AUGUST 19, 2008 --

David Ignatius. A columnist for The Washington Post noted, August 24, that Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “don’t just oppose Republicans; they seem to actually dislike them.” Mr. Ignatius referred to the Democrats as “The Get-Even Gang.” He even wrote that the Democrats have not done much since they regained control of Congress in 2006 “beyond bashing Bush.”

Where Mr. Ignatius exaggerated, for LPR, was in his description of Republicans as “tough and unyielding,” and constituting an
“attack machine.”

The GOP has yet to win a congressional election because the people are voting for them. The Republicans won, in 1994, in LPR’s view, because the people were fed up with Democratic high-handedness and voted for the only alternative. Over the next four congressional elections, as the Republican House and Senate majorities kept getting whittled away, the GOP had no clue that the people were still voting against the Democrats, not for the Republicans. For the GOP, it was amazing to hold congressional majorities over several elections.

Hardly any attention was given to the fact that the Republican majorities kept dwindling every two years until, like an Olympic flame, it was extinguished.

Republicans will convince people to vote for them when they become “tough and unyielding” for the common good, and respond effectively and in a positive way to the visceral polemics of their adversaries who,in turn, likely, regard Republicans as “the enemy.”

LPR wonders if Mr. Ignatius wrote the truth about Democratic antipathy for the GOP to warn the Democrats that their anti-Republican vitriol could antagonize the voters into again voting against the Dems.

As LPR sees it, congressional Democrats never got over their loss in 1994 of what they had come to regard as their entitlement: majority control of Congress. And the GOP has yet to learn how to stand up for themselves when attacked by the truly “mean-spirited” Democrats.