From the Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal, OCTOBER 28, 2010
There They Went Again
The 111th Congress fits a familiar Democratic pattern.

In the midst of the final moments of another contentious election The Wall Street Journal points out a pattern that it seems no one has  yet learned.  The Republicans fall out of favor in a substantial way: Watergate, Iraq etc. The Democrats take both Congress and the White House, proceed to govern  hard left and are then quickly shown the door. Yet again they have read the voters’ signals wrong. The rejection of Nixon or Bush was not a mandate to govern from the hard left.

Excerpts:

Far from being a unique historical event, a GOP victory on Tuesday will repeat the pattern we have seen since the 1960s. Four times Democrats have won control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and four times they have attempted to govern from the left. Each time Americans saw that agenda and its results, and they rejected it at an early opportunity. Maybe there’s a lesson here.

The larger lesson is that we are learning for the fourth time in 45 years that America can’t be governed from the left. Democrats exploited the recession and the accident of 60 Senate seats to push the agenda of their dreams, and the American public has recoiled at the effrontery and the results. Repairing the damage of the 111th Congress will take years, and perhaps decades, but the first step is ousting the liberals who once again drove their party off a cliff.

print