David Sanders, who claims in a piece today that, while the GOP is down, they’re not out—and he sees some promising signs on the home front in Arkansas to cheer Republicans a bit in a tough year:
Closer to home, the state GOP stopped the bleeding by picking up legislative seats after losing numbers for two consecutive election cycles. In fact, of the four major races in which Gov. Mike Beebe openly campaigned for Democratic candidates, the Republican won. Greenwood’s Republican Terry Rice defeated Democrat Bill Walters for Walters’ wife’s old House seat. In Russellville, after being outspent by her Beebe-backed Democratic opponent, Andrea Lea won her House race, and North Little Rock Republican Jane English won despite the governor openly appearing in her opponent’s political advertisements. And, in the state’s highest profile political race, Conway’s incumbent Republican state Sen. Gilbert Baker was re-elected despite Beebe’s aggressive campaign for his Democratic opponent.
More on this topic from Blake Rutherford over at the Think Tank, rounding up responses from some national observers, including wise words from Rich Lowry of the National Review: “One of the wisest baseball cliches is: ‘You’re never as good as you seem when you’re winning and never as bad as you seem when you’re losing.’”
