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November 11, 2006

Northern Alliance Radio Today -- The Post-Election Blues?

Mitch and I will be on the air between 1-3 pm CT this afternoon for the Northern Alliance Radio Network on AM 1280 The Patriot. We'll be discussing many topics, but probably we will focus on the fallout from the midterm elections. How do Republicans proceed now that we are in the minority, and how can we engage the Democrats in the war on terror?

CQ readers outside of the Twin Cities can listen to the show on our Internet stream at the station's web site (linked above), and you can join the conversation by calling 651-289-4488. We'd love to hear your thoughts on the election and their meaning.

UPDATE AND BUMP: Since today is Veteran's Day, let's do something to help disabled veterans right now. Support Soldier's Angels and their latest Project Valour-IT effort to provide them free laptops:

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 12:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Surviving The Midterms

I got an e-mail from a fellow blogger I greatly respect (who will remain anonymous), expressing his despondency after the losses in the midterm elections. Watching the Democrats grab control of both chambers of Congress deeply affects him, as he has spent so much of himself trying to assist the Republican cause for the past few years. Now, he can't see his way clear to any cause for optimism, and he asked for my advice -- and since I think more than a few of the CQ community may feel the same way, I figured I'd post my thoughts on the subject.

I'm neither depressed nor giddy at the thought of working from the opposition, at least on legislative matters. Some conservatives tried to temper the loss with large doses of optimism, claiming to feel "liberated" at the prospect of being unchained in some manner from the GOP yoke. Criticism of these statements has been greatly overblown; none of them has ever lied to advance the Republican agenda. They have championed the Republicans by focusing on stories and personalities that put the best foot forward, because they believed that the Republicans and their agenda served the nation best. They have often criticized Republicans and Republican leadership, but in the election, they emphasized that voters needed to make a choice -- and they supported the Republicans.

Elections come and elections go. Americans make choices, and we live with these choices. They do not amount to the end of the world or the end of our democracy unless Americans stop supporting the processes that allow those choices. I have been through enough good news and bad news that I have learned two very important lessons, both in politics and in life:

Nothing is ever as good as it looks, and nothing is ever as bad as it seems.

Depression and anxiety is natural, but we should not wallow in it, because it doesn't produce anything positive. We now have to work to push our agenda and policies from the minority, and that will be a tough battle. We will have to find ways to work with the Democrats, or we will have to give up and let them run everything. I'm not prepared to give up, nor am I prepared to act like this is the end of the world.

The American voters made their choice. Now we have to go to work, preparing a positive agenda for the nation, engaging the Democrats on issues where we can find agreement, and opposing them when we cannot. Gridlock will be likely, and that's not a bad thing on domestic issues, but we cannot afford to be paralyzed on the war effort. That requires a large effort by Republicans to work with Democratic leadership -- because we simply have no choice, not for the next two years. If we dig in our heels, we will leave this nation dangerously exposed to terrorists, and that's neither responsible nor Republican.

My advice to my blogger friend and the CQ community is to rationally plan for the next two years in the minority. We have to remain firm on our principles while still working to serve our nation. Sometimes that will require compromise, and sometimes it will require tenacious defense of our own principles. That's honorable and necessary work, and we will have plenty of it to do until 2008.

Tomorrow, I'll address what else we need to do to recapture the majority in 2008.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 11:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saluting Our Veterans

I want to wish all of our brave and courageous men in uniform, past and present, a happy Veteran's Day. These men and women served our nation to protect the freedoms we enjoy, and in many cases to bring liberty where oppression and tyranny existed. It goes without saying that we owe our own freedoms and liberties to these fine, courageous Americans, who dedicated themselves and their lives to our great nation.

Last night, the First Mate and I watched an edition of Shootout! on the History Channel. This series reviews famous firefights from various battles, analyzing them and profiling the men who survived them. Last night, they featured the Battle of the Bulge and several engagements between American and German troops, and one man's story struck me as particularly emblematic of the fortitude of simple American citizens fighting for their country. Meet Melvin Earl Biddle, one of only 150 living Medal of Honor recipients:

Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company B, 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Place and date: Near Soy, Belgium, 23‑24 December 1944. Entered service at: Anderson, Ind. Birth: 28 November 1923, Daleville, Ind. G.O. No.: 95, 30 October 1945.

Citation: He displayed conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against the enemy near Soy, Belgium, on 23 and 24 December 1944. Serving as lead scout during an attack to relieve the enemy‑encircled town of Hotton, he aggressively penetrated a densely wooded area, advanced 400 yards until he came within range of intense enemy rifle fire, and within 20 yards of enemy positions killed 3 snipers with unerring marksmanship. Courageously continuing his advance an additional 200 yards, he discovered a hostile machine-gun position and dispatched its 2 occupants. He then located the approximate position of a well‑concealed enemy machine-gun nest, and crawling forward threw hand grenades which killed two Germans and fatally wounded a third. After signaling his company to advance, he entered a determined line of enemy defense, coolly and deliberately shifted his position, and shot 3 more enemy soldiers. Undaunted by enemy fire, he crawled within 20 yards of a machine-gun nest, tossed his last hand grenade into the position, and after the explosion charged the emplacement firing his rifle.

When night fell, he scouted enemy positions alone for several hours and returned with valuable information which enabled our attacking infantry and armor to knock out 2 enemy tanks. At daybreak he again led the advance and, when flanking elements were pinned down by enemy fire, without hesitation made his way toward a hostile machine-gun position and from a distance of 50 yards killed the crew and 2 supporting riflemen. The remainder of the enemy, finding themselves without automatic weapon support, fled panic stricken. Pfc. Biddle's intrepid courage and superb daring during his 20 hour action enabled his battalion to break the enemy grasp on Hotton with a minimum of casualties.

The Battle of the Bulge was a close-run victory. Men like Melvin Biddle and many others helped slow down and stop the German advance before they could seize fuel and food depots and continue their desperate counteroffensive. Mr. Biddle is still with us and living in Indiana; like so many of America's heroes, he returned home from war and helped build the country he protected with his industriousness and dedication.

To men like Melvin Biddle -- and my own father -- Captain's Quarters delivers a heartfelt thanks for your service to and love of America.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 10:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Still Not Biting

Yesterday, I responded to John at Power Line about holding Democrats accountable for terrorist propaganda statements of delight at the midterm elections. In an update, after kindly linking back to me, John asks this question:

But isn't a reasonable starting point for that engagement the fact that the terrorists are delighted that the Dems have won, and are convinced that the Dems' policies, as the terrorists understand them, will benefit the jihadis? Don't the Democrats have some obligation to face up to the fact that the prospect of our disengagement from Iraq--and if that isn't their "new direction," then what in God's name is?--is viewed with glee by the enemy?

My response is lengthy again, so I decided to make it a separate post.

This is one point where John and I differ. I don't take Abu Hamza at his word, nor Zarqawi before him. Al-Qaeda has made plenty of statements expressing delight that Bush continued to send American troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, enabling the jihadis to annihilate infidels much more easily. I didn't buy that then, and I don't buy this now. The Islamists have made a culture out of spinning massive defeats into sterling victories. If the wind shifted from the north to the east, these people would claim it as a sign of Allah's grace on their jihad even if it blew half of them into the Persian Gulf. They lie for a living and a hobby. It's the only tool they have to garner their benighted followers and convince them to die.

Some readers here rightly point out that the Democrats have spent the last few years trying to play down the idea of a war. I have no trouble criticizing Nancy Pelosi for that (sorry, can't find the link at the moment). As I wrote, we need to be very vigilant about the efforts of Democrats in either fighting the war or not fighting the war, and I don't counsel silence on that point. However, it seems exceedingly silly to point to a terrorist propagandist and take him at his word about people who haven't even submitted their first piece of legislation in the majority.

We often complained about the Democrats not being a "loyal opposition" for the last six years, acting immaturely and selfishly while putting partisan interests ahead of the nation's security. Well, now that shoe is on our foot, ladies and gentlemen. It isn't time for payback, not unless we want to spend a generation in the wilderness, not unless we want to actually rely on American defeat simply for the opportunity to regain power. That's the same thing we accused Democrats of doing, with some justification in some instances. Why would we follow their example?

Like it or not, Congress controls the pursestrings and shapes American policy, and the Democrats control Congress. We're not powerless, but if we want America to succeed, we need to find ways to work with them, while performing the duties of the loyal opposition. That means providing rational and tough criticism to the policies and direction that Democrats provide and not screeching every time a Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw Haw issues another broadcast telling us what failures we have elected.

UPDATE: One more time -- I'm not advising that we let the Democrats do whatever they want. I'm not advising we remain silent. I'm not advising that we stop promoting our own agenda or deviate from our principles. I am advising that we base our criticisms on what the Democrats say and do rather than what Abu Hamza says about them. They have to govern now and be responsible for their agenda, and that responsibility will almost certainly force them towards the center on foreign policy and the war. When they do not act responsibly, then we must act to correct them with all due diligence.

UPDATE II: And a further clarification after Paul's entry into the debate, well-written and provocative as always. I consider John, Paul, Scott (and Ringo!) all friends of mine and don't mean to imply that any of them are "disloyal". In fact, John and I exchanged e-mails at the beginning of this thread, where I invited him to "beat me up" after my initial post. They haven't, of course; they have all been gentlemen, as always.

Paul and a couple of CQ readers have questioned my use of the phrase "loyal opposition", which strictly speaking would only apply if a Democrat occupied the White House. I meant it as a shorthand for being in the minority in both chambers of Congress, so perhaps "loyal minority" would be a better phrase.

Nevertheless, I think Paul is too sensitive to my argument here. I have no problem holding Democrats responsible for their own rhetoric, as my posts have consistently said. I have a big problem with holding Democrats responsible for the rhetoric of terrorists, which is what John did in his original post. Just as George Bush doesn't have to answer Abu Hamza's charge that he is the most stupid President in history nor the AQ chief's request to keep sending American troops to Iraq so AQ can slaughter them, Democrats do not have to answer for Abu Hamza's satisfaction at their election.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 9:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Hamas Retreats

Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh has announced his intention to resign from office if an agreement can be forged which will allow international aid to flow back to the Palestinian Authority. However, he has not repudiated the positions which caused the aid to stop, and claims that the new government will not budge from those principles either:

Hamas committed today to folding its eight-month government if that would restore the international assistance that was cut off after it won national elections earlier this year.

In a shrewd and dramatic speech, the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyah, said he would likely resign in the next “two or three weeks” to make way for a national unity government more acceptable to international donors than Hamas, the organization responsible for the deadliest attacks against Israel. ...

It was a public acknowledgment that Hamas had failed to run the Palestinian Authority on its own terms in the face of an American and Israeli-led cutoff of funds and aid, and that Mr. Haniya and his government would soon be replaced by a “unity” government of technocrats, currently being negotiated with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas refused to meet the three conditions set out by the international community: to recognize the right of Israel to exist, to forswear violence and to accept previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements that imply a two-state solution. In turn, Israel withheld more than $50 million a month in taxes and customs collected for the Palestinians and the United States and Europe cut off direct aid to the Palestinian Authority.

Unfortunately, Hamas will still refuse to change its position on any of the above and still wants a power position within the new unity government. That sounds like a textbook description of putting lipstick on a pig. The problem, as Tzivi Lipni pointed out, is not the names of the groups involved but the policies they have promulgated.

