Matt Patterson,The Washington Times
American conservatives are celebrating their sweep of the congressional midterm elections as a first step in reclaiming their beloved republic and halting its slide into Euro-socialist stupor. Unfortunately,there are troubling signs that the 2010 victory for constitutionalism (whose forces captured but one half of one branch of the national government) may be far too little,far too late.
Take,for example,the post-election Kaiser Family Foundation survey,which found that just 24 percent of voters want the egregious Obama health care regime repealed altogether;another quarter want it repealed in part only. Nineteen percent want it left alone,while a shocking 21 percent favor its expansion. All told,about 65 percent of voters actually favor a greater government role in health care than existed before Barack Obama was elected president.
Then there are the unforgiving demographics:People of color overwhelmingly want more,not less,government. The most recent election was not atypical as black,Hispanic- and Asian-Americans voted overwhelmingly for Democrats (by 90,64 and 56 percent respectively). For whatever reason,conservative voters outraged by the growth of government tend to be overwhelmingly white. And as Zoltan Hajnal notes in the Wall Street Journal,“[W]hites may currently be the majority but they are a declining demographic. The proportion of all voters who are white has already declined to 75 percent today from 94 percent in 1960. By 2050,whites are no longer expected to be a majority of the U.S. population.”
None of this bodes well for the fate of limited government in the United States. In truth,the constitutional republic that conservatives cherish has not existed for a long time –if ever.