Election News: The Good and the Bad

Now that the election is over, we can sit back and ponder the good, the bad, and the ugly news in American politics contained in the election results. First, the good news. The B.J.Clinton wing of the donkey party is the big loser, so therefore we should be hearing less from the likes of Terry McAuliffe and B.J. himself, and more from the looney left part of the party represented by Ted Kennedy, Charles Rangel, Barney Frank, and Hillary Clinton herself. The donks will have to be true to their base, which is a most appropriate appellation considering that their appeal is to the baser instincts of humans such as class warfare, serving the "victims" and "minorities," (such as women and women, who are neither a minority nor victims), and depicting lovers of freedom and a return to constitutional government as lovers of pollution, death to all non-farmyard species, and a certain glee at the suffering of the downtrodden.

What's so good about this "good" news? In my opinion, this turn of events shall serve to afford the American electorate a cleaner choice between the parties, a rhetorical divide that has been blurred in this last decade of minimal difference between the donkeys and the pachyderms.

The bad news is that, with the donks moving to the left, the packs will be free to pursue their true desire, which is a bigger, more powerful government of their own design. Today, Jonah Goldberg in gloating over his party's victory, says

The first thing the GOP should do is get the homeland-security bill and the terrorism-insurance stuff taken care of right away.

In case you forgot, the Homeland security bill will create the largest federal bureaucracy ever conceived, and "terrorism insurance stuff" is code for taking an insurance product that is available on the free market and attaching to it a government program with a bureaucracy to determine "fair" rates and subsidize the premiums.

If there is a philosophical difference between the democrats and the republicans it is too subtle for me to discern. At most there is a difference of style, which is, in my opinion, put into the debate as a way to attract votes, rather than a philosophical desire to make government smaller or to make our people more free.

And that's what makes it so ugly. these are our choices. Any candidate that is attractive to someone like me is marginal at best. Even when a good candidate manages to get elected, it is only a matter of one or at most two re-election campaigns before he is submerged into the incumbent party, or, like Jesse Ventura (who is far from my ideal candidate) retires before he becomes part of the problem.

I will have to be satisfied with an election result that is less bad than we might have had. And I am. Very much so.