In order for the West to put any reliance on the PA, we have to know that successive governments will abide by the treaties and agreements signed by previous ones. Otherwise, everyone has to start from scratch after every election, and no progress can be made towards any kind of peaceful resolution, if one exists at all. Hamas does not want a two-state solution, and so Israel has no incentive to restart tax payments to an entity that wants to destroy it. And while America might be willing to buy peace through foreign aid in the hope that a few years of quiet might produce leaders who want it to continue, we're not going to pay Hamas to be terrorists, and so far neither will the Europeans.

Haniyeh wants to change the label but keep the product the same. Some world leaders, desperate to reverse the economic collapse in Gaza and the West Bank, might take the bait. They shouldn't, and neither should the American people. We cannot defeat terrorism while we fund it, a basic truth that all of Haniyeh's declarations cannot hide. If the Palestinians want international aid, then they need to comply with its conditions, and not just switch the nameplates on the doors.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 8:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pork Queen?

Scott Lindlaw at the AP provides an analysis of what Nancy Pelosi's speakership will mean to the San Francisco area and to California as a whole once she takes the gavel. Lindlaw notes the financial benefits other areas have received when their Representative becomes Speaker of the House, and notes that Pelosi has hardly made pork a stranger in the past:

Tip O'Neill secured down payments for Boston's Big Dig. Sam Rayburn sent gushers of cash back to Texas, along with tax breaks that helped its oil industry. Hospitals, schools and nonprofits in Dennis Hastert's hometown of Aurora, Ill., have seen millions roll in during his reign. Now Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco is poised to follow them as speaker of the House — a perch predecessors used to channel big cash to pet projects back home.

"There's a long tradition where not only can you bring back your average pork as a member of Congress, but speaker pork gives you a lot of money, a lot of influence over the purse," said Julian E. Zelizer, a congressional historian at Boston University.

Pelosi, a Democrat, will be the first Californian to hold the post, and congressional watchdogs say they'll be observing her new spending clout with great interest.

There are "a lot of peeping chicks everywhere," said Tim Ransdell, executive director of the California Institute for Federal Policy Research in Washington, D.C. "And implicitly the House speaker has a nice war chest to start with."

Hastert was no prize on that score, either. Hastert's land deal did more than benefit his constituents; it also benefitted Hastert, making him a target for the kind of government reform that the Republicans supposedly demanded in 1994. Now Pelosi has her shot at the till. Will she follow the tradition?

If past history is any guide, yes. Lindlaw points out that as a member of the minority, she has already sent millions back to the Bay Area over the last two years. This has come in the form of grants to such pressing federal problems as a dental clinic in the Presidio, a maritime park, and a Filipino cultural center, totalling $9 million. Overall, Congress sent $204 billion to California in grants in 2004 alone.

Pelosi's efforts in grants doesn't rank her among the top 50 Representatives in the FedSpending database, even with all that largesse spent on California. However, her efforts for federal contractors puts her #3 on the pork parade, according to the OMB Watch/Sunlight Foundation joint project. Contractors in Pelosi's district got $8.7 billion over the last two years; only James Moran and Frank Wolf brought more money to their home districts. The recipients include some interesting deals:

* A consulting firm, Kennedy/Jenks Consultants, won a little over $4 million for architect and management engineering work -- 75% of which was non-competed.

* The Carlyle Group, a firm the Left associates with strange Bush-Saudi conspiracy theories, got $2.7 billion for work in Pelosi's district alone, 85% of which was non-competed.

* HOK Group, which received $11 million for more architectural work, 86% of which was non-competed.

One gets the impression that Pelosi has used her influence to ensure that the federal government spends its cash in the city by the Bay. As Speaker, she will have a great deal more influence on federal contracting and grant awards. We will have to watch vigilantly to ensure that this Speaker does not use her office in the same manner as her predecessors.

UPDATE: Two important posts have appeared today on this topic. Liberal Goodman sends us this from TPM Muckraker, a liberal blog that has done excellent work on pork issues. Justin Rood takes a look at the new Democratic leadership in the House, and doesn't see much of an improvement on corruption issues:

The Democrats swept into the majority in Congress vowing to fight the culture of corruption. Bad news for the muckraking biz, right? Thankfully, less-than-squeaky pasts don't appear to be a factor in the Dems' reasoning as they divvy up leadership posts and committee chairs.

Be sure to read Justin's review of these new chairs, which include Alan Mollohan, Alcee Hastings, and John Murtha. After that, go to Big Lizards and check out Dafydd ab Hugh's look at Nancy Pelosi's less-than-comprehensive attack on pork:

Now, we assume the lobbyists (and the special interests they represent) aren't the generous sort. They're not giving away bucks and perks for free! So what do they get in return? What would be so valuable to a corporation, say, that they would be willing to spend several hundred thousand dollars of squeeze to get it?

The payback, of course, is in government expenditures inserted into public bills which go to private corporations for purely private purposes. In a word, earmarks.

Where, Mrs. P., in that laundry list of anti-corruption measures, is the ban on earmarks?

Earmarks provide an avenue of quid pro quo for legislators to repay lobbyists and special interests for their "kindnesses", which is why we insisted on the new federal budget database listing all contracts and grants by agencies of the executive branch. We need the same kind of legislation when it comes to Congress' own expenditures, but the woman who ran against the "culture of corruption" has so far refused to support such an initiative.

Both the Left and Right have tired of earmark payoffs. Pelosi ignores that at her own peril.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 7:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 10, 2006

Not Going To Bite

My good friend John Hinderaker links to a CBS report about the latest entertainment coming from al-Qaeda this evening, as do some of our mutual friends in the conservative blogosphere, that hails the Democratic midterm victory as a "reasonable" move. Abu Hamza al-Muhajir had plenty to say in the new videotape released from an undisclosed location in Iraq, but the wonder is that anyone pays any attention to it. Here's the portion in question:

The terror group also welcomed the U.S. Republican electoral defeat that led to the departure of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and vowed to continue its fight until the White House is blown up.

In the tape, al-Muhajir praised the outcome of Tuesday's elections in which Democrats swept to power in the House and the Senate, in large part due to U.S. voter dissatisfaction over the handling of the war in Iraq.

"The American people have put their feet on the right path by ... realizing their president's betrayal in supporting Israel," the terror leader said. "So they voted for something reasonable in the last elections." He did not explain his logic.

Actually, Zarqawi's successor had a lot more to say about America and Americans. He also called George Bush the "most stupid President" in history, and he requested that Bush stick around in Iraq because AQ terrorists hadn't killed their fill of Americans. It's the kind of stupid rant that makes radical Islamists and their sympathizers swoon with delight, but is filled with hyperbole and crude attempts at psychological warfare and propaganda. They try to play into the mood of their enemies, and they demonstrate their ability to monitor news feeds in their attempts to provoke Americans across the political spectrum.

That's one reason why it's a mistake to allow them to succeed, but there are more as well.

Radical Islamists want to divide Americans in order to defeat us. They will play on our differences, stoking the fires of resentment and generating more hatred between us than we have against our enemies. AQ understands that the only way they can possibly beat the US is to get us to grind to a halt with partisan warfare at home, paralyzing our ability to fight them on the battlefield and sapping our will to put them out of business. This video is transparently calculated to give enough ammunition to both sides of the political divide to do that job. Besides, if we take Abu Hamza at his word about the Democrats, then we have to take him at his word about Bush as well, and about our troops.

The partisan sniping has ceased to be germane. We've already had the election, and the Democrats are in charge -- and they will be for two years no matter what. Obviously, we will watch closely to ensure that they do not surrender to terrorism, but I'm not going to take Abu Hamza's word that they will before their majority session even starts. They are Americans, and Americans put them in charge, and they have earned the right to show us how they will face the enemy now that they control the agenda. If they fail, I'll be the first to castigate them for losing ground to the terrorists. However, I'm going to base that on their actions, and not on the word of a murderous thug who couldn't care less whether their American victims are Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, or LaRouchists.

The reality is that we cannot win the war on terror without the Democrats after these midterm elections. Rather than continue with antagonizing rhetoric, we'd better find ways to engage them rationally in this effort if we want to survive. I'm hoping we can find common ground with them now that they have the responsibility to govern. If we can't, then let's criticize them for their actual failures, and not get so intent on grasping at any way to attack them that we start becoming repeater stations for the ravings of genocidal lunatics.

UPDATE: I have extended the debate to another post. Be sure to read through all of the comments as well.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 11:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Looking At The Results

Polls have usefulness as a thermometer of sorts; they measure the political temperature at any one moment, but it's tricky to use them to predict the temperature in the future, especially two years out. That's true of the so-called scientific polling, and more so of the self-selected sampling that occurs with these Internet straw polls. However, they do provoke interesting discussions about our political assumptions and attitudes.

Take today's poll, just below us. GOP Bloggers registered 10,263 responses across the blogosphere in the last 24 hours -- and over 3600 came from CQ readers. The CQ results show some surprising strength for Rudy Giuliani, who garnered 30% of first-choice selections, followed by Newt Gingrich at 25% and Mitt Romney at 24%. Those three potential candidates were the only ones who scored positive on acceptablity, with Romney oddly winning that category with 62%, compared to 59% for Rudy and 44% for Newt. The three most unacceptable candidates were Chuck Hagel (-57%), Bill Frist (-53%), and George Pataki (-50%).

John McCain only scored a -38%. Are you guys mellowing, or what?

The midterms, according to CQ readers, benefitted Rudy and Newt almost equally (33% and 28%). This makes some sense. Rudy has no connection to the Republican Congress, and Gingrich led the 1994 revolution that this session's leadership squandered. Romney came close with 26%, but John McCain trailed badly with 10%, which is not surprising.

What I find most surprising is the support Rudy still gets with CQ readers. He has consistently scored high in these straw polls. The real story, though, is the return of Newt as a real contender in this race. The midterms have raised his profile considerably. He has plenty of negatives still -- but then again, so does Hillary Clinton, and she's likely to be the Democratic nominee. He would relish the opportunity to beat the Clintons, I'm sure.

Some of you complained about the lack of choices, or the way the demographic questions were worded. I understand both your frustration and the intent of the straw-poll architect. (I didn't design it.) I'll make sure your concerns get heard.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

GOP Straw Poll

Republicans can be forgiven for not showing much enthusiasm for a poll this week, but in this case, we can guarantee that a Republican will win. This is the latest in a series of blogospheric straw polls on the 2008 Presidential nomiation, and obviously the first one since the midterm meltdown last Tuesday. GOP Bloggers has again staged this for the conservative bloggers and their readers to give their support to their favorite Republican candidates.

I'll run this on top for the rest of the day, and we'll see how CQ readers feel about the national candidates after the Congressional switch. Be sure to leave your comments here as well.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Steele For RNC Chief

The Washington Times reports this morning that Michael Steele will have his choice of high-profile jobs after losing a tough race to Benjamin Cardin for Maryland's open Senate seat. With Ken Mehlman's announcement of his resignation as Republican National Committee chair, many have openly speculated that Steele will get the nod as his replacement. However, Karl Rove wants Steele in Bush's Cabinet, possibly to lead HUD:

Also last night, Republican officials told The Times that Mr. Steele, who lost his bid for the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, has been sought out to succeed Mr. Mehlman as national party chairman. Those Republican officials said Mr. Steele had not made a decision whether to take the post, as of last night.

Other Republican Party officials said some Republican National Committee (RNC) members, including state party chairmen, have mounted a move to have Mr. Steele succeed Mr. Mehlman.

But they said that President Bush's political adviser Karl Rove, who is Mr. Mehlman's mentor, would rather see Mr. Steele serve in the president's Cabinet, perhaps as secretary of Housing and Urban Development. These officials said no one has actually offered Mr. Steele either the RNC post or a Cabinet post.

