Jeanne Shaheen's Victory was a Fluke

Sunday on Close UP (0.00 / 0)

10 AM WMUR Close UP

Main topics: Palin and Ayotte

Andy Smith
Dean Spilliotis
Phyllis Woods, NH RNC member
Victoria Bonney, NHDP Comm Director

Have you written a letter to the editor today? Have you donated today? Have you put up signs? Have you made calls? Have you talked to your neighbors?

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by: Ray Buckley @ Sat Jul 11, 2009 at 13:57:42 PM CDT

Wasn't Shaheen's victory margin (0.00 / 0)

wider than Obama's?

How flukey.

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by: JimC @ Sat Jul 11, 2009 at 14:56:55 PM CDT

I think it was smaller, actually, iirc, (0.00 / 0)

but the whole "John Sununu is soooo well-liked, what a shame he lost because people hate George Bush" fable just makes me want to keep banging my head against the wall.

birch, finch, beech

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by: Dean Barker @ Sat Jul 11, 2009 at 15:41:32 PM CDT

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AND... (4.00 / 6)

we had no straight-ticket voting anymore!!!

birch, finch, beech

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by: Dean Barker @ Sat Jul 11, 2009 at 15:42:06 PM CDT

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And unlike Obama, Shaheen was running against an incumbent. (0.00 / 0)

--
"Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past; you must fight just to keep them alive!"

@DougLindner

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by: Douglas E. Lindner @ Sat Jul 11, 2009 at 18:11:11 PM CDT

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and come to think of it... (4.00 / 1)

I don't recall a fella named Bush being on my ballot last November. Or even being in the news very much in 2008. Didn't the GOP keep him pretty much locked up in the attic and refuse to let him out?

Here's my theory about why Jeannie won: voters saw we were in for some hard times over the next few years, looked at Jeanne and John, and thought, "I need someone looking out for me in Washington, not someone who wants to make life easier for corporations."

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by: Michael Marsh @ Sat Jul 11, 2009 at 19:11:03 PM CDT

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Andy Smith is a dolt. However, this is a good example of (0.00 / 0)

Republicans not being able to see people as individuals.  Everybody's got to be part of a group and share those group characteristics (the electorates of Maine and New Hampshire).

If you're in the business of making predictions, you've got to generalize.  What I don't understand is why we keep paying people to make predictions.  Is it because we get some satisfaction out of them being wrong?

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by: hannah @ Sat Jul 11, 2009 at 16:14:50 PM CDT

Hang on (4.00 / 3)

John E. Sununu was caught up in a tide of anti-Republican sentiment; what Andy Smith misses is that John E. helped create that anti-Republican sentiment by being part of a no-account group of Republican senators who didn't do their jobs in DC. His pathetic performance in the senate contributed directly to the mess that Barack Obama, Jeanne Shaheen, and a lot of other people are trying to clean up, the same mess that inspired the country to vote the Republicans out.  



"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Sat Jul 11, 2009 at 19:15:25 PM CDT

In the conservative mind-set, failure is usually a personal (4.00 / 1)

responsibility--i.e. the result of someone having gone off on his own and not followed directions.  "Fluke" is a good word in this case because it assigns responsibility to fate/chance, rather than some person or group.  The alternatives--to assign personal responsibility for the loss to Sununu or credit Shaheen with performing as expected--are both unacceptable.

Sununu did what he was told and Shaheen followed her own agenda, so the results should have been opposite of what happened.  Ergo, it must have been a fluke.

I think that when conservatives consider results, they have three alternatives.  They either did right (obeyed), did wrong (disobeyed), or nothing could/should have been done so as not to tempt fate.  If you don't want to do wrong and right is uncertain, then doing nothing is the default.  Which is where the party of 'no' is now at.

I just ran across a commentary on the official Air Force web site, The art of objective decision making that you might find illuminating.  "objective" is good; it means the decision-maker is not personally involved.  And, if he's not personally involved, then the consequences of the decisions are not his fault and he won't be hamstrung by regrets.

Making every decision a moral issue creates the risk that negative results (evidence that the decision was wrong) will produce second thought and a sense of guilt, which will interfere with future action.  Better to simply remove responsibility from the actor.

"If you just do what you're told, nothing is your fault."

The purpose of the fluke narrative is to salve the sensibilities of the losers.

The strange thing about the objectivity being promoted is that the characteristics of the object being observed are never accurately perceived.  Perhaps that's because their objectivity is nothing but a purging of their subjective interests (emotions).  To be unselfish is to discount one's self.

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by: hannah @ Sun Jul 12, 2009 at 05:05:25 AM CDT

Here's a slightly different take... (4.00 / 2)

... it's an article of faith in the GOP that most Americans share their political philosophy. They "proved it" by winning 5 of the 7 presidential elections before 2008.

Since they are sure that most Americans agree with them politically, there are only 3 ways for the GOP to lose an election:  

- The candidate abandons GOP conservative principles. (That's why the GOP was so desperate to disavow W as not really being a conservative when his unpopularity became clear).

- The candidate runs a lousy campaign.

- It's the librul media's fault!

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by: Michael Marsh @ Sun Jul 12, 2009 at 06:00:18 AM CDT

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Well, faith is akin to fate, methinks, and definitely preferable to (0.00 / 0)

reality and fact.

Faith-based organizations don't necessarily believe in a deity.  What's important is the emphasis on faith as opposed to fact, especially refutable facts.  There is no certainty in fact.  If you accept a fact, you may turn out to have been wrong.

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by: hannah @ Sun Jul 12, 2009 at 11:05:47 AM CDT

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