A Belated Postmortem of the 2010 Election: In Which I Temporarily Eat My Words

I think the 2010 election was a bit traumatic for non-conservatives like me, to say the least. That's why I'm writing about it right now, instead of right after the disaster happened.

The problems: One, the Republican Party has gone so far to the right that I vowed never to vote for them again (except for Ron Paul, of course) years ago. Two, the Republicans swept the election, big time. The Democrats got their butts handed to them.

So what happened? Basically, when the candidate of hope and change actually became president, he proved to be more conservative than the people who elected him. Barack Obama even turned out to be more conservative than Richard Nixon, of all people. Since few American politicians seem to remember Nixon, let's give a bit of context here: Nixon, for all his professed conservatism, was responsible for the kind of socialist policies Obama refuses to touch with the proverbial ten-foot pole, such as "affirmative action" a.k.a race quotas and — believe it or not — price controls. Any TEA Party Republican who claims that Obama is the "most socialist president ever" doesn't know Nixon, or Eisenhower for that matter (Interstate Highway System, among other unforgivable acts of socialism). "Most socialist president ever" is really code for "that black guy who had the gall to become Great White Father".

So Barack Obama, the desperate liberals' Great Black Hope, turned out to be a Clintonite Blue Dog conservative who clings to Bush-era neofascist policies starting with the imperial wars. So, in the mid-term election, the angry young liberals stayed home in droves, allowing the angry old conservatives to carry the election. The TEA Party claims the American People gave it a mandate. So what do they do? Impose corporatist dictatorship wherever it holds power.

I predicted the Democrats' losses would be minimal in 2010. I never figured on the Democratic liberal and antiwar base turning against President Obama. That's why I'm eating my words. I'm temporarily eating my words because the way the Republicans are acting — that is, like the arrogant ruling party of a one-party dictatorship — 2012 is theirs to lose, and they will lose it. They've already given the Democrats more than enough rope with which to hang them. And if Michele Bachmann wins the GOP nomination, consider them already beaten. But if Jon Huntsman wins — he's the former Utah governor who was Obama's ambassador to China — his former boss will get a real contest, precisely because Huntsman is not as extreme as the TEA Party wants.

Stay tuned...