I think either would be a plum assignment for Steele, but he should really use caution before joining a lame-duck Cabinet when the White House has to face an opposition that controls both chambers of Congress. The assignment won't help Steele gain much national credibility, especially at HUD, which has a reputation for petty corruption and rampant incompetence. Granted, Steele could make history by revamping it and cleaning house, but that hardly did wonders for Jack Kemp's political career.

With all due respect to the White House, both Steele and the Republicans would be better served with Steele at the helm of the RNC. He instantly gives more credibility to Republican outreach efforts to minority communities, a key goal after years of writing them off as lost causes. He brings experience, as he has served as Maryland's Republican chair in the past, and after the midterms, the RNC needs someone with some seasoning from the trenches. He would have a much higher national profile at the RNC than he would stuck in the DC bureaucracy, perhaps even positioning him for a governorship or a Presidential run farther down the road.

Steele would be a worthy successor to Mehlman, who unfortunately leaves on an unhappy note after having done so much to build Republican forces over the past few years. I have had the pleasure of meeting Ken on a few occasions, and he is a serious, committed man with a disciplined mind. He leaves the RNC better than he found it, and he will appear again in Republican politics; rumor has it he will run Rudy Giuliani's campaign, which makes Giuliani even more formidable than ever. In whatever capacity he decides, Mehlman will bring class, focus, and talent to bear for the Republican party, and we cannot wait to see him at the helm again.

UPDATE: Speaking of class and talent, Jon Henke's back at QandO, with an excellent look at the midterm lessons and the way forward. Be sure to read it all.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The New Guru, Same As The Old Guru

Now that the Democrats have won their Congressional majorities, they now have to govern for the first time in 12 years. They made a lot of campaign promises, especially regarding Iraq, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus wants to make sure those get honored. To that end, they have turned to a new guru on war -- one who led Democrats to a massive defeat via his own defeatism in 1972:

George McGovern, the former senator and Democratic presidential candidate, said Thursday that he will meet with more than 60 members of Congress next week to recommend a strategy to remove U.S. troops from Iraq by June.

If Democrats don't take steps to end the war in Iraq soon, they won't be in power very long, McGovern told reporters before a speech at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

"I think the Democratic leadership is wise enough to know that if they're going to follow the message that election sent, they're going to have to take steps to bring the war to a conclusion," he said. ...

McGovern told the audience Thursday that the Iraq and Vietnam wars were equally "foolish enterprises" and that the current threat of terrorism developed because — not before — the United States went into Iraq.

Unfortunately, Oskar Garcia of the AP doesn't give any details about the context of this last remark. McGovern couldn't possibly be so dense as to mean that terrorism wasn't a threat to the US before 2003, given the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the USS Cole in 2000, the two African embassy bombings in 1998, and so on all the way back to World Trade Center I in 1993. (Well, I suppose he could, but that would be too easy.) I assume the context of the remark was the Gulf War in 1991, where the UN repulsed Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, and then tried to "contain" Saddam afterwards with Western military forces staged all over the Middle East, primarily in Saudi Arabia.

That, however, shows precisely the problem with McGovern and his anti-war allies. The 2003 invasion is nothing more than the end stage of the 1991 war, a war that never really ended at all. Saddam kept engaging the same military forces that provided the containment and made other antagonizing moves, most notably the assassination attempt on George H. W, Bush after he left office. It was the "realists" that now have come back into fashion that stopped Bush 41 from marching to Baghdad, forcing the US to leave its troops all over Saudi Arabia and engendering the hostility and rage to which McGovern presumably references. And had we not acted -- after twelve years of low-level war -- to finally end it, those troops would either still be there or would have left after a global capitualtion to Saddam Hussein and his deadly progeny.

And why did we invade Iraq in 1991? Because Saddam had invaded and annexed a key US ally in the region, Kuwait, who provided one of the few strong Arab friendships in the region. Had we not come to their aid -- an action that the UN approved -- we would have seen Saddam pose an immediate threat to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf shipping that brings so much oil to market. We had little strategic choice but to repel Iraq.

The mistake we made was not finishing Saddam when we had him on the ropes in 1991. Had we finished the war in 1991, we wouldn't have had to station troops in Saudi Arabia, and the Shi'ites would likely have been much less radicalized than they are now after the American betrayal later that year. The twelve years of no-fly zones, intermittent bombings, and the flood of kickback money flowing to Saddam and out to who-knows-where would never have happened -- and all of those consequences flowed from the decisions of Brent Scowcroft and other "realists" to stop halfway to Baghdad and allow Saddam to remain in power.

And even then, McGovern still is incorrect. Islamist terrorism had struck US interests all through the 1980s, and even earlier than that in the Teheran capture of our embassy and hostaging of our diplomatic mission for 444 days. McGovern clearly does not recall the numerous actions by Hezbollah in Lebanon. First they conducted a suicide-bombing mission that killed more than 240 of our Marines in 1983. After that, they kidnapped a series of Westerners, primarily but not exclusively Americans, and killed at least one, a CIA officer. They held the men who survived for years, especially Terry Anderson, who lost seven years of his life to those terrorists.

McGovern was proven spectacularly wrong on Viet Nam in the last half of the 1970s, when Congress' failure to come to Saigon's aid allowed our ally to collapse in 1975. That set off a round of atrocities that took the lives of millions in Southeast Asia and brought a flood of refugees to America. Now he wants to repeat the same strategy in Iraq, in an area of vital strategic importance, and the new Democratic majority hangs on his every word. The Democrats learned nothing about global security over the last 30 years, and they're about to prove it all over again.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What's Olmert Got For Sale?

Ehud Olmert made it clear that he wants to sit down with Mahmoud Abbas and start serious negotiations. He told an interviewer that he would meet with the Palestinian Authority president at any time or place for talks, and that Abbas didn't know how far Olmert would go to achieve peace:

Three days ahead of his trip to Washington D.C., Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged on Thursday night to make substantive offers to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

"I am ready day and night, I am ready anytime, any place, without preconditions to sit down and talk. He [Abbas] will be surprised how far we are prepared to go," Olmert said in a public interview with Sky's Adam Boulton at the Conference for Export and International Cooperation in Tel Aviv.

"I can offer him a lot," he added, but did not elaborate. The two leaders have not met officially since Olmert took office last spring.

Well, perhaps Israelis might also be surprised at how far Olmert might be willing to go. This rather cryptic message makes it sound like Olmert has a major initiative planned, one that Abbas might find difficult to reject. Olmert made it clear that he believes Abbas is the partner for peace in the Palestinian territories, saying that Abu Mazen was a decent and trustworthy man who opposed terror.

Obviously, Olmert wants to build Abbas up as a partner for peace with Israelis inclined towards skepticism on this point. The Israelis have seen Abbas make a lot of speeches in which he declares that he yearns for peace, but the terrorists of his own faction continue their attacks on Israelis as well as Palestinians of other factions. Unfortunately, as Olmert certainly realizes, Abbas is as good as it gets for peace partners in the PA. Israelis may not make much of a distinction on that score, and Olmert is trying his best to make the sale.

Olmert supports Abbas' efforts to form a government of technocrats in order to form a power base that will accept a two-state solution, but Olmert's explicit support probably damages Abbas politically. To counter this, Olmert has declared that he will many trade Palestinian prisoners for captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, but only if Abbas makes the deal with him. Olmert wants to show that Abbas can win back these arrested Palestinians but that Hamas cannot be any kind of negotiating partner at all.

Will this work? Perhaps, but it seems unlikely. Even if Olmert has gauged Abbas correctly, right now Abbas has only moderate power to effect any changes. Hamas has Shalit and will not allow Abbas to win all the credit for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Olmert may never get a chance to show his hand -- and he may just have a pair of deuces, given his political support at home.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Return Of The Realists

I find it very helpful to read international publications to see how outsiders perceive America and our politics. Especially in foreign policy, it helps to keep from developing a parochial perspective. After all, one of the major goals of any foreign policy is to convince other nations to follow our leadership. With Robert Gates replacing Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, it's worth checking to see if the foreign press have come to the same conclusion as we have.

At least in London, they have:

Two years ago they were the pariahs of neoconservative Washington, a group of soft-spined old timers who refused to see that the only way to defeat America’s enemies was with the lethal might of the US military.

But within hours of Donald Rumsfeld’s enforced resignation on Wednesday, and in the clearest of signs that President Bush has turned to his father to dig him out of a mess in Iraq, the foreign policy “realists” who dominated US diplomacy in the early 1990s have been suddenly restored to the helm.

In choosing Robert Gates, the former CIA Director, to replace Mr Rumsfeld as Defence Secretary, Mr Bush completed an extraordinary recall to duty for the White House foreign policy team that advised his father, while ending the influence of the neoconservatives who had disparaged them after Mr Bush took office in 2000.

Mr Gates comes from a circle of national security aides who counselled the first President Bush from 1989 to 1992. They loathe the neoconservative world view and their swift re-emergence signals a profound change in how Mr Bush will deal with Iraq, Iran and the Middle East during the last two years of his presidency.

Gates has won endorsements from Zbigniew Brzezinski and Scowcroft himself, and he co-authored a report with Zbig two years ago that will raise eyebrows from American hardliners. The study recommended that the Bush administration drop its hard-line stance on Iran, instead offering diplomatic relations and the end of all sanctions in exchange for an end to Iran's nuclear program. The Times of London quotes Frank Gaffney as wondering whether James Baker, who brought Gates into the Iraq Study Group, hasn't already opened some back-channel negotiations with the Iranian mullahcracy.

Israel may wonder if their best friend has suddenly decided to distance himself from them in favor of this aspect of realpolitik.

Brzezinski also mentioned the blow this appointment gives to Dick Cheney, who has suddenly begun looking like a traditional Vice-President: isolated and decreasingly influential. Jimmy Carter's former national-security advisor told the Times that Cheney tried to keep Bush from essentially firing Rumsfeld, a rumor that has passed around DC since the announcement yesterday, and that appointing Gates makes Cheney's marginalization complete. Condoleezza Rice is said to already be on board with the move away from the "neocon" approach in favor of the Baker/Scowcroft flavor of foreign policy.

The Times, of course, believes this to be a wonderful development. One can hardly miss the tone of delight in its reporting on the subject. Republicans who see Iran and Syria as dire threats (especially Iran) will not share in this enthusiasm. The effort to get John Bolton confirmed as UN Ambassador will not mitigate the pushback on this sudden policy switch, as Bolton looks doomed. While it is true that the American public voted for change, particularly on Iraq, it is equally true that Bush won re-election in 2004 on his own foreign policy and not that of John Kerry.

At this point, Bush seems to have turned on a dime after the midterm debacle. We will have to wait and see whether this turnabout actually protects America as much as it appears intended to protect the White House.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Troops Fear The Loss Of Rumsfeld

American troops concerned with the loss of Donald Rumsfeld spoke to Martin Fletcher of the Times of London, worried that the new Secretary of Defense would pull them out of Iraq before they could complete the mission:

Half of America and the upper echelons of the US military may be cheering Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation from the post of Defence Secretary, but there was no rejoicing yesterday among those most directly affected by his decisions: the frontline soldiers in Iraq.

Troops expressed little pleasure at the departure of the man responsible for their protracted deployment to a hostile country where 2,839 of their comrades have died.

Indeed, some members of the 101st Airborne Division and other troops approached by The Times as they prepared to fly home from Baghdad airport yesterday expressed concern that Robert Gates, Mr Rumsfeld’s successor, and the Democrat-controlled Congress, might seek to wind down their mission before it was finished.

