This was the single most unusual election cycle I have ever witnessed. Let’s recap. President Barack Obama’s approval rating cracked 50 percent the day before the election, with 52 percent approving of his performance and 48 percent disapproving. Thirty-four percent strongly approved of the president’s performance while 40 percent strongly disapproved. That gave him an approval index of –6. And these were the highest ratings the president enjoyed since a convention bounce in September. Just days before the election, 43 percent of Americans thought the country was headed in the right direction, while 54 percent thought the country was headed in the wrong direction. As recently as August, the right-track, wrong-track numbers were 27 percent right, 66 percent wrong. That's two-thirds of the country. Fifty percent of people polled Tuesday favored repeal of Obamacare. Economic growth is sluggish, well below 2 percent. Unemployment remains stubbornly high at 7.9 percent. Welfare spending has hit an all-time high. Welfare programs now cost taxpayers roughly $1 trillion a year. That doesn't include Social Security or Medicare, by the way. Obama and Congress, unable to come to any sort of meaningful agreement on spending and tax policy, have pushed the country to the brink of what they woefully refer to as a "fiscal cliff." If they can't figure something out by the first of the year, the country likely will be plunged headlong into another recession. Remember what I wrote last week? The average American worked 107 days into 2012, from Jan. 1 to April 17, to earn enough money to pay this year’s combined 29.2 percent federal, state and local tax bill. Despite that massive confiscation of private-sector wealth, government is broke and infrastructure is crumbling. Lawmakers keep making promises they can’t keep and spending money that doesn’t exist. Government today runs annual deficits of well over $1 trillion per year and borrows 40 cents for every dollar it spends. Amid that backdrop, American has voted to maintain the status quo. Obama was re-elected, the House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans and the Senate is controlled by Democrats. The burning question: Why in the world would voters think the status quo is better than the alternative? I think a significant part of the answer involves the Tea Party. Those folks have set the Republican party back. Republicans are looking like Neanderthals completely out of touch with the demographics of modern America and devoid of any solutions other than obstructionism. Now, I didn’t say that’s what Republicans are. I said that’s what Republicans are looking like. Big difference. And they're looking like that because of the Tea Party’s penchant for putting up candidates who, if they took a step to the right, would fall off the planet. Oh, what could have been. The U.S. Senate was within the grasp of the Grand Old Party. There’s no way Joe Donnelly beats Richard Lugar in Indiana. There’s no way Claire McCaskill retains her seat in Missouri. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was on his heels two years ago in Nevada. Enter the Tea Party. Enter candidates whose pure right-wing ideology was, apparently, more important than the ability to win. Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin and Sharron Angle, with their whacky ideas and statements, handed those seats to the Democrats. That’s bad enough, but they did much more than that. They allowed the media, which are all too happy to trumpet the foibles of conservatives, to paint the entire Republican brand as crazy and out of touch. Joe Biden says whacky stuff all the time. Ah, shucks, that's just Joe being Joe. But when a conservative says dopey stuff, it’s national news – for days. Don’t the Tea Party people realize this? It goes way beyond just these races and nutty comments made by these candidates. Take this whole war on women nonsense. Of course there’s no war on women. The number of conservatives nationwide who want to end availability of contraception or who are pro-life with absolutely no exceptions are insignificant. Yet, suddenly, because of the Tea Party, that's the broad brush used to paint all Republicans. Republicans get portrayed as hard right on immigration, too. Boom. Romney gets only 24 percent of the Hispanic vote and 17 percent of the Asian vote. Even though most of these voters are pro-life and god-fearing, they vote against their own self-interest. They think Republicans want to deport everybody, even though most conservatives hold a much more moderate view of immigration policy. Does the Tea Party think the average voter understands these nuances? The Tea Party reveled in glee when multiple members of their freshman class in the House of Representatives two years ago signed onto Grover Norquist's pledge to never raise taxes ever on anything no matter what. And then the Tea Party held an electoral gun to those members’ heads. You vote to raise taxes, we’ll make sure you get voted out next time around. How do you suppose this plays out across the diverse electorate that is America these days? It plays out as wrongheaded and obstructionist. How in the world can we possibly overcome the massive debt we've amassed without raising any revenue? As a center-right kind of guy, this stuff literally drives me to distraction. I am pro-life. I am a fiscal conservative. I am pro-First Amendment, Second Amendment, 10th Amendment and 14th Amendment. I believe in the principles set forth in the Constitution. But even I couldn't vote for some of these candidates. Republicans – with the exception of the Reagan years – always have had trouble shedding an image being exclusionary. You know, the whole big tent thing – inclusive, responsive to the needs of minorities, women and the underprivileged. The Tea Party wants to shrink the tent. Nobody left of hard right gets in. And if you don’t like it, too damn bad. That’s no way to run a party. And that’s no way to win elections. The situation is compounded by talk radio hosts who claim that Romney lost because he wasn’t conservative enough. That’s hogwash. It’s not about one candidate. It’s about how the party is perceived by the entire electorate. If Republicans want to win in national races, they must attract moderates and independents. On July 30, 2011, (that’s 2011) I wrote this: Polling shows the Tea Party already has lost half its followers because of its incessant demands for conservative ideological purity among Republicans. It seems the Tea Party spends more time and effort targeting Republicans than Democrats in their quest to hold politicians accountable. That's happening right here in Indiana with the campaign to unseat Sen. Richard Lugar. … I've listened to presidential hopeful Michelle Bachmann, the darling of the Tea Party. She says straight up that she will not vote to increase the debt limit no matter what. I think that's wrongheaded. And I don't think any of this bodes well for Tea Party candidates in the next election. … Tea Partyers beware: I – and I think most Americans regardless of politics – believe absolute, unyielding positions lead to flawed, misguided outcomes. But what do I know? I just hope it’s not too late. What this country needs now more than ever are thoughtful conservatives in office.
