The End of the Rove.

by on

Much of the Republicans' recent defeat, strategists tell Bloomberg News:

can be attributed to the party's previously fail-proof tactic of firing up its core supporters by appeals on social issues such as gay marriage. This year, that approach backfired, particularly among young voters, who are more likely than others to call themselves independents, and who overwhelmingly backed Democrats.

One-third of the electorate now say they are independents, and "exit polls suggest this group is still up for grabs, with nearly a third of young voters saying they made up their minds about how to vote in the final days of the campaign." Significantly, these young independents "tend to be either pro-gay marriage or more indifferent to the issue compared with older voters."

But "Democrats will face demands from their own base-and if that leads to tax increases, overzealous hearings on Bush policies or runaway spending, independents will be put off Democrats, too."

11 Comments for “The End of the Rove.”

  1. posted by Alex on

    I’ve made the observation to a couple of people that people weren’t voting for Democrats as much as they were voting against Republicans.

  2. posted by Bobby on

    Stephen, Rove’s tactic got Bush elected and re-elected. One failure does not mean his methods didn’t work.

    Alex is right, people were voting against republicans because of the Iraq war mess, high oil prices, and the liberal media that kepts screaming Bush is evil and all that BS. Moderates are easily manipulated, but if the democrats go crazy, I’m sure republicans will get re-elected easily.

  3. posted by Northeast Libertarian on

    Yep, people pulled the (D) lever to get rid of the (R) problems, but all they’ll find is that they voted for a different face on the same old problems. Both (D)s and (R)s love their big-spending, far-reaching, command-and-control, ever-larger, ever-growing, unaccountable, corrupt government.

  4. posted by ETJB on

    (1) The media is only as liberal as the conservatives that own it.

    (2) Moderates vote for Democrats partly because that was their only viable alternative and many social conservative voters stayed home or voted for conservative Democrats.

  5. posted by Alex on

    Is anyone else as amazed how both progressives and conservatives look at the “mainstream” media and see it slanted towards the other side? (Not only can it been seen, but documented…)

  6. posted by dr on

    “Is anyone else as amazed how both progressives and conservatives look at the “mainstream” media and see it slanted towards the other side? (Not only can it been seen, but documented…)”

    It is more accurate to say that our national media is primarily alarmist and statist. When they focus on the rest of the world, they tend to favor Republicans, because bluster on national defense plays well on TV. When they focus internally, they tend to favor Democrats, who are more likely to be calling for the government to “do something,” and also because of the Republican unwavering support of corporate welfare. When they focus on social problems, it tends to favor the statists in both parties (Bloomberg/Lieberman/Clinton) who call for action against whatever the scourge of the moment it.

  7. posted by Northeast Libertarian on

    If anything would overcome my opposition to the death penalty, it would be a proposal mandating an instant death penalty for forum spammers. 😛

  8. posted by ETJB on

    Spam Alert!

    Karl Role had already said that he was going to step down after 2004 or that that was going to be his last presidential election..something to that nature.

    However, every GOP leader or activist I hear on the radio or see in the press seems committed to carrying his vision forward. Again and again I hear Republicans say that they lost because they did not push enough on the social issues.

  9. posted by Alex on

    Got to credit them with determination: Seems that it would take a lot of time and effort to spam to this type of blog?

  10. posted by ETJB on

    On the issue of Congressman Foley I did find a blogger talking about the possible federal crimes that the Congressman may have violated.

    It would be interesting to see if we could get some lawyers to comment on it.

    I have not been to this web page before, and I have idea how credible it may be or if it is known to favor one political party over the other.

    http://volokh.com/posts/chain_1159905974.shtml

  11. posted by raj on

    ETJB | November 30, 2006, 1:32pm |

    Volokh.com–The Volokh Conspiracy, a group blog–is pretty reliable on legal issues. When I hear a report of an interesting legal matter or court decision on the radio, that is the first place I go to for cites and links, since they are reasonably up-to-date.

    It is, however, a group blog, and some of the members of the group obviously have various axes to grind on various non-legal issues, and I pretty much ignore them.

Comments are closed.