Mr Rumsfeld “made decisions, he stuck with them and he did what he thought was right, whether people agreed with it, liked it, or not”, Staff Sergeant Frank Notaro said. He insisted that Iraq was better off now than before the war.

Staff Sergeant Michael Howard said: “It’s a blow to the military. He was a good Secretary of Defence. He kept us focused. He kept the leaders focused. It’s going to be hard to fill his shoes.”

The American troops believe in the mission they serve. Interestingly, the Times -- which does not back the Iraq war -- gives an extended forum for these men to express their support for their mission and the man who sent them there to complete it. They want to see Iraq succeed, and even now want to stay until it happens.

It's an interesting point of view, and one that may surprise many who claim that the best way to support the troops is to have them retreat. Will that "support" turn to scorn when they realize the troops want to stay? After all, these men will have openly endorsed the policy of forward engagement that critics find so objectionable.

Fletcher reports that the troops also fear the impact of the new Democratic Congress on the war. They see the elections and the sudden departure of Rumsfeld as an ominous turn in domestic support, not without reason. Many of these men have built relationships with Iraqis, especially in the new security units, and will have bonds of friendship with the Iraqis that will be left in the lurch in the event of a precipitous withdrawal.

It seems to me that any effort to "support the troops" ought to at least involve their input. If they do not see Iraq as a lost cause, then they are right to wonder why so many Americans back home do. While the military will and should remain under civilian leadership, the fact is that the perspective of the soldiers and Marines on the lines have been woefully underreported in the American media, and it's somewhat embarrassing that we have to turn to a British newspaper to discover this unease at the change in Pentagon leadership.

Case in point: The New York Times, which decided to go the full John Kerry and depict the Marines in Iraq as ignorant and intellectually lazy:

The sergeant went upstairs to tell his marines, just as he had informed them the day before that the Republican Party had lost control of the House of Representatives and that Congress was in the midst of sweeping change. Mr. Menti had told them that, too.

“Rumsfeld’s out,” he said to five marines sprawled with rifles on the cold floor.

Lance Cpl. James L. Davis Jr. looked up from his cigarette. “Who’s Rumsfeld?” he asked.

If history is any guide, many of the young men who endure the severest hardships and assume the greatest risks in the war in Iraq will become interested in politics and politicians later, when they are older and look back on their combat tours.

Read both articles, and you tell me which one you believe depicts American fighting men more realistically -- the one that shows them as involved, informed, and concerned about their mission, or the one that depicts them as apathetic and uninformed. To me, it appears that the British newspaper manages to overcome its own editorial position much better to deliver truth rather than spin.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 12:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 9, 2006

Pence, Shadegg Gain Support For House GOP Leadership

Mike Pence and John Shadegg, two strong fiscal conservatives, have picked up some support in their newly-launched campaign for House leadership. John Hawkins and Robert Bluey -- my blogging partner at the CNN event -- both report that Tom Tancredo and Steve King have decided to back Pence, at least, as House Minority Leader. The move comes as a bit of a surprise, at least concerning Tancredo, who criticized Pence earlier on his support for a moderate normalization program similar to that in the Senate. King sent out a press release, which stated in part:

Republicans have lost seats in Congress because we needed more fiscal discipline, lacked clarity on the Global War on Terror, and were not aggressive enough on our fiscal and social agenda. We now need an articulate and committed Minority Leader who can be the most effective spokesman for our agenda. Mike Pence is the best communicator in Congress and among the most committed. ...

I have full confidence that Mike will lead Republicans in the right direction, and promote the principles of limited government, fiscal discipline and personal responsibility. That is why he has my full support for House Minority Leader.

John Boehner has not done a bad job in his tenure replacing Tom DeLay as Majority Leader, and with Denny Hastert explicitly removing himself from GOP leadership (before getting the boot from the caucus), one might expect him to continue in that leadership post as the Republicans move to the minority. However, Boehner and Majority Whip Roy Blunt have come to be seen by some Republicans as part of the leadership that created the problems that led to their defeat. The urge to clean house will overcome any good work done by Boehner, and while that's unfair, it's also not a bad move.

House Republicans need to demonstrate a commitment to certain principles ahead of policies in order to win the trust back from their constituents. Chief among those should be a commitment to reform and support of limited government. Pence has demonstrated all of those qualities, as well as having a reputation for clean politics. Republicans should strongly consider having Pence lead them during the next two-year period, in which they will be rethinking their direction. Pence seems like the right navigator for that journey.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 8:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Time To Start Campaigning?

La Shawn Barber makes the case for cancellation of all political vacations and an immediate start to the 2008 campaign in her Examiner editorial today. She writes that conservatism won even while the Republicans lost, and that conservatives have to continue the fight:

Republican politicians may have been ousted, but conservative policies prevailed, particularly the ban on so-called same sex marriage. Something similar happened during the 2004 presidential election. In response to a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling declaring the state’s ban on homosexual “marriage” unconstitutional, all 11 states with measures protecting marriage passed those measures, including states that [former presidential candidate] Sen. John Kerry won.

Despite clearly supporting certain conservative ideals, voting Americans rejected the men behind the policies. ... Our system of government has its problems, but it’s still the best around. Democrats wanted their chance to govern, now they have it. Campaigning for 2008 begins —now.

It's true that a number of social-conservative ballot initiatives won on Tuesday, even in the same states that gave Republicans the heave-ho. It's also true that the Democrats won with a more conservative slate of candidates than they've fielded in a generation. What does that mean? It means that conservative ideals still resonate with the American public, but that they have tired of this slate of Republican leadership, probably George Bush most of all.

I disagree with La Shawn to some extent. We cannot begin campaigning until we know in which direction to take the party. Republicans need to take some time for soul-searching to determine what First Principles to use in developing policy. In the end stages of our majority, a lot of our efforts seemed more intended to retain power than to advance a coherent agenda. For a party that believes in limited government (or professes that belief), that kind of activity is self-defeating at best.

We need to have our ideas and our ideals prevail, and stop thinking in Beltway terms about how to gain power. Tom DeLay and his K Street Project should have taught us that lesson; power is a means, not an end, and sublimating the ideals of limited and clean government in order to gain more power means you never get back to them. I understand that one has to achieve power in order to create change, but if we ever hope to significantly reduce the size of the federal government and its intrusive reach into the lives of Americans, K Street lobbyists will not be our natural allies.

We're entering a period where governance has been stripped from us. This allows us to think about how we want to rebuild our party in order to really achieve our goals. That process is more important than the campaign trail at the moment, especially since we need to know who we are before we can decide who will represent us. Let's take that time and get it right this time.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

President Bushenegger

So what's next for George Bush after having his party stripped of Congressional control? The final two years of a two-term presidency normally get devoted to The Legacy, as Oval Office occupants start to look longingly at the history books and wonder how their own presidencies will be recorded in them. No President wants The Legacy to be gridlock and can-kicking, and so Bush has made moves towards the Democrats in a manner similar to what Arnold Schwarzenegger did in California after a series of ill-conceived referenda:

If Bush was willing to dismiss Rumsfeld, which the president said only a week ago that he had no intention of doing, it was in part because he and his party have so much at risk. Tuesday's elections proved to be a reaction not only against the war and the corruption scandals that have scarred Congress but also against the kind of base-driven politics that Bush used in 2004 to win a second term.

That model has often elevated policies and tactics designed to energize conservative activists over an appeal to what many GOP strategists saw as a shrinking middle of the electorate. But on Tuesday, the center struck back, voting decisively for Democratic candidates in House races.

The president responded with a renewed call for bipartisan cooperation, saying leaders on both sides should resist the temptation to divide the country into red and blue. "By putting this election and partisanship behind us, we can launch a new era of cooperation and make these next two years productive ones for the American people," he said.

Olympia Snowe made the same point in her press conference yesterday. She claimed that yesterday's election proved that the idea of a conservative mandate from the 2004 elections was a bad misreading of the electorate. This opens up a huge debate in the Republican ranks, as various GOP factions argue over the blame for the collapse. Mark Tapscott makes the conservative case rather brilliantly in his blog from yesterday, in which he also makes the case that the "base mobilization" tactics were doomed to failure anyway. One thing all factions should acknowledge is that the party failed to keep its majority because it failed to operate as a big-tent organization, and further purges will only ensure a lengthier stay in the minority.

In that context, the Arnoldization that Bush appears to have begun makes some sense. He doesn't have a dog in the party fight that will arise over the next few weeks; in two years, he's retiring no matter what. People forget that Bush never has been a doctrinaire conservative, and that he chose Dick Cheney as his running mate to build confidence among conservatives in his leadership. He cut taxes like a conservative, but his social policies outside of abortion and embryonic stem cell research have been centrist, and his foreign policy Wilsonian. The removal of Rumsfeld and the selection of Bob Gates as his replacement, along with Condoleezza Rice at State, moves that foreign policy significantly back towards the foreign policy of his father and further away from Cheney and the "neocons".

Bush wants to still be able to get work done in the final two years, and he understands that he will have to compromise on a broad front with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to do so. He isn't Ronald Reagan in that sense, but that's because he doesn't have Reagan's approval ratings, either. He's a minority president beset by a wave of disapproval, and he has few options outside of outright political warfare -- and in this case, the Democrats have all the big guns now. It's realpolitik in a different arena; Schwarzenegger showed how to survive and even thrive in that environment, and Bush appears ready to use his playbook.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:17 AM

Amnesty On The Front Burner

George Bush announced yesterday that he would focus on areas of consensus with the new Democratic majority, and one of those areas would naturally be comprehensive immigration reform. The Republicans in the House blocked Bush's plans for the normalization of more than twelve million illegal aliens within the US in this session of Congress, although the Senate approved it. Now with Democratic majorities in place in both chambers, the border fence approved, and anti-amnesty forces marginalized, Bush can complete his efforts:

President Bush yesterday said he will team up with Democrats to pass an immigration bill with a guest-worker program that his own party blocked this year, and his Republican opponents predicted a bloody intraparty fight but said they cannot stop such a bill from passing.

"We will fight it, we will lose. It will go to the Senate, it will pass. The president will sign it. And it will happen quickly because that's one thing they know they can pass," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican and chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, who had led the opposition to a guest-worker plan. "I am absolutely horrified by this prospect, but I have to face reality."

Mr. Bush supported a bipartisan majority in the Senate this year that passed a broad immigration bill including a new worker program and citizenship rights for millions of illegal aliens. But House Republicans blocked those efforts, calling them an amnesty, and instead forced through a bill to erect nearly 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Tuesday's elections removed that obstacle by turning control of the House over to Democrats. Yesterday, in an afternoon press conference, the president said he shares Democrats' vision on immigration and will try again for a broad bill. "There's an issue where I believe we can find some common ground with the Democrats," he said.

Bush now has to face the reality of DC under Democratic control, and this step was utterly predictable. Bush has never pretended to be anything but a moderate on immigration reform, and his party repeatedly frustrated his attempts to build a bipartisan solution.

The anti-amnesty forces can thank themselves for this situation to some extent. I warned about carrying grudges past the primaries and in campaigning against Republican incumbents in the general election on single-issue bases. Nevertheless, many activists kept campaigning against lists of Representatives and Senators on the charge of betrayal against the nation on this very issue -- and they got their wish, in most cases. I know because I would get two or three e-mails a day outlining every outrage committed by an illegal alien and the list of "traitors" who wanted to support comprehensive reform, a deluge that got so tiresome that I added the senders to my spam filter, with only spotty results.

