Chris Hartsock -- It's the Values, Stupid!

By Chris Hartsock
January 22, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

It seems Republicans have been taking their recent landslide victory for granted both too much and too little. After winning 19 senate seats and reclaiming the presidency by a whopping 3.5 million margin in the largest popular vote in history, Republicans are apparently losing sight of those particular aspects of their social agenda which specifically accounted for this monumental success. Worse: the Democrats have been taking notes.

Ironically, after months of incessant weeping and gnashing of teeth, the left may have ultimately learned more from the sobering election results than the GOP even has, so much that they have begun taking noticeable steps towards reforming their image. Most recently, Hillary Clinton has been gushing over her religious faith; at least four CBS employees have either resigned or been fired; and most astonishingly, Michael Moore was last seen clean-shaven.

All this while Republicans � having just won an election on the chief basis of their superlative affinity with traditional Middle Americans and their party's core emphasis on moral values � are acting as if election results signifiied some abrupt need to retreat to the middle and tone down their policies. (Isn't it the Democrats turn to do that?)

In an interview last month with a German newspaper, Governor Schwarzenegger prescribed that the Republican Party should "move a little further left and place more weight on the center."

Um, is that what Schwarzenegger got out of this election? That we should "move a little further left"? Maybe I missed something, but somehow that isn' exactly the message I got from 59,117,522 fellow voters last November.

In reward for having promoted certain unapologetically conservative policies throughout his campaign amidst a rising tide of ferocious liberal bullying in the social arena, President Bush received not only a colossal stamp of approval from voters, but a mandate.

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Christian Hartsock is 18 and a senior at Piedmont High School. Christian studies film and politics, writes screenplays and political columns and work as a sports and event videographer. Next year, he will be attending the Brooks Institute of Photography, a film school in Ventura, California.