The Era of Hand Wringing is Over

No sooner do I blog about the significance of Tuesday's election, than a fellow conservative counsels humility, and no matter the result.  Mona Charen, of all people, is worried about Republican hubris.

I am as delighted as any conservative could be about predictions for Tuesday’s election. But the exultation of some on the right is making me nervous. It’s not just superstition. The votes haven’t even been counted, and yet some are already interpreting Republican victories as a thorough repudiation of everything Democratic, socialist, and liberal. The era of big government is over . . . again.

I'm sorry Mona, and every other conservative who's already starting to "go wobbly", but if next Tuesday's election plays out the way most polls suggest it will, then it will not only be a mandate, it will be a demand.  If those newly elected, or newly re-elected, begin their term of office by temporizing, they will find their tenure in Washington short indeed.

Republican reach-across-the-aisle, split-the-difference, don't-want-to-make-waves deal making is a large part of the reason we're in the mess we're in.  The professional pols inside the GOP just knew that tacking always to what they judged to be the middle was the surest way to electoral success.  But they were wrong.  They were wrong because, in fact, it didn't insure electoral success, and they were wrong because they were terrible judges of what constituted the middle.  To them, it seems, the middle was always somewhere between the left and the far left.

Now is definitely not the time for more confusing and ultimately dispiriting ambiguity.  The stakes are simply too high.  As I've said before, I increasingly believe we are in the midst of a Great Reckoning.  Like perhaps no time in my life, the people of America are not only ready to make a clear choice, they are, in fact, eager to do so. 

I, for one, do not fear that choice.  That, Mona, is confidence, not hubris.