In any event, this new effort is moderated by the new law requiring the US to build barriers and to bolster enforcement at the border. Republicans pushed that through before the midterm elections, and those will help slow down the wave of illegals crossing the border. The next step for Bush will be to revive the Senate proposal from earlier this year, which will normalize the status of most illegals and create a path to citizenship for them.

If we successfully tighten border security to eliminate the vast majority of illegal entries, then normalization may be the best path to take. It allows the illegals to come out of the shadows and gives us an accounting of the true scope of the problem. Sunlight also means we will know who people are, an important point for national security concerns and something that would never happen as long as we keep them on the run. There will still be people who violate the amnesty/normalization agreement, but it drastically reduces the law-enforcement problem from 12 million or so to probably something in the low six figures.

Normalization or amnesty will anger many Republicans, and that's understandable. However, it's simply a lesson in what happens when a ruling party rejects the big-tent approach and becomes the minority party.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

GOP Outreach To Black Community Needs More Work

One of the apparent defeats from the midterm results came in response to the Republican effort to field black candidates for significant offices. Those candidates lost in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, and it shows that the GOP has to work more to make inroads into a community with a lot of distrust for them:

Memo to Republican chief Ken Mehlman regarding recruiting black candidates: Try again.

Republicans had hoped to brand 2006 as the year of the black Republican. But with high-profile failures in Maryland’s Senate race and in governor contests in Ohio and Pennsylvania, prospects for GOP gains among black voters turned up short this year and gave scant hope for 2008.

Michael Steele, Maryland’s lieutenant governor, lost by almost 10 percentage points to Rep. Ben Cardin. Ken Blackwell, a conservative darling who would have been Ohio’s first black governor, lost by almost 24 percentage points; Lynn Swann lost his bid for the Pennsylvania governor’s office by 21 percentage points.

Each race had its own difficulties. Blackwell lost in Ohio because of the prevailing anger against the state party, thanks to a series of scandals that had Buckeye voters looking for fresh faces. Lynn Swann ran against Ed Rendell, a highly experienced pol who dismantled Swann's neophyte efforts in a state that has turned increasingly blue over the past few years. Michael Steele faced an uphill task at best in a state where registered Democrats have a more than 2-1 numeric advantage over Republicans, in a year where Republicans took a beating. Under those circumstances, a ten-point loss doesn't look so bad.

The AP's story suggests that the GOP looked for black skin rather than addressing black issues. That's certainly not the case for Steele and Blackwell, both of whom had already won statewide office before 2006. The two men had proven themselves capable politicians and under normal circumstances at least had a shot at winning. With Lynn Swann, one of my favorite football players of all time, it might have been better to start him in a Congressional race instead of an executive office. On the other hand, Rendell was probably unbeatable anyway, and Swann gained some good experience for his next campaign.

They are right in one aspect. Republicans need to make the concepts of smaller government and fiscal discipline more relevant to the black community. The Bush administration missed that chance when they dropped school vouchers from the education reform they passed in the opening months. Freeing underprivileged students from failing schools and ending the educational monopoly may have given the GOP an entree to black votes, or at least consideration at the polls. Until the Republicans can articulate how their governing philosophy can make life better in the urban areas, those voters will remain diffident to GOP entreaties, no matter who makes them.

However, the AP's recipe is one that the GOP should follow. Republicans should keep trying to engage the black community in positive ways, and fielding candidates is one of those ways. Michael Steele may become the Republican national chairman, replacing the excellent Ken Mehlman, if he decides to step down. That would be a great move by the GOP, and it would show a continued commitment to giving millions of American voters a choice.

So, yes. Keep trying, even if it doesn't result in immediate success. It's not just smart politics, it's the right thing to do.

UPDATE: Let me be clear -- I'm not talking about "pandering" to anyone. I believe that fiscal conservatism, limited government, and enabling private investment to flow freely to small business helps the black community, and Republicans need to make that message relevant to those voters. It's not about pandering, it's about engagement -- actually talking and campaigning, rather than writing off millions of Americans as a lost political cause. It's also about listening, which Mehlman started to do, and which Steele should continue if he takes Mehlman's spot.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Herding Cats, Or Blue Dogs

Now that the Democrats have won control of both chambers of Congress, their real challenge has begun -- big-tent governing. The Democrats took control by nominating center-right candidates to replace Republicans, and now they will have to find ways in which to unify their caucus to get their issues advanced. As the departing Republican leadership can tell them, it's not as easy as it looks:

They wear cowboy boots, chew tobacco, love hunting, hate abortion, want less government spending — and some voted for Ronald Reagan. Now they are headed to Congress as Democrats.

Although the Democrats’ victory was above all an overwhelming repudiation of the conflict in Iraq, it was also built on the back of moderate, often conservative candidates recruited to compete in traditionally Republican territory.

When Congress returns in January, both the House and Senate will see something of an ideological shift, with an influx of freshmen Democrats who, while unified in their opposition to the war, are well to the right of the party’s current caucus on cultural issues.

Their success reflects a resurgence of “Blue Dog” Democrats — socially conservative but generally economic populists — across the Midwest, and a bold new strategy to target the Republican-leaning West and South West — states such as Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico — as a way of winning back the White House in 2008.

Conservatives have spent the last few years wondering what happened to the Blue Dog Democrats, and the easy answer was that they became Republicans. The parties began to divide by ideology during the Reagan years, and the migration became significant in the 1990s. Out of sheer political expediency, the power brokers in the Democratic ranks backed candidates like Heath Shuler and Jim Webb -- who resembles a Buchananite more than a Blue Dog -- for the sole purpose of winning majorities in Congress.

If one doubts that, when was the last time the national party put so much of its efforts and treasure behind pro-life candidates? At their last national convention, the party erupted into criticism when a pro-life politician merely wanted to address the delegates:

On Tuesday afternoon, a few hours before the Convention adopted the party's platform, the Democrats for Life of America rallied outside Faneuil Hall and in front of the statue of Samuel Adams. They cheered the great advances pro-life Democrats had made in recent years and decried the new party platform. In 2000 the party's platform included big tent language, saying: "The Democratic Party is a party of inclusion. We respect the individual conscience of each American on this difficult issue, and we welcome all our members to participate at every level of our party." In 2004 that had changed to excluding all pro-life Democrats from the party. The US Senators, Congressmen, ambassadors, state legislators, clergy and ativists from around the country rejected the new language that said it was only "Republican efforts" at work to protect pregnant women and their unborn children.

Now that they have a majority, though, these same candidates that they actively recruited will now want to vote their conscience on these matters, and the Democrats may have some tough battles with their special-interest groups. Many of them oppose new taxes, for instance, and the New Direction plan for Democrats calls for big increases in social spending. The newbies did not join the Democrats in order to instill socialism, and some in the activist community may find these new members very trying indeed.

Democrats could abide the Blue Dogs in days gone by because they had large enough majorities to make them less relevant. With the razor-thin majorities they have now, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi may find herding Blue Dogs as frustrating as herding cats.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 8, 2006

CQ On The Air To Concede Mayoral Election

I'll be appearing on Rob Breckinreidge's show, The World Tonight, on CHQR in Calgary at 9:05 pm CT tonight. I plan to use the appearance to formally concede in my campaign to win the mayor's race in Eagan through write-in votes. Exit polling is still spotty -- well, we can't find the guy I paid to annoy people coming out of the polling station -- but so far, the campaign apparently foundered on the basics. Two major factors combined to deny me office: Eaganites who don't know who I am, and Eaganites who do.

Of course, there was that whole Fresca thing, too. I may have to think about switching to Squirt.

Actually, Rob wants to talk about the midterm election results, so be sure to tune in to catch my take on the GOP loss. If you're not in Calgary, listen in on their Internet stream!

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 8:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Dissipation Complete

Virginia has finished counting its ballots, and the final count makes James Webb the winner of the Senate race this evening, retiring incumbent George Allen, who at one time appeared to be a front-runner for the 2008 Presidential nomination. The decision gives the Democrats 51 seats and control of the Senate, putting Harry Reid in charge of the upper chamber:

Democrats wrested control of the Senate from Republicans Wednesday with an upset victory in Virginia, giving the party complete domination of Capitol Hill for the first time since 1994.

Jim Webb's squeaker win over incumbent Sen. George Allen gave Democrats their 51st seat in the Senate, an astonishing turnabout at the hands of voters unhappy with Republican scandal and unabated violence in Iraq. Allen was the sixth Republican incumbent senator defeated in Tuesday's elections.

The Senate had teetered at 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans for most of Wednesday, with Virginia hanging in the balance. Webb's victory ended Republican hopes of eking out a 50-50 split, with Vice President
Dick Cheney wielding tie-breaking authority.

The AP reports that Allen will likely not request a recount if the spread remains in the several thousands, and right now the spread is over 7,000. Most normal recounts do not make corrections of that magnitude, and after such a divisive campaign, Allen probably wants to spare Virginians from an overtime period.

This puts an exclamation point on the dissipation of Republican rule in Congress. This makes the last two years of the Bush administration especially tricky, but not just for Bush. The narrow 51-49 margin will make it difficult to pursue any partisan initiatives. Even with the House in Democratic hands, the Senate has to gain a consensus of 60 in order to get anything done, a reality Republicans repeatedly discovered during the last four years.

Don't expect great programs out of Congress. Divided government tends to do less, not more, and tends to react even more slowly than normal. The Bush administration should be prepared to work with Democrats on their agenda, but that doesn't mean capitulating on every issue. We will have to remain vigilant in vetting proposals and watching appropriations to ensure that we contain the excesses of Democratic redistribution plans while the Republicans try to rediscover their limited-government, reform-minded platform all over again.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 8:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I Question The Timing, And The Sanity

One day after voters spanked Republicans in the midterm elections, George Bush turned a two-year commitment to Donald Rumsfeld into a "heckuva job, Rummy," before the last ballots have even been counted. Rumsfeld resigned his post as Secretary of Defense after almost six years on the job, and Bush will nominate Robert Gates to replace him:

Donald Rumsfeld will resign as Defense Secretary in a stunning consequence of yesterday's midterm election results which demonstrated American dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq.

President Bush has chosen Robert Gates, president of Texas A&M and former CIA director, to replace him. Gates represents a change in direction for the Pentagon . He has a reputation for a pragmatic approach to foreign policy. In George H. W. Bush's administration, Gates served as deputy to National Security Council director Brent Scowcroft, who has been a sharp critic of the current President Bush's Iraq policy. His nomination must be confirmed by the Senate.

During a press conference, President Bush announced the resignation, calling Rumsfeld a "superb leader" but emphasizing that a "fresh perspective" was needed and that "the timing is right for new leadership" at the Pentagon. He called Rumsfeld a "trusted adviser and friend," and that he's "deeply grateful" for his service to the country.

Although President Bush has long defended Rumsfeld from bipartisan criticism of his conduct of the war in Iraq, calling him a "smart, tough capable administrator" two weeks ago, his hand was forced by the outcome of the midterm elections which swept the Democrats back into control of the House for the first time in 12 years. Many voters cited the war in Iraq as one of the reasons that they were rejecting Republican candidates at the polls.

I have no illusions about the indispensability of any one man in the American effort for national security. Rumsfeld has done tremendous work at the Pentagon during his tenure, which will be the longest period for any SecDef by the time he actually steps down. He has also served as a lightning rod for criticism on the war in Iraq, which comes with the job. Cabinet positions are political appointments, and political appointments get changed when the politics demand it, and SecDef is no exception to that reality. I argued before that I'd rather see Rumsfeld resign than pull out of Iraq.

