Status Quo

In the middle of the National Election hangover, the conservative pundits are trying to figure out what happened on Election Day.  With high unemployment, trillions of dollars in deficit and a gridlock in Congress, I expected changes that would put this country back on track.  Some pundits say Romney failed to connect with voters.  Others say that the voter demographics changed and the Republicans failed to respond.  A few say the Democratic grassroots campaign was more effective than the Republicans’ campaign.  There are those who say the negative ad campaign undertaken by the President and Romney’s failure to respond hurt Romney.  I’m not a political consultant, but I noticed two things that worked against Romney and the Republicans, in general.

First thing at work against Romney was the voter’s love of the status quo.  The second is hot-button/low-information voters.  I’ll leave the second for a future post, but now I want to talk about voters and their love of status quo.  If it isn’t love, then it is comfort in the familiar or fear of change that propagates the status quo.

According to a Gallup® poll released in August, the approval rating of Congress reached a high of 24% in May 2011 and remained below 20%.  In August, when the time the poll was released, Congress’ approval rating was a mere 10%.  Surely, with a rating that bad, one would think that voters would have “voted the bums out” in hopes of something better.

But that didn’t happen.  Thirty three Senate seats were on the ballot this year.  Ten of the 33 incumbents retired and one incumbent lost in the primaries.  Of the 22 incumbents on the ballot, 21 were re-elected.  In the House, all 435 seats were up for re-election.  Due to redistricting or retirements, 412 incumbents were up for re-election. Thirteen incumbents were defeated in the primaries and 26 were defeated in the general election, meaning 373 Congressmen were re-elected to Congress. 

Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  With an approval rating of 10%, we sent more than 90% of Congress back to Washington.  What do we expect different when we re-elect the same group?  Doesn’t that qualify as insane?  

The status quo is not a good one, the country is not prospering.  Let’s try something different.  Be aware of what’s going on in Washington.  Go to http://www.house.gov/ or http://www.senate.gov/ to find out about pending legislation and hearings.  Contact your Congressman or Senators and let them know what you think and how you want them to vote.  We put them in office, let’s make them work for us.