Saturday, October 14, 2006
Sobriety Checkpoint [Kellyanne Conway]
Here’s a twist on conventional wisdom: if the Democrats fail to gain control of the House it will be due in part to the Mark Foley incident. I know the chattering class has it the other way, that “if the GOP fails to keep the House…” but they are the same people who said Jesse Ventura should be president (yes, of this country), John Kerry would be (with manufactured exit polls to prove it) and Hillary will be (she won’t run).
They are so swept up in the moment becoming the party of moral supremacy that they fail to understand what motivates voters – and what alienates them.
Before I proceed, allow me to make clear that this is not a defense of the Republican leadership and their handling of the Foley information. No heroes there. And there is little excuse for some of the awful legislation that has passed on their watch and the death of good ideas left languishing.
But the Left has totally overplayed the Foley incident and there is no indication that they will stop. That’s good for Republicans because one’s disgust for the incident is different from its direct impact on one’s vote. Security and affordability are the dominant themes this year, with prescription drugs and immigration specifically important in some races. Yes, ethics has a place in this election, but more in individual contests than as some sweeping national trend.
Americans rarely base their electoral decisions on a single incident or individual. But they do punish those who they think waste time focused on less consequential issues and who keep repeating themselves as if we need to hear it 3,000 times to get the message. And they rein in those who they believe have overreached. The 1994 elections, for example, were a response to the excesses of the first two years of the Clinton Administration.
Republicans have been on the losing side of this overreach equation, too. In 1998, the party spent millions of dollars in ads featuring Monica Lewinsky, not tax cuts. They then lost five congressional seats. In the 1996 presidential primaries, businessman Steve Forbes cut into Senator Bob Dole’s lead in Iowa when Forbes accused Dole of having voted for tax increases. But the ads ran incessantly, and eventually the caucus-goers shifted their anger toward Dole for his policies to Forbes for his overkill. “Does he think I am stupid – or that I want him in my living room every five seconds?” one focus grouper famously remarked.
The obsession with Foley is reaching that type of critical mass, with front page stories persisting some two weeks after it first broke. It would all be irritating and little more if nothing else was happening in the world. But we’re at war. North Korea is going nuclear. I part company with the George Conway-Howard Dean view of the political impact of the North Korea nuke test. They see this as a “told you so” moment of sunlight for failed policies of the Bush Administration that have clumsily focused on the wrong member of the axis of evil.
Others, including the UN Security Council, who today voted unanimously 15-0 to sanction North Korea, regard its claim of a nuclear test as a sobering reminder of what’s at stake. Serious matters have a way of injecting grown-up calm and reason when more scintillating yet less consequential events overtake water cooler conversations and media coverage. Still, Kim Jong-Il is not yet getting the same amount of attention as Mark Foley or Jack Abramoff from the MSM or the Democrats.
The congressional page incident engulfing Capitol Hill may be serious, has certainly been overanalyzed and will be investigated. But it should be moved off the front pages, infinite cable loops and silly campaign propaganda in favor of the real “issues.” Easier said than done. Consider that in the weeks preceding September 11, 2001, a hearty portion of the national conversation was fixed on the mysterious disappearance four months earlier of Chandra Levy, the Washington intern who had an affair with Congressman Gary Condit (D-CA). 9-11 did little to cure this 24/7 obsession with missing lovers, cruise ship passengers or murdered children. That’s why before last week Natalee Holloway, John Mark Carr and JonBonet Ramsey had higher household name recognition than Congressmen Mark Foley or even Dennis Hastert, third in line for the presidency.
Daring not to denounce Jong-Il, a certifiable lunatic who starves his own people and who has even been denounced by Russia, and China, whose ambassador criticized North Korea’s “flagrant behavior,” many on the Left saves it descriptions of a “sick and twisted man” for Mark Foley and accusations of a “liar” for their own president. It is imperative that North Korea not be a two-day story, a mere diversion from the Foley debacle, which itself is a diversion from North Korea. To those preening about “protecting the children,” a madman with a nuke is more dangerous than a horndog with a BlackBerry.
10/14 11:28 PM
