Investor's Business Daily, August 16th, 2007
Congress: Turns out Donald Rumsfeld resigned as secretary of defense before last year's election. But Republicans who think announcing his departure would have saved their majority are deluding themselves.
The resignation letter of the defense secretary who presided over the liberation of Iraq was made public this week, and surprisingly it was found to be dated Nov. 6 -- the day before last year's congressional elections.
According to Reuters, the revelation "infuriated some Republicans, who said their party might have kept more seats in Congress and perhaps kept control of the Senate if Rumsfeld had left before the election."
But such scapegoating is a very bad sign, because it means Republicans don't know why they lost. After 12 years of GOP majorities in Congress, voters were mad for reasons that were of Republicans' own doing. Among them:
Iraq and the War on Terror: For a Democratic Party advocating surrender to be able to nationalize last year's election regarding Iraq is testimony to Republicans' shortcomings as communicators. Americans will only support a long war like the war on terror when their leaders explain what's at stake -- and few Republicans spoke of Iraq in World War II-like terms.
Border security: Republicans foolishly thought immigration was "fixed" 20 years ago, allowing our porous border to become a national security issue. And so, Democrats got away with a tough-sounding "six-point 12an" -- like promising "to ensure that our ports ... are secured against attack." Today, our entryways remain unacceptably vulnerable.
Corruption: Democrats gained lots of votes thanks to last year's congressional page scandal. The GOP House leadership's slowness in weeding out a predatory congressman enraged family values-oriented voters otherwise inclined to support Republicans.
Spending: Democrats exploited Republican pork-barrel practices, but they're minor league compared with the entitlement crisis unaddressed in over a decade of GOP rule.
GOP politicians who actually believe that throwing some imagined boogeyman like Rumsfeld overboard would have saved them from their own shortcomings don't deserve to be in the majority.
