Not that hungry for change

Washington has misread the public. People want problem-solving, not political whiplash.


From Michael Medved at US Today via Real Clear Politics:

Republicans may be the immediate beneficiaries of the Democrats' clumsy misinterpretation of the supposed mandate for change, but they run a very real risk of making similar mistakes. Polls show disillusionment and distrust regarding the Obama agenda, but that hardly signals an impassioned appetite for a conservative counterrevolution. If the GOP pledges massive, wrenching, systemic change — cutting back, for instance, on cherished, widely popular government programs on which millions of Americans depend — it will meet the same resistance and skepticism that confronts Obama and his liberal colleagues.

In other words, the people would welcome a concerted effort to "clean up the mess in Washington," but they don't want Washington cleaning up the mess in their private lives because they don't consider their personal status a mess.

Yes, the Democrats miscalculated by underestimating the deeply conservative nature of the American people, but the Republicans may yet miscalculate themselves by interpreting that conservatism as ideological rather than temperamental.

The public wants pragmatic, commonsense, problem-solving leadership more than purist dogmatism of the right or the left. Voters don't yearn for stirring 10-point programs, or radical readjustments of governmental institutions, or definitive demonization and defeat of opponents.

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