However, the timing of this move seems ludicrous. Just two weeks ago, Bush riled up the electorate by pledging unwavering support for Rumsfeld for the next two years. I'm sure that a number of Republican politicians who find themselves out of a job wonder why this decision didn't get made two months ago, and why Bush had to issue that unhelpful statement in the midst of the midterm struggles. Obviously, Bush can live without Rumsfeld, and obviously the White House now understands the drag that Rumsfeld had on the GOP. Otherwise, he wouldn't be out today. Why didn't anyone at the White House figure this out two or three months ago, when the transition to Gates could have demonstrated a little more flexibility on Iraq?

Robert Gates sounds like a fine choice to replace Rumsfeld, at least in terms of experience. I think a skilled politician on the Hill might have been a better choice, perhaps even Bill Frist, who has to know that his presidential ambitions just hit a brick wall in the midterms. (Insiders will not win in 2008.) However, Gates served under Brent Scowcroft and is a member of the new commission headed by Jim Baker to rethink Iraq policy. This looks like a big shift away from democratization and a realignment to something much closer to the foreign policy of Bush 41.

I suspect that the Senate under either party's leadership will move quickly to confirm Gates in order to expedite Rumsfeld's departure. Let's hope that the new SecDef doesn't start playing the realpolitik games that left us vulnerable to Islamist terrorism in the first place.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 3:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Kingston Meets The Bloggers

Just before boarding my flight, I had a chance to participate in a blog conference call with Rep. Jack Kingston about the effects of the midterm loss. Kingston, who came to Congress in 1992, is one of the few Republicans to have operated in the minority. Here are my unedited notes from the call, which I had to leave early.

He appreciates what’s going on in the blogs. He thinks that we have learned a lesson which we shouldn’t have had to do the hard way. You have to deliver on the name brand, which is clean government, competence, and fiscal responsibility. In 1994, we got elected on the Contract with America, and showed the American people that we would follow up on those promises.

We got a little too used to holding the gavel. We started using spending to shore up weak districts, and that horse-trading led to even more spending. The failure of self-discipline started with the leadership. It also led to the scandals; we lost six seats from self-imposed problems. A number of retirements created a twelve-seat lead to the Democrats.

This left the GOP vulnerable on Iraq. The GOP lost the trust of the American people on the small and not-so-small stuff, and so they failed to trust Republicans on the bigger issues.

He doesn’t see how the Democrats can hold majorities on major issues. Too many conservative Democrats got elected.

He sees the next Congress as kicking many cans down the road. There’s no Democratic mandate, and there’s no mandate for fiscal conservatism either (Shays returns, Ryun, Gutknecht et all exit). He thinks it will be very difficult for the Democrats to pass appropriations, as they will have a lot of IOUs to pay off.

Kingston has no preferences on new leadership. The GOP has to recover from the shell-shock, and then the calls will start. He believes that new leadership will arise from the loss. He’s not willing to endorse anyone at this point; he wants to see what shakes out. Kingston wants to have a conversation about what happened first before they can start working on picking leaders. He thinks Republicans will be split on whether they spent too much or too little.

Will there be a new central plan, a la Contract with America? Not sure. The climate was different then. There aren’t a lot of obvious issues. Newer members will not comprehend the magnitude to the loss, and they need to learn what it means to be part of the minority. He sees their role as activists.

He sees the blogging community as a rallying point for that activism. Put simply, the Republicans will not be as relevant in the Beltway as they were before. They will have to go outside the Beltway in order to organize effectively.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 10:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The UN Likes The Results

Kofi Anna's office decided to deliver one last broadside to the Bush administration before skulking out of office after running the most corrupt Secretariat ever. The UN spokesperson released several tidbits from press coverage of the midterm elections, celebrating the end of Republican dominance in an election that had little to do with the UN:

Democrats seized control of the House of Representatives and defeated at least four Republican senators yesterday, riding a wave of voter discontent with President Bush and the war in Iraq. But the fate of the Senate remained in doubt this morning, as races for Republican-held seats in Montana and Virginia remained too close to call as Election Day turned into the day after. (NYT online) Virginia is facing a likely recount. (BBC)

Democratic gains in Congress were seen around the world Wednesday as a rejection of the U.S. war in Iraq that led some observers to expect a reassessment of the American course there. The shift in power also was seen as a signal in some capitals that the United States would put a greater emphasis on trade policy and human rights. (AP) ...

Whatever this election accomplished, it did nothing to end the rancor and distrust that define current American politics. Yet, as the campaign went on (and on) there was one issue on which people from both parties appeared to be finding common ground: Donald Rumsfeld has to go. (NYT ed)

One has to wonder why the UN would take such an interest in our midterm elections. The only direct impact this will have on our UN policy is that John Bolton will be unlikely to get confirmed in the new session. The GOP has a few weeks to attempt to squeeze him through the Senate while Republicans still control it, but if they cannot, then Bush will have to use another recess appointment to keep Bolton at Turtle Bay. What possible difference could it make to the UN if Rumsfeld stays or goes? Bush sets foreign policy, not Rumsfeld.

Otherwise, our Congressional elections really do not concern the UN -- except, of course, as a means to celebrate the defeat of Republicans at the polls. That exposes the UN, or at least the Annan clique, as a bunch of unseemly meddlers. This comes as no surprise, of course, but they appear to be unconcerned now about being so open with their kibbitzing.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 10:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pawlenty A Bright Spot For Minnesota GOP

Tim Pawlenty managed to play Midterm Survivor and keep himself from getting voted off the island last night, eking out a very narrow win over the DFL's Mike Hatch for Governor. With just about every precinct now reporting, Pawlenty won re-election over the state's Attorney General by 13,900 votes. However, the state GOP has little else to celebrate, as it lost significant ground in both chambers of the state legislature:

Gov. Tim Pawlenty eked out a narrow reelection victory over DFL Attorney General Mike Hatch early this morning in a climactic finale to one of the closest, hardest-fought gubernatorial contests in memory.

Pawlenty was leading by about one percentage point when the Star Tribune declared him the winner about 2 a.m.

As one of the few statewide Republican victors in a Democratic state in the midst of an overwhelming Democratic tide, Pawlenty may have enhanced his national image as an up-and-coming star with a future in national office.

Noting Republican losses elsewhere and the fact that he will have to deal with both a DFL House and Senate, Pawlenty said about 3 a.m. that it was "a time tonight to be humble and time to be grateful."

I called this race at about 11 pm ET, when I saw the returns from Hennepin and Ramsey. Hatch only could put fourteen points between Pawlenty and himself inside the urban center of the state, which I though portended a four-point win for Pawlenty. As it turns out, I was too generous on the margin, and that had implications down-ballot. The GOP lost five seats in the Minnesota Senate and 19 in the House, a state-sized wave of the kind that many predicted nationwide.

What does that mean for Minnesota governance? Pawlenty will have to find accommodation with the new, stronger DFL majorities. That means, in all likelihood, more taxes and more spending. One interesting sidenote from the election is the failure of the publicly-funded sports stadiums to galvanize fiscal conservatives. Pawlenty took a lot of heat from Republicans for cooperating with the legislation that enabled that public spending, but as it turns out, many of the proponents of the bill won re-election. Pam Wolf had challenged Don Betzold in Anoka, where the tax levies will really hit, on his support for public funding for the Vikings stadium, but he beat her by ten points.

This makes the Republican national convention a more interesting story in 2008. At the time, Minnesota looked like it could conceivably go red with a high-profile Republican event. That seems less likely now, although two years can bring a lot of changes. It may make Tim Pawlenty more critical to national GOP hopes in 2008, and don't be surprised if he doesn't start getting some mention for a VP slot. He's now going to have to be like Arnold Schwarzenegger without the accent, and that may be as much of a boost as a burden with the party.

The state GOP has a lot of rebuilding to do. They have two years to get it done, and they'd better get started pretty quickly.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 8:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What Happened?

National Review Online had the first of the post-mortems up this morning, featuring input from several political writers on the cause and meaning of the midterm results. It's an interesting mix of analyses; Republican disunity, Democratic play-acting get some play. Kate O'Beirne and I tend to believe that this reflects Republican performance more than anything else, and Kate believes it started from the White House down:

During the “Iraq War Mid-terms,” Republicans were going to lose seats this year but could have limited the damage. I predict that in the future they will police their ranks and lean on the crooks and cheats in their midst to step aside. If it is true that “corruption” was a top concern for voters, Republicans could have insulated themselves some by delivering on ethics reform. Maybe they will learn that there are worse things than giving up their perks - like giving up their majority.

Democrats are the party of government — as we will now be reminded. Republicans lost the mantle of being reformers when they became so darn comfortable running things and seemed to be only concerned with keeping things that way.

Many conservatives appeared to be detached from the political troubles of President Bush that put his fellow Republicans in trouble. With conservatives also discouraged about the progress in Iraq, there wasn’t much rallying to the defense of “their guy.” That might have been different had he vetoed a few big spending bills or led the fight for border security. I hope his future explanations about his intent with respect to Iraq is more strategic than stubborn.

I think she has this about right. One has to recall the 1994 Republican "revolution", which resulted in a much more sweeping victory than the Democrats had last night (right now, they have gained 28 seats with four more still in play, while the GOP took 54 that year). Democrats had built what looked to be a permanent majority, and that led to astronomical amounts of hubris and no small amount of corruption. The GOP successfully ran on those themes in 1994 because nothing resonates like corruption and unchecked power with the American electorate.

Barring any surprises from later exit polls, I believe we saw that same dynamic again last night. The Republicans have indeed left reform in the dust, with notable and honorable exceptions like Tom Coburn and a handful of other highly active Republican officeholders. The explosion of earmarks over the last three sessions of Congress have stripped them of the mantle of fiscal responsibility -- really one of the keys to Republican identity -- and the pursuit of lobbyists has left a bad taste in the mouths of voters. It led to the Jack Abramoff scandal, an "unforced error", as Glenn Reynolds put it, but one completely predictable when politicians mix earmarks with lobbyist power.

No doubt Iraq played a significant part of the decision by Americans last night. However, one has to wonder if Americans would have lost confidence in Republican leadership in the war if they had not lost confidence in their ability to keep a clean Congress first. As I write in the NRO piece, I don't recall the last time America has switched control of Congress during wartime, and I think that's pretty significant.

Republicans have to go back to the basics -- and I don't mean the base. They need to settle on some First Principles before they calculate how to convince voters to trust them with governance again. Republicans have traditionally stood for fiscal discipline and a strong defense above all other issues. The GOP needs to return to those values first and keep them foremost when creating their strategies for 2008. They need to elect clean leadership, and Tom Coburn's phone should be ringing off the hook this morning if Republicans want to get serious about rehabilitation.

They have two years to atone for whatever mistakes led to their defeat last night. They'll need every single day to rebuild the trust lost from the 1994 revolution.

UPDATE: Joe Gandelman, who really should have been with us last night at the CNN bash, has a round-up of post-mortems that's definitely worth reading. Please note that my posting will be limited as I'm traveling today.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 7:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Final Thoughts

I'm back at the hotel after the CNN blogger bash, and I'd like to wrap up with a few final thoughts. I don't think anyone can honestly look at the results tonight and say that we saw anything less than a trip to the woodshed for the Republicans. We may hold the Senate by the barest of margins, but the House is gone in a substantial manner. Some will make comparisons between this six-year election and those past (1986, 1974, 1958) and claim a moral victory in containing the losses, but that simply won't fly.

