Op-Ed: A midterm elections threat assessment — high and getting higher
Tuesday
Nov 28, 2013 at 4:00 AM
If the midterm elections aren’t held in early 2014 as scheduled, it would be the fourth consecutive year of missed opportunities.
With so much attention being paid to the ‘Tea Party Express’ and other similar ‘grassroots’ organizations, the midterm elections might be forgotten, and a return to the old partisan gridlock would take its place.
So far, with a Republican Party so divided, that it might not be able to hold the House of Delegates in the absence of a ‘Tea Party Express’-type candidate, there is a good chance of a reversion to the status quo. The November elections are just two months away, and they could be disastrous for the country if the Republicans don’t hold the majority.
We already have four years of Republicans who didn’t want to be in the minority — as the Tea Party Express, Jim DeMint, Michelle Bachmann, Rand Paul and now Mike Lee have had their way with the GOP establishment. The establishment isn’t going to let up, which means the Senate Republicans will be fighting for re-election, and that’ll make the midterms more difficult.
In the long run, we’ll also see the long period of gridlock in Washington, D.C. — and a return to the failed policies of the Obama administration.
In this political season, the best defense is a flexible offense — not to be confused with a passive-aggressive defense. If you want to win elections, you need to find new strategies to appeal to the voters, and the easiest way to do that was to become the conservative alternative to the Democrats.
The GOP didn’t do this, and was unable to, with the exception of the Tea Party Express. The best defense is a flexible offense — not to be confused with a passive-aggressive defense. If you want to win elections, you need to find new strategies to appeal to the voters, and the easiest way to do that was to become the conservative alternative to the Democrats.
If the Republicans failed this midterm, they failed at the wrong time. The country had been watching two major events — the Arab Spring and the debt-ceiling debacle — and the Republicans were too weak to