An American Opinion

It has been widely reported that in 1992 James Carville, Presidential candidate Bill Clinton’s chief strategist, posted a notice on the wall of the campaign war room a notice that read something like the following:

1. Change vs. more of the same.
2. It’s the economy stupid.
3. Don’t forget health care.

The purpose of this list was to keep the candidate’s message focused throughout the Presidential campaign.  Mr. Carville and his list is credited with helping Clinton win the U.S. Presidency though in fact, Ross Perot did more to put Bill Clinton in the Whitehouse by splintering the conservative vote and giving Clinton a plurality of votes.  A reasonable observation could easily be made that without the conservative Perot candidacy Clinton would have almost certainly lost that election because most Perot voters would have likely voted for Republican George H.W. Bush, who was easily more conservative than Clinton, and given him the victory with well over 50% of the vote. (See election results)

Past performance being the best indicator of future performance, what would happen if the Republican Party were to employ Mr. Carville’s list today?

Here’s my take on it.

“Change vs. more of the same”.
It appears that most Americans are disappointed with the current administration’s performance.  Voters were promised transparency and non-partisanship that has not been delivered.   While the last “State of the Union” address promised that priority would be given to the lack of jobs that beleaguers the American economy , the administration has instead remained focused on its healthcare agenda and largely ignored the economy outside of creating a growing bureaucracy that may ultimately create government jobs that will require higher taxes to fund.   In a nutshell, the current administration promised change, and many Americans see it as change for the worse.

“It’s the economy stupid!”
The American economy has generally gotten worse under the current administration.  They promised jobs, and the jobless rate has climbed in spite of those promises.  It appears that the administration has backed themselves into a financial corner with expensive programs which prevent the use of tax cuts to jump-start the economy, ( a historically proven solution).  Since historically the economy always eventually recovers in spite of political mistakes, it appears that the administration has decided to simply stall and watch it.  When the American people climb out of the downturn under their own power, the Administration will, with the support of admirers in the media, claim victory over the problem.  Indeed it has already begun with the administration claiming success in creating jobs, while the jobless rate continues to rise.  The week before, the administration claimed economic success when General Motors, paid off a government bail-out loan early.  They neglected to disclose the truth that General Motors simply paid off one bail-out loan with yet another government bail-out loan.  The Administration’s economic efforts have thus far failed. It’s like P.T. Barnum said, “You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time”.  They can’t maintain the pretense of success indefinitely and people are already asking questions.

Don’t forget Healthcare.
Sixty percent of Americans were against passage of the Healthcare Bill and the Democratic party ignored them.  The Democratic Party chose to rule the American people when they were elected to represent them.  When you try to rule a country against the wishes of sixty percent of the people, you’re going to have a problem.  When that country is America, whose people are genetically biased against being ruled and have repeatedly fought for freedom, you have a BIG problem.  Healthcare is probably one thing that the Democratic Party hopes Americans forget before the next election.  Ask yourself this question: “Why would the Democrat authors of the healthcare bill delay its programs taking effect until after the 2010 election cycle when a bill with a positive effect would virtually guarantee electoral victory?”

Conclusion:
I believe that in this scenario, the Republicans would win and would not need to splinter the Democrat vote to do it (though some conservative Democrats may be swayed)  Republicans will however need to embrace important, broadly held conservative values to insure that their vote is not splintered by conservative third-party candidates, for that is the true lesson of the 1992 election.

The only way liberals can win is by splintering the conservative vote, or fomenting sufficient personal hate as they did with George Bush.  Those issues aside, Mr. Carville’s list should serve conservative Republican candidates well in the next two election cycles.  After all, his list is essentially another way to raise the question Ronald Reagan asked in 1980 when he suggested Americans ask themselves: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

And should the Republicans succeed in resuming a position power, when that same question is asked regarding their collective turn at the helm, they need to have acted to ensure the electorate’s response is “Yes”.

It definitely wasn’t “Yes” for the Republicans at the last election, but without a miracle, it will not be “Yes” for President Obama and the Democrats this time around.