Junto Boys

WHY THE REPIBLICAN MAJORITY

Conservatism is always popular after times in which liberal experimenting and good intentions have failed. Had Carter been President during khaddafi we might still be fighting him today. Conversely, if Reagan had been President in 1979 the Iran situation might not exist anymore. Would Saddam have become a nuisance in the 1990s with a Republican President? Would North Korea have gotten off easy in 1994? The American people want to elect Presidents with grand ideas about reshaping America during peacetime, but those elections also result in giving problem spots in the world a way to grow. Once those problems get to be too much, a Republican has to come aboard and right the situation.

John Kerry could have won this election if only Democrats as a whole had any credibility on the issue of national security. Even with the media pretending that post Vietnam Democrats are up to the job, the American people can see with their own eyes. The 1960s split America in a way that is now described as red state - blue state. The chaos at the Democrat convention in 1968 and Humphrey's loss in the general election changed the dominance of the Democrat Party at a national level. The national party would no longer run strong Defense candidates like FDR, JFK and LBJ. Instead, they would combine the Welfare state mentality of those men with a hippy mentality on foreign policy. It wasn't noticeable to rank and file Democrats until Jimmy Carter's lack of resolve in Iran made many in the party (and most southerners) bolt. Thus was born Reagan Democrats. You could just as well call them JFK Democrats or LBJ Democrats, either way they were Democrats in ways that their national party no longer was.

Democrats could still win local elections and congress because of pork and personal service, but the President would have to be like Republicans on defense in times of trouble. This was especially true in the south where conservatives trusted their entrenched Democrats, but turned their backs on new ones. When I moved to Pensacola in 1986, the combination of Democrat Earl Hutto and Democrat Bob Sikes had held a seat in Congress since World War II. Hutto stepped down the same year (1994) that Republicans took over Congress. It was an easy Republican win and the birth of Joe Scarborugh. A Democrat in the same district now will lose the election by 20 or more points. A lot of guys didn't see the transformation coming on the local level.

Bo Johnson (D) was the Speaker of the Florida house and a popular local politician. He also stepped down in 1994 and his right-hand man ran for the seat. He was trounced by an unknown 28 year-old Republican with no political experience. People didn't care about Bo Johnson's party man. 12 Years of Reagan-Bush and two years of Clinton showed many ticket splitters in the south that times needed to change.

A lot of states in the heartland will still send Democrats to congress or vote them in as President during tough times. But they’ll vote for the Republican President when the chips are down. Clinton and Carter both won in times of peace, but America won't take those chances in times of strife.

George W. Bush didn’t divide the country. The division happened as an aftermath of Vietnam when the former cold warrior Democrats had a change of heart and moved to a position that mirrored that of France and Great Britain during the rise of Hitler.

LBJ trounced Goldwater in 1964. He ate him for lunch. Jimmy Carter is the only Democrat to win more than 50% of the popular vote since, and he barely did that even with the Watergate scandal hurting Ford. The Democrats took a grand party that dominated the White House from 1932 to 1968 with the slight blip of a non-political Republican 5 star general and turned it into a minority party over the issue of Vietnam and foreign policy.

The Democrats split their party over the Civil War and it allowed Lincoln to win the election, reshape the country, and put them firmly in the minority. They’ve done it to themselves again. The question is no longer how good the Democrat candidate is, but whether the world situation is such that we can afford him.