The Hangover: One Year After Electing GOP, Voters Reject Their Ideas

Dateline 2010. People are frustrated with two plus years of economic stagnation. Washington is a fractious place that seems to be ensnared in an endless fight with a broken record of the stale talking points. Democrats had made huge strides in the 2006 and 2008 elections, and holding both houses of Congress and the presidency, as well as a majority of governor’s mansions. So the voters pushed out the party in power for their inability to immediately turn around the economy and bring down the unemployment rate, giving the House back to Republicans and returning the GOP to power in the statehouses of some bluish swing states.

Exactly one year later, voters in some key states where Republicans had made gains rejected those ideas through statewide referendums, striking not only at the party but at the very reason for electing them — their ideas. If election day 2011 tells us anything, it’s not just that overreaching in this political environment is a bad move, but it’s a spectacularly bad one.

None of last night’s roundup of referendum votes were close. In Ohio, the most watched and direct clash between Republican and Democratic forces, the state’s new anti-union law pushed by Gov. John Kasich (R) was defeated by 22 points, after both sides spent millions. Kasich himself became the face of the law, called SB 5 while it was going through the legislative process, which stripped many of the collective bargaining rights for public employees, including cops, firefighters and teachers. It subsequently took a bite out of his popularity, as his disapproval rating has hovered well over 50 percent for months.

Yes, it was an overreach. But the lesson seems to be that if voters are concerned about jobs, it’s best not to start directly attacking along the old political lines. Surely Republicans in Ohio wanted to impart the dual message of saving the state money through austerity measures like SB 5 and hitting their political foes as the culprits of the struggling Ohio economy.

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http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/one-year-after-electing-gop-voters-reject-their-ideas.php?ref=fpa_beta

about time.

That's really nothing more than a glorified snake oil salesman. If only the voters would turn that bullshit off and think for themselves we'd be better off.

That's why it's important to vote party line right down to dog catcher: Which one of those Bush monsters said "it's not who votes for who, but who counts the votes." Something like that.

People have learned that one side just cannot be trusted at all.