Is the growing backlash against Washington an anti-establishment thing, an anti-Obama thing, or an anti-incumbent thing?
Yes. All of the above.
To better illustrate the point, here’s a story you probably didn’t see in the news.
Vaughn Ward was the perfect Republican congressional candidate. Raised in humble beginnings by his mother, Ward grew up to serve in the Iraq war, to work as a CIA operations officer, and continues to serve today as a major in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve.
Involving himself in Republican politics, he worked his way up to an assignment in the last presidential election. And despite the failure of the McCain-Palin ticket, Ward emerged from the rubble with some prime assets: big-time endorsements and big-time cash for his own congressional run in his home state of Idaho.
We’re talking about endorsements from both John McCain and Sarah Palin, and all the strategic and fund-raising firepower a Congressional candidate could hope for.
By July of 2009, Ward was the Republican’s “heir apparent” as he sought the opportunity to run against incumbent Democrat Congressman Walt Minnick. And along with the endorsements of nationally prominent figures like Palin, powerful Republicans in Idaho had coalesced around Ward, including the current and immediate past governor.
It was “all good.” Until it all “hit the fan” this spring.
For one, it was discovered that Ward’s wife was the family bread winner, working as a salaried employee of Fannie Mae. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being an employee of the federal government. But being reliant on a federal salary raised questions about Ward’s authenticity as he railed against Obamanomics and big government.
Worse yet, in late April, Ward received a rebuke from both the Pentagon and the U.S. Marine Corps. Images of Ward in military gear had been used in campaign web advertisements, and this, the Pentagon noted, violated the policy of the U.S. military that it remain apolitical, and that military imagery not be used to endorse political agendas.
From there, the remaining few weeks of the Ward For Congress campaign were tragic. A journalist in Spokane, Wash., discovered that Ward had lifted huge sections of policy-position content from other Republican congressional campaign websites (in some cases duplicating entire paragraphs, line-for-line), and placed them on his own campaign website.
Then Ward embarrassed himself in a debate against his severely underfunded grass roots Republican challenger, Raul Labrador, by claiming that he opposed Congressional representation for the “country” of Puerto Rico (Labrador, who grew up in Puerto Rico, was quick to pounce on Ward’s error about the U.S. territory). And hours before primary election day, an embarrassing video of Ward using words and phrases from an Obama speech popped up on Youtube, a video so stunning that Jay Leno aired it on his TV show.
On election day, Labrador defeated the “establishment” candidate Ward by nearly 10 percentage points. Ward had the entire national Republican machine on his side, an expensive TV ad blitz, and a campaign visit from Palin. Labrador had few endorsements and very little cash — but he had won the trust of the people, people who were fed up with party politics and candidate incompetency.
The people’s voice will be heard. Is the Republican Party listening?
—
Austin Hill (www.AustinHill.net) is author of “The Virtues of Capitalism” and a frequent guest host for Arizona’s Newstalk KTAR (92.3 FM).
wonderweenie posted at 11:42 am on Wed, Jun 9, 2010.
Nothing will happen once the Republicans take back Congress which they will in the fall. Expect more of the same in DC. Gridlock, lobbyists controlling what goes on. But Republicans are not kind to the environment, the poor, and they love to wage war. I wonder what country they'll invade first. We can expect to see their philosophy of tax cut and spend. Gee, I can't wait to see our deficit balloon even more.
Irons1 posted at 12:31 pm on Wed, Jun 9, 2010.
I doubt highly that the Republican or Democratic party is listening. Here in Arizona, the Republicans definitely don't listen to the people on anything economic. It's interesting that they are always talking about sacrifice, but never do it themselves. The state is in ruin because of Republicans, but yet they get voted in time and time again.
allamer posted at 1:52 pm on Wed, Jun 9, 2010.
The political parties do not benrfit the citizens. All they do is concentrate power into the hands of a few party leaders. That means that your elected representative is NOT a co-equal member of Congress---one of 435--with as much power as any other to represent YOU. Nope. He's just a party minion to vote for bills he hasn't read, knows very little about, and haven't been debated just because party leaders want them passed. So who are "party leaders" representing? Not ordinary Americans, that's for sure. Each bill is a change in law, and politicians pass way too many. That's because these thick bills contain a lot of special-interest pork that would never get passed in a truely-representative, no-party Congress openly read and debated on the floor in public. Congress acts largely in secret. What we see on CSPAN is very limited. When politicians make public comments about legislation, its actual cost is always hidden in political babble. We need to elect people who are not party minions if we want representation.
Rich posted at 1:57 pm on Wed, Jun 9, 2010.
We need jobs. Are they listening?
We need stable property values. Are they listening?
We need top flight education. Are they listening?
Or are they arresting our gardeners, buying votes by stealing our senior citizen's health care funds to redistribute, and "talking tough" about an ecological disaster in the gulf while doing nothing?
So long as they can blind enough people with smoke and mirrors they can generally get away with incompetence. You can fool some of the people some of the time. So long as you can do that in an election year, it's usually enough.