George Will - Validation By Defeat

George Will has--as he usually does--discerned precisely the true causes of Democrat defeat. In this case he rightly points out that they didn't have a product people wanted to buy.

This comes as no surprise to most of us, but Will puts a perfect face on Democrat ignorance of the American electorate.

In a deluge of sentiment and tears from Democrat operatives since November 2, self-reflection has quickly turned into self-aggrandizement and the subsequent disdain for the judgment of the American people--what Will calls a "Culture of Victimhood":

The culture of victimhood, and of the presumed incompetence of individuals, is both a cause and a consequence of a society sprinkled with warning labels written for imbeciles. Such as? On an iron: DO NOT IRON CLOTHES ON BODY. On a fold-up child's stroller: REMOVE CHILD BEFORE FOLDING. These warnings are, in part, defensive measures designed to protect manufacturers against an important Democratic constituency—trial lawyers wielding their premise that when anything goes wrong for anyone, someone else is culpable and should be made to pay.

This is consistent with Democrat statecraft: the art not of inspiring greatness and achievement but of building a political base through appeal to our basest nature by calculating the Lowest Common Denominator of every possible issue. This approach is causing the Democrats to fail either because they can go no lower in the realm of public discourse or the American people are moving in the other direction of seeking higher ground. It seems to me that it is much more of the latter exasperated by the former.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and Democrat policy becomes more vacuous as Democrat leaders seek to govern in a direction non-existent in the hearts of the people or the Constitution which gives them the ultimate power at the ballot box.

Proving that the free-market still provides more efficiency in its chaos than governmental refinements of chaos, George Will points correctly to the weakness of McCain-Feingold thusly:

[Proponents of McCain-Feingold] are dismayed that political spending on the presidential race (including spending by the independent 527 groups) and on all House and Senate races totaled $3.9 billion—--less than what Americans will spend on chips this year. One reason the money in politics is supposedly "too much" is that most of the money goes for advertising, and we know how powerfully it controls voters.

Actually, we don't know. For the record, John Kerry and groups supporting him spent more on advertising than Bush and groups supporting him did —nationally, and in Florida and Ohio.

And more to the point; grassroots politics always wins the day when practiced as a foundational part of a campaign plan. The real genius of Karl Rove was less his political machinations (although they were brilliantly concieved and executed) and more the force of his will to accomplish the largest grassroots effort seen in Republican politics since that which naturally arose under the inspiration of Ronald Reagan and the guidance and encouragement of Lee Atwater.