A bad night for the Republican Party and a bad night for conservatives, but the Union continues to be strong. We shouldn't be too depressed: our enemies will rejoice, but they're foreigners and who cares what they think; two years will go by quickly and then we get to go again; and the nation has survived worse than Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. They are not the enemy; they are not even folk enemies. I've never seen either wear their baseball cap sideways.
We shouldn't be too optimistic: the nation is sick of the war in Iraq and that's not good; the next two years will probably see one or two Supreme Court resignations and this Senate will not give us a good conservative Justice; and while there may be more Blue Dog Democrats in the House, they're all going to vote to empower Pelosi, and Conyers, and Rangel. The House will hang the Administration up in committee for the next two years. That they might well overplay their hand won't change the fact that the administration will be distracted and disrupted for two years.
Still, everyone's looking for the silver lining (you can barely hear for all the whistling past the graveyard in the Corner) and here's mine: once again, anti-immigrationism proves to be perfectly irrelevant in American politics.
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15 comments:
I admire your philosophical outlook.
Re: graveyard whistling, one of my pet peeves is the traditional post-election farce wherein all sides claim victory.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you get your arse kicked. If you can't tell the difference between winning and getting your arse kicked, you're really in trouble.
So is it no longer a "60-40 nation"?
Next you'll be telling me that some things cost more than they used to.
"A bad night for the Republican Party and a bad night for conservatives..."
But a great night for America. The message is that those in power who ignore what their constituents want risk losing power. That is an important message for all politicians to experience and remember. The republicans and democrats will be better parties because of last night.
Peter:
She might have been right.
When Major beat Kinnock in 1992 I remember writing essays about how Labour can never win another election in Britain.
But of course Blair's New Labour was nothing like Labour.
Brit;
Right so far. Let's see how the post-Blair elections go. My read is that old Labor is driving out nuLabor, as the moonbat Left in America is taking over the Democratic Party.
The left of the party is making a bit of noise, as you'd expect in the jostling for position as Blair nears his end. But the Lib Dems are claiming most of the moonbats these days.
The Old Labourites are trying to decide whether they can pin their hopes on Brown. It seems unlikely. Even the most one-eyed firebrand knows he isn't about to revert to Clause 4.
In the end, it will come down to how many of the Oldsters are willing to sacrifice the unity that will give Labour a chance of fighting off Cameron, in favour of their politically suicidal socialist principles.
While it didn't get a lot of nationwide play, Michigan passed a constitutional amendment prohibiting "affirmative" action.
The MAL promptly promised to fight it in court.
On what basis?
On the basis that they think they can win in court. Good old Skipper, standing there in the middle of the ring with the rulebook clutched in both mitts.
Behold the folk enemy!
And what you can't see is that the little volksfiend is wearing one of these.
They will argue, I assume, that it is a violation of the federal equal protection clause.
David:
Wouldn't any argument they might contradict their conclusion?
Additionally, they are in the position of arguing, at the State level, that a constitutional amendment is unconstitutional.
While that isn't impossible, it would seem to be an awfully tough row to hoe, given that the State Constitution says:
No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws; nor shall any person be denied the enjoyment of his civil or political rights or be discriminated against in the exercise thereof because of religion, race, color or national origin. The legislature shall implement this section by appropriate legislation.
Skipper: It's not my argument. Having said that, since the anti-affirmative action amendment is a later amendment to the state constitution, it implicitly overrides the state equal protection clause -- assuming that the two are in conflict.
However, a state court is still bound by the federal constitution and must apply it to override the state constitution if they conflict.
The problem is that (1) the Supreme Court clearly doesn't believe that affirmative action is constitutionally mandated, so it is hard to argue that a ban is forbidden, and (2) there is the obvious conflict between selective discrimination and equal protection.
Of course, if we had a Democrat congress, they could probably require affirmative action using their power under paragraph 5 of the 14th Amendment. Good thing that'll never happen...
Skipper: some good posts on MCRI, and the never-say-die attitude of its opponents, here. Tough row it may be, but they're willing (and surely have the money) to spend at least the next ten years hoeing it.
Joe:
Thanks for the link. It made a point I hadn't noted before -- the same groups who were for ERA are against the MCRI. How one can do that while avoiding a migrain is a singular mystery.
Volokh Conspiracay also has a couple posts on the subject, all pointing out the difficulty of challenging the MCRI in court.
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