This is a big loss, and it will hurt the GOP and the Bush administration. Even if we do hold the Senate, we will have to find compromise candidates for the federal bench, and also look forward to more taxes and regulation. Free trade is a goner. The prosecution of the war on terror will get limited by a probable repeal of the Patriot Act, or at least an attempt to do so, and I'm very sure the Democrats will move to defund the operations in Iraq by a date certain in order to force a "phased redeployment".

And that's not even counting the myriad investigations that Democrats will launch against the Bush administration. Republicans will keep it from getting out of hand, but the Democrats will want to build enough damaging allegations to win again in 2008.

However, in terms of policy at least, the American people have spoken. The majority endorsed these views, and now we have to see them play out. We can certainly criticize it -- and we will -- but we have to respect the voice of the American electorate. They wanted a different direction, and now they have to experience its consequences.

One final thought: I want to thank CNN and all of the bloggers who made this such an enjoyable event. John Aravosis said that he could have gotten more done if he had stayed home, and I think that's probably true. However, we would not have had the opportunity to meet each other, especially those of us who oppose each other in the blogosphere, and get to know each other as people. Jacki, Abbi, Alex, and all of the great technical staff really deserve kudos for their efforts to stage such a well-balanced event.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 12:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 7, 2006

Did Catholics Switch To The Democrats?

I just received a release from the Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good with some potentially disturbing news. They claim that large numbers of Catholics switched their votes from the GOP to the Democrats in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia. The swing in each state was as follows:

SUMMARY OF CATHOLIC VOTE SWING:

OH - 47 points
PA – 22 points
VA - 15 points

That would explain Santorum's loss in Pennsylvania. It would be interesting to see more in-depth analysis of these exit polls to determine why they changed their votes this year.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 9:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Election Night: Minnesota

I'm opening up a separate thread for the Minnesota races, in order to keep all of that commentary together. Minnesotans had some tough choices to make, and so far it looks like they've followed the predictions. The only surprise so far is that Hatch has opened an eight-point lead on Pawlenty, but we're also seeing 43% of all MN-05 precincts reporting with the other districts in single digits -- so this lead is likely illusory.

Bachmann leads Wetterling by just two points in MN-06 .... let's hope she stretches that out a bit as more precincts report.

10:14 ET - Hatch is stil up by nine points. However, at this point, Hennepin County has reported 60% of its precincts, which makes this a very distorted result. Hatch is up 14 points in Hennepin, which may not be enough to beat the rest of the state. 59% of Ramsey also has been counted, which means that what we're seeing is mostly the urban areas of the state. If he can only maintain a 14-point lead in his power base, we're in good shape.

10:35 - John Kline is easily beating Coleen Rowley in my home district of MN-02, 58-38. That was never going to be much of a race anyway. However, Gil Gutknecht is down in the opening rounds of counts in MN-01, a race we thought would be close but a Republican hold. It's too early to tell, but it bears watching. Tim Walz ran a pretty good race in this district.

Bachmann is still only 4 points up on Wetterling in MN-06. We want to watch that one carefully, too.

12:21 - I've been on standby to go on CNN for some time, and did a lengthy interview on Pipeline, so I haven't had an opportunity to post any thoughts for the last hour or so. Let's recap the changes in Minnesota:

MN-01: Looks like Gutknecht will lose a close race.
MN-05: Ellison wins, as expected. Fine and Lee wind up with almost the same vote total.
MN-06: Bachmann appears to be cruising to victory; Wetterling gets to taste defeat -- again.

Hatch and Pawlenty are just about tied for governor as the outstate votes have started coming in. Hatch ran up a lead based on the Hennepin-Ramsey counts, but not enough, it appears.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 8:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Election Night: Atmosphere

I arrived here at Tryst a about a half-hour ago or so, and it's quite the zoo. Scott Johnson and I shared a cab over from the hotel, and we almost missed the place -- although we couldn't figure out why, since CNN has two huge vans in front of the coffee shop. Right now, we have people staring at us through the windows, probably wondering (a) what the heck is going on, and (b) where they're going to go for their coffee fix.

I figured that we would have a quiet atmosphere, sort of lounge-like, and that we would be mostly focused on our computers. Instead, this is a madhouse, but a fun one. I'm ensconced near the buffet table (naturally), in a comfortable couch. Surrounding me is Nick Gillespie from Reason, John and Joe from Americablog, and Robert Bluey from Human Events Online. I've met La Shawn Barber, Kevin Aylward, Ann Althouse, Patrick Hynes (who interviewed me for a YouTube segment coming up), Jeralynn Merritt, and a few others.

More later -- I'm getting an interview request at the moment.

6:21 ET: The connection here keeps going out, but CNN has been terrific about trying to correct it. They have engineers all over the place.

Right now, I have Abbi Tatton sitting next to me. I'll try to get a few thoughts from her.

6:43: Doing a chat session with the AP right now, with Nick Gillespie and Judd Legum. Mary Katherine Ham has dropped by to say hi. What a tough life I'm living at the moment ...

7:13 - About to go on air -- watch the TV...

7:38 - One commenter wants to know about the general mood among the bloggers regarding the election. I don't think we're seeing much confidence from any quarters here. I'm sitting with a good mix of perspectives, and the prevailing mood is watchfulness. No one's exhibiting any outright cheerleading in conversations here. In fact, the atmosphere is quite collegial, and I think the prevailing mood is apolitical cheer. That, and frustration with the dodgy Internet connections. I've just switched to my cell-phone Internet service, which is slower but it stays up.

8:09 - Patrick Hynes has an interview with me on YouTube at Ankle Biting Pundits -- check it out.

8:32 - I'm bumping this post to the top, and you'll see the posts change positions during the night. CNN is having some major-league problems with connectivity here. I'm sticking with my cell-phone connection to the Internet; it's been very reliable. I also hear that Blogger is down.

8:44 - CNN has its engineer, Chris, working his rear end off. He's so confident he's gotten the problem solved that I'm going to disconnect my cell phone to check it out.

8:57 - I'm going to be interviewed by Jacki Schechner in a few minutes about Pennsylvania and Ohio. Keep an eye out ...

9:40 - Jacki couldn't do the interview, but Abbi may be making her way over now. Keep an eye out ...

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 7:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Election Night: Senate

And on this post, I'll be tracking the Senate contests from around the nation. I earlier predicted a net loss for the GOP of two seats at the Examiner and NRO:

Senate: Right now, the GOP has a 55-44-1 advantage. I see the Democrats picking up two seats, with a possibility of a third. Rick Santorum and Mike DeWine will almost certainly lose, and Santorum’s loss will really hurt the GOP. I expect either Jim Talent or George Allen to get edged out, but it’s such a toss-up that I’m going to figure that they’ll win at least one. Michael Steele will win Paul Sarbanes’s open Maryland seat, adding one back in for the GOP. Corker, Burns, Chafee all win, and on Wednesday we will all wonder why anyone counted Jon Kyl as anything but a solid Republican hold. In the end, the split will be 53-45-2 (Sanders and Lieberman).

Optimistic? We'll soon see! Keep checking back on this post for updates.

7:34 - I'm hearing that some initial precincts in Virginia have Allen up 59-41, but that has to be from a GOP stronghold.

7:42 - Allen up by 10 points with 7% of precincts reporting. This is looking ... not bad.

8:02 - Allen's down a point now. It looks like northern Virginia just came in. It's a gap of four thousand votes.

8:05 - Yeah, it was Fairfax County, which is a Democratic power base. No big surprise there.

8:23 - Robert Bluey is sitting next to me and tells me CBS has called Pennsylvania and Ohio for Casey and Brown, respectively. Neither is a surprise, but as Nick Gillespie just said to me, Santorum's loss is a big blow to the Republican social conservatives. If Allen doesn't make it, it's going to really kneecap that faction in the Senate.

8:28 - Matt Sheffield notes that CBS made this call while polls were still open in PA. What happened to responsible exit-poll reporting?

8:37 - Early returns have Corker well ahead of Ford in Tennessee.

8:40 - Allen's back on top in Virginia by a thin margin (7,000 votes).

8:51 - Santorum and Casey were the two races I expected Republicans to lose. So far, I don't see any evidence that we're going to lose anything else, but Missouri hasn't reported yet.

8:55 - Aaaaaannnnnnd, Allen's still on top in Virginia. With 60% of all precincts reporting, Allen has a 14,000-vote lead. We've seen Fairfax and Arlington report, and most of the rest of the precincts are in the south.

9:03 - With 17% of all precincts reporting, Tom Kean leads Bob Menendez by 3 points and 14,000 votes -- but the networks are still calling this for the Dems. Keep an eye out, I think they made a mistake.

9:12 - Okay, Menendez' districts have come in now and he has a significant lead. I made a mistake. Allen continues to lead by a few thousand votes. Missouri has started to report, and Talent has a lead at a stage where it makes little difference.

9:22 - CNN called Maryland for Cardin, although Steele has an initial lead. None of us here can figure out why CNN made that call, not even John Aravosis, who's rooting for Cardin. I'll look into the demos.

9:28 - Allen's up by 22,000 votes in Virginia now, but it's still close. In Missouri, Robert Bluey tells me that Amendment 2 is leading, which is good news for Talent. He's up by four points in the early count.

9:41 - The Senate seat in Maryland still looks pretty competitive for Steele. Prince George's County hasn't reported yet, and the county leadership all endorsed Steele. I say this still looks winnable for the GOP.

9:58 - Allen's still up by 28,000 votes in Virginia, with 84% reporting now. Cardin slipped ahead of Steele after Prince George's County reported, but that should have been a Democratic stronghold. Cardin is carrying it 2-1 with 19% of the precincts reporting. That may change.

10:10 - Fox is calling Missouri for Talent, and I believe they called Tennessee for Corker as well. It's looking like the GOP will hold the Senate.

10:25 - Jim Talent is stretching his lead in Missouri. He's up ten points and 37,000 votes with 25% of the precincts counted. It's a fairly surprising result, although it appears that Amendment 2 pulled conservatives to the polls to defeat it.

10:43 - Allen's still up by 27K with 94% counted, and back up to 50%. Steele has narrowed the gap to 5,000 in Maryland with 33% reporting, so that's still an open contest.

11:27 - Took a bit of a break, and I've been having a great chat with Jacki Schechner and Robert Bluey (and John Aravosis). However, it looks like Michael Steele has pulled back into the lead in Maryland with 48% of the precincts reporting. He's up by 17,000 and two percentage points.

12:28 - Allen/Webb way too close to call. I hear that the absentee ballots get counted last in Virginia -- does anyone know whether this is true? If so, it might provide a lifeline to Allen, who's trailing by 1800 votes at the moment. Steele has apparently lost to Cardin, so we didn't get that pickup, and it looks like Tester beat Burns for another Democratic pickup. It looks bad for the GOP, but it looks like they'll still hold the majority 51-48-1.

12:43 - And we didn't need this news, but Talent just dropped a thousand votes behind McCaskill in Missouri. That might lose us control of the Senate ... very bad news.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Election Night: House

I'll be following house races on this blog post. According to my two predictions published today by the Examiner and National Review Online, I'm expecting tough news on this front:

House: This has been a tough race to call for the lower chamber. The Democrats tried to nationalize the election, and they had a lot of success early in the cycle, but they’ve lost their grip on the generic congressional ballot in all of the late polling. Unfortunately, they need only 15 seats, or 3.4 percent of the districts, to switch in order to wrest control from the GOP. Our friends at Real Clear Politics have a chart which shows the disparity between Republican and Democratic seats at risk, and that will make the difference. The House will go from 232-202-1 to 222-213, giving Nancy Pelosi a narrow advantage.

