More Football – Politics Comparisons

The Houston Texans did something very strange Sunday. They beat the Indianapolis Colts. The Texans were not supposed to be in the same class as the Colts, and were not supposed to have any reason to be competitive, especially after being thrashed 40-7 against the Patriots the week before. The Colts, for their part, had clinched their division but were playing for a first-round bye in the playoffs, and so were expected to be well-motivated. Yet the Texans jumped out to a 14-0 lead, and scored a field goal as time ran out to beat the Colts for the first time ever. The next day the Dallas Cowboys played the Philadelphia Eagles, in a game which the Cowboys were expected to win handily, yet the Cowboys were consistently blown off the line of scrimmage and were completely embarrassed on Christmas Day.

As you might expect, Cowboys fans and Colts fans were less than pleased with the results, and overwhelmingly blamed their teams for losing. This is common in sports, the fair-weather fan who cannot accept that their team does not always win, or that the other team might have been the better team that day, or at least had a good plan for that one game. I see the same thing happening in politics. The Democrats beat the Republicans in the midterm elections, and we are reading and hearing all sorts of crazy theories based on that one event. Never mind the elections in 2004, 2002, and 2000 we are told, this one is the only one that matters. That folks is just a combination of wishful thinking by the Donks, in the same way that there are bound to be Texans fans who forget the ten losses our team has, and believe that winning this one game has somehow righted a lot of wrongs the team has to face, and Republicans who just gave up and turned rodent about it. Optimism is a nice thing, but too much leads to rash thinking and poor decisions. I visited the Indianapolis newspaper’s online site and found a lot of Colts fans ready to fire their coach and retool their team. A playoff-bound division winner, and they want to can the coach. But we see that among Republicans, as well. President Bush is responsible for tax cuts,. Two worthy Supreme Court picks and a bunch of solid federal court nods, for putting people in the right place to improve things at Defense and State, and for a forceful response to 9/11 that can fairly be said to be part of why there has not been another 9/11 since then. Yet Republicans started to desert him as soon as MSM-biased polls started suggesting that Dubya was not popular in New York or other liberal bastions. The RINOS like McCain and DeWine left first, followed by weak Republicans like Frist and Hastert, and then the extremists quit when they decided they could not get what they wanted by supporting the President or their party; rogue egotists like Tancredo began attacking the republican leadership, willing to put Democrats in power simply because they were denied the power to hijack the agenda and initiatives. The Republican Party will endure, indeed it shall thrive, not least because it is generally willing to meet its challenges and face its needs for change. But in the meantime, we all would do well to pay attention to those who advance the ideals of the nation and the party, and pay no heed to those who can only support the team when they get what they want and expect.