Nothing short of a revolution. That’s the only way to describe the public upheaval that took place yesterday.
Nancy Pelosi has been fired, the Senate is far more balanced and Presi dent Obama was resoundingly rebuked. Republican governors could control upwards of 30 statehouses when the smoke clears. That’s what you call a consequential election.
As predicted, the explosion of government cost and the economic slump were the driving factors for voters. The results immediately reinvigorate the checks and balances inherent in the two-party system and bring a needed dose of fiscal sanity to Washington and the states.
Yet those are only the most obvious outcomes. The real meaning of yesterday is much more profound.
Let me put it this way: With apologies to Michelle Obama, I’ve never been more proud of my country. Millions of ordinary Americans rebuffed the harangues and lectures of their supposed betters and dared to take the future into their own hands.
They shouted truth to power. They dared resist the fear mongering of the corruptocrats in government and their media handmaidens.
Told to shut up and sit down, the “great unwashed middle,” as Katie Couric recently called it, thundered “Hell, no!” Voters everywhere stood up for independence and spoke up for their own values.
This is American Exceptionalism in action.
Call it a Tea Party for convenience, but that loaded term is an injustice to the movement that is rebelling against its political masters.
Emerging at a time of national distress, a semblance of the spirit that created this unique nation and sustained it through two centuries of war and peace, prosperity and pestilence is reshaping the third century.
That spirit is springing forth in small towns and suburbs and big cities. It is the seed of democracy, as practiced by patriots.
It is a shining moment in America’s grand history precisely because the odds and the oddsmakers were against it. With few exceptions, the major news organizations, the civilian liberal establishment and the White House used every power lever to ridicule and delegitimize the citizen movement.
Obama tried to stir fear among Latinos by portraying opponents as “enemies” and even yesterday warned against big money, special interests and “the politics of cynicism.”
In short, faced with a great and sweeping uprising against his agenda, he could think only of clichés to instill fear in his supporters.
If ever there was a moment that captured the president’s divide from the heartland, that was it. The president knew for months, a year even, that the nation was dead set against his policies.
Instead of conciliation, he heaped ridicule and abuse on critics. He moaned about the tone in Washington as though he is an innocent bystander.
The result was a wave against him that grew day by day. His harsh attacks reminded voters how wrong they were to see him as a reasonable man who would govern from the center.
As Newsweek blogger Mickey Kaus wrote of Obama’s desperate broadsides, “He’s firming up the wrong base.”
The focus now turns to Obama’s reaction. Will he continue to beat his head against the wall of the American people? Or will he accept that his way has been rejected?
He’s still president, but he’s no longer free to act without restraint. He has awakened a mighty force and, unless he can accommodate himself to it, he, too, will be swept aside.
USE THE SLEDGEHAMMER, ANDY
Trying to prove he’s serious about cracking down on Albany corruption, Andrew Cuomo recently upped the ante by threatening to launch a Moreland Act investigation if the Legislature doesn’t move on ethics reform. He called this his “fallback position.”
Cuomo has it backwards. Instead of making the investigation Plan B, he should promote it to Plan A. There is no time for a threat.
Cuomo’s landslide gives him the mandate he needs to use every weapon he has. The Moreland Act is as close to a nuke as the governor gets.
It gives him virtually unfettered power to dig into any aspect of state government. In the plain English of the 103-year-old act, he can “examine and investigate the management and affairs of any department, board, bureau or commission of the state.”
Did I mention that subpoena power comes with it?
It is rarely invoked, and that’s a pity. It hasn’t been used since Gov. George Pataki dusted it off to probe Comptroller Alan Hevesi’s use of state workers to care for his wife. The probers got Hevesi on that one and he resigned, but they missed the big one: the multimillion-dollar bribery scam he’d permitted around the pension fund.
No governor in years has used the Moreland Act to go after the Legislature. It is awash in corruption and even the most basic tasks are reduced to transactions. Pay-to-play describes the entire culture.
It’s not just what’s illegal. The scandal is often what’s legal.
Cuomo understandably doesn’t want to start his term with a war with the people who can thwart his policies, so he has convinced himself he can use power politics to get lawmakers to back his limits on taxes, spending and borrowing. It’s a noble idea that borders on naive.
The Legislature won’t act unless it is forced to. For that to happen, Cuomo needs continuing public anger to keep the pot boiling. Otherwise, lawmakers will make a few token gestures, then slink back to their old ways.
The beauty of the Moreland Act is that, properly staffed, it can expose the dark underbelly and let taxpayers follow the money trail down the ratholes.
It can show how every function in Albany is predicated on a quid pro quo, how much of the bloated budget is linked directly or indirectly to the favor bank, whether it’s patronage, contracts or incentives.
Expecting lawmakers addicted to those habits to suddenly get religion is like expecting the lion to lie down with the lamb. It’s not in their nature.
Oh, congratulations, Gov.-elect Cuomo.
‘Exile’ is home
In a night of a thousand victory speeches, Marco Rubio’s stood out. The new Republican senator from Florida called himself “the son of exiles” and warned his party that its big victories last night were “not an embrace” but a “second chance.”
Give the White House credit. It feared Rubio’s talent and charisma, which is why it dispatched Bill Clinton to try to get a weak Democrat out of the race and line up behind a craven Charlie Crist, the former Republican whose only loyalty is to himself.
The plot failed, and Rubio, a Cuban-American, instantly becomes a national figure. Look out, Washington.
Absent Hillary stars in ‘Glee’
You gotta hand it to Hillary. She was smart enough to get out of town to escape any blame for the Dem debacle and brave enough to gloat about it. Talking to students in Malaysia, she said she talked to President Obama by phone. “I think he was a little envious that I am here,” she chuckled. Ah, out of sight, but never out of mind.