×
Tim Carney "dampens" Republican enthusiasm by arguing that America has been a "Republican country all along" and a big Republican victory tonight proves that "the last four years didn't quite reflect reality":
The bad news for Republicans: This election isn't really redrawing the map, and it doesn't represent a fierce reaction against the Democrats. Instead, the country is returning to where it was politically before the Republicans threw away their majority in 2006 and 2008 through overspending, two wars, and rampant corruption.In other words, voters reacted to years of Republican governance by electing Democrats. Now voters are reacting to Democratic governance -- in this case a failure to bring down unemployment -- by electing Republicans. It's almost as if in American democracy, the two parties trade majorities without one ever achieving a permanent, enduring dominance over the entire electorate.
For all the complaints about how liberals are obsessed with identity politics, conservatives seem pretty fixated on the notion of this election restoring the idea that conservative politics is synonymous with American authenticity, at the expense of anything resembling a legislative agenda. Liberals will at least be able to look back at the policy goals achieved during the last few years and see progress. The "Republican country" conservatives can look forward to waking up to tomorrow morning is one in which Republicans rail against government spending while promising to do more of it.
All of which is to say that, identity politics aside, even Republicans -- or at least their elected officials -- recognize that Americans aren't so much "small government ideologues" as they are ideologically incoherent. The "center-right country" argument is spin at best, vanity at worst.