We're going to keep a close eye on this, especially in my home state of Minnesota. I'll be updating shortly...

7:30 - Yes, Mary Katherine and I coordinated our outfits tonight. Republican red -- what did you expect?

7:32 - Just saw some early Indiana returns. The Republicans appear to be doing pretty well; Chocola is holding a slight edge in votes, and he was in a bit of trouble.

8:10 - Just saw some entries for the House. Bad news -- Negron trails by 3 in his bid to "punch Foley for Negron" with 13% of the precincts reporting. Good news -- Dickerson leads Carson in Indiana, a race I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Dickerson is running a fairly independent campaign against an entrenched incumbent; if he can win, it will help the GOP tremendously.

8:15 - Chocola is now losing substantially to Donnelly with 26% reporting in Indiana. So is Hostettler. However, Levya has a slight edge against Visclosky, and if that holds up, Indiana will be a wash.

9:20 - I haven't been updating this because I'm not really seeing any real trends yet. So far, only the real noncompetitive races have reported. I'm looking for more information before I get too far out on a limb.

9:44 - Indiana has reported to a large extent, and it doesn't look all that great for the GOP. They lost IN-02, with Chocola trailing by six now. Dickerson has slipped to six back as well with 66% reporting, but CNN hasn't called that race. Sodrel is in trouble in IN-09, too. Democrats could pick up two seats here in Indiana.

10:19 - Still no indication of a 'wave". CNN has its count up for the overall gain/loss, and it only shows the GOP down 3 so far. We still have half the country to see, but so far it's not a bloodbath.

10:52 - CNN now shows eight losses for the GOP, including Curt Weldon, who had a federal probe launched against him in the final weeks of the campaign. We're well into the Mountain time zone, and while the GOP has lost those seats, I'm not seeing a wave. I think my call of 20 seats may prove correct, and that may be overstated. We'll see.

11:17 - CNN has called the House for the Republicans. With 300 seats reported, Republicans have lost 16. If that trend holds, the GOP will lose around 24 House seats (statistically speaking). We may go on air to discuss this -- they're checking with CNN to see if they want to debate on the news.

12:19 - Jeez, I meant they called the House for the Democrats. Actually, I just wanted to see if y'all were still awake.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Exit Polling Data Leaking Out

I hate to say I Told You So, but ... well ...

Preliminary exit poll results indicate that nearly six in 10 voters today disapprove of the way President Bush is handling his job.

About four in 10 approve. That's down from 53 percent approval in 2004, and 67 percent just before the 2002 midterm elections.

About four in 10 "strongly" disapprove of the president's work, more than double the number of strong approvers.

Intensity of sentiment for and against, by contrast, was about equal in 2004: Thirty-three percent strongly approved of the president's performance, and 35 percent strongly disapproved. And in 2002, strong approvers dominated, quite a contrast from today.

I said earlier this week that the networks couldn't resist using the exit poll data for longer than an hour after they got it in confidence. As it turns out, I had the timing exactly correct. And what did it tell us? George Bush's approval rating.

Well, that's a scoop.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A Reminder Of CQ Election-Night Coverage

As CQ readers know, I will be in DC tonight at the CNN blogger bash, hanging out with an impressive array of fellow citizen journalists. I found out yesterday that the list includes Scott Johnson of Power Line, one of the true gentlemen of the blogosphere. I also get to hang out with Mary Katherine Ham, La Shawn Barber, Lorie Byrd, and a host of other fine conservatives at Tryst, the DC coffeehouse that CNN selected as the site.

CNN coverage starts at 7 pm ET, and the plan is to have the national coverage check in with the bloggers as the night progresses. They will also televise us continuously on their Pipeline channel, the Internet video service. If you want to avoid the anchor-desk commentary and hear exclusively from the bloggers, that's the place to go. (See update)

That won't be the end of my activity, either. I will call in occasionally to the coverage in the Twin Cities provided by my Northern Alliance comrades at AM 1280 The Patriot. They'll be covering Minnesota's races live all night long, and I'll give them the national updates as they can squeeze me in. Be sure to listen to the Internet stream for some crisp and entertaining commentary.

UPDATE 4:31 PM: I've arrived and rested up for this evening. I've found out that Pipeline is a paid subscription service now -- I've used it before, but it must have been during a beta period. If you haven't subscribed to it, I doubt that watching a bunch of bloggers will entice you to do so now. Just keep checking on my live blog -- that'll keep you up to date!

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 9:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

It's Your Turn Now

We've covered the issues.

We've profiled the candidates.

We've debated the implications of a shift in power in Congress.

The time for talking has expired, and the time for action has arrived. We need to get conservatives to the polls today. Pick up the phone and ask your friends if they need a ride to the precinct. Invite your neighbors to carpool with you to the polling station. Do what you can to get as many voters to the polls today.

I'll be off the air until this afternoon, when I get a chance to set up for the CNN blogger event. I'll post my predictions at that time, as the Examiner and NRO both asked me over the last couple of days to put them to paper. In the meantime, don't worry about predictions and polls, and concentrate on helping to get out the vote.

Here in Minnesota, I encourage CQ readers to vote for the following fine candidates:

* Tim Pawlenty -- He's a governor who restored dignity to the office after the Jesse Ventura debacle, balanced the budget, and worked in a bipartisan manner to enact mostly center-right policies. What's not to like, especially when one considers the alternatives in Mike Hatch?

* Mark Kennedy -- He will likely lose to Amy Klobuchar today barring a minor miracle, but Kennedy has served his state well in his terms as Congressman for the 6th District. He's a tough-minded but fair man who has demonstrated honesty and integrity in his campaign for Senator.

* Michele Bachmann -- She's had to play Slime Survivor thanks to the outright lies coming from the Patty Wetterling campaign, and she's done it with class and a sense of humor. She will be the rallying point for Republicans in the new Congress. No one puts Bachmann in a corner, believe me, and she will make Minnesota proud.

* John Kline -- Coleen Rowley couldn't shine his shoes -- or his jackboots, as her campaign's depiction of the former Marine in a Nazi uniform suggested. Kline has represented my district well, and we're going to send him back to continue in that effort.

* Alan Fine -- Do we want to send a man who organized and campaigned for an anti-Semitic organization and then fibbed about his involvement in it during his political career? Keith Ellison ran for state office in 1998 on a platform of allowing the Nation of Islam to patrol streets in Minneapolis instead of the police department. He hasn't moderated much since then.

* For mayor of Eagan, don't forget to write in Ed Morrissey. Join the Fresca Campaign!

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 7:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Kinsley: Democratic Platform Embarrassing

Bump to top, and welcome Instapundit readers!

Michael Kinsley, no friend to the GOP, decided to take a look at the suddenly-scarce Nancy Pelosi's plan for governance if and when the Democrats take control of Congress. Kinsley expected a platform of reasonable competence, one he could promote -- apparently in the final hours of the midterm cycle. Instead, he found it to be a rehash of the worst Democratic stereoptypes, full of euphemisms for surrender and a slew of spending initiatives to break the federal budget:

What will a Democratic House of Representatives under Speaker Nancy Pelosi be like? The Republicans have been painting an unattractive portrait of Democrats roasting young children on a spit in the Capitol rotunda and whatnot. Hoping for a more encouraging view, I picked up "A New Direction for America," a 31-page manifesto released to little acclaim by House Democrats in June. By all means, read it. But do me a favor and vote first. ...

Apparently and unfortunately, President Bush is right that the Democrats have no "plan for victory." (Neither does he, of course. Nor, for that matter, do I. But I don't claim to have one. And I didn't start it.) For national security in general, the Democrats' plan is so according-to-type that you cringe with embarrassment: It's mostly about new cash benefits for veterans. Regarding Iraq specifically, the Democrats' plan has two parts. First, they want Iraqis to "assum[e] primary responsibility for securing and governing their country." Then they want "responsible redeployment" (great euphemism) of American forces.

Older readers may recognize this formula. It's Vietnamization—the Nixon-Kissinger plan for extracting us from a previous mistake. But Vietnamization was not a plan for victory. It was a plan for what was called "peace with honor" and is now known as "defeat."

No wonder Pelosi has acted like her picture belongs on a milk carton. When Kinsley says that the Democrats have played to their stereotypes, then their governing plan must truly be a disaster. One has to marvel at the concept that we can achieve national security and win the war on terror by simply bolstering payments to veterans. Don't get me wrong; I believe we have to take care of the men and women who put their lives on the line for our country. That's why the Bush administration has increased spending on veterans' benefits by 56% since 2001. However, expanding veteran programs even further has no real impact on terrorism. Does anyone imagine that Osama bin Laden murdered three thousand Americans and destroyed the World Trade Center because of the plight of the American veteran? Apparently, the Democrats do.

In fact, as Kinsley notes, the Democrats have no plans for anything other than their normal asset redistributions to special-interest groups and selected victim classes. They want small businesses to shoulder the cost of a 50% health-care tax, which they think will solve the health-care crisis. It's more likely to start a small-business crisis as firms collapse under the weight of the new costs. Since the engine of economic growth lies in small businesses and start-ups, the effect will be to start a recession and to drive people into larger corporations for their investments. Instead of building a more robust middle class, the Democrats will remove competition and escalate centralization of economic power.

Also, Kinsley also discovers that for all of the talk about fiscal discipline and responsibility in this election cycle, the Democrats did not specify a single new revenue source for all of their new programs. They rail about the profligate Republicans, in an attempt to convince fiscal conservatives to consider the Democrats as their own "new direction", and talk a lot about "pay as you go" as the principle for budgeting. However, they leave the reader with no clue as to how the Democrats will find the money for all of their giveaways and redistributions ... which means that they have some tax increases that they don't want to mention.

The Democrats offer defeat, retreat, and an economic collapse darned near complete. Even Kinsley can't put a good face on this fiasco. No wonder Nancy Pelosi has been hiding for the last week.

UPDATE: Kinsley's piece also appears in today's Washington Post.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

'Europeans So Desperately Want The Democrats To Win'

Der Spiegel reviews German coverage of the midterm elections in today's edition, and unsurprisingly, notes that the Democrats have a big rooting section -- Europe. The intelligentsia on the Continent, or at least in Germany, yearn for Democratic control of Congress:

Never underestimate the "legendary effectiveness of Karl Rove", worries the left-wing Die Tageszeitung, still shell-shocked from George W. Bush's re-election in 2004. "If (the Democrats) can't manage to win at least the House of Representatives this time, then nothing can help them." ...

What the Democrats might do with control of Congress is something on the mind of center-left daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, as well -- and the paper cautions the party to wield its power thoughtfully. Two years from now, when the Americans go to the polls again and look at what Democrats have done with their mandate, their typical refrain of "we wanted to but couldn't" will not be good enough. ...

The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung makes little effort to downplay the US Midterm elections, referring to Tuesday as "World Voting Day." Europeans so desperately want the Democrats to win -- and the image of "Bush as the enemy" has become so deeply ingrained in the European conscience -- that they are starting to believe a real shift in power is happening. Not so fast, writes the daily. "Whether this is actually the end of Republican dominance will only be seen in two years," when Democrats will have to answer for their time in power.

There's nothing wrong with our friends in Europe expressing their opinions on American politics. We often do the same thing here. However, it seems rather telling that the same people who have cocooned themselves into a crumbling nanny-state economy want the Democrats to come to power in order to have more company. It's just another reminder of the likely direction that a Democratic Congress will take, and another point of consideration for voters today.

UPDATE: Der Spiegel missed the Brussels Journal, in which Paul Belien describes to Europe what Pelosi's America will resemble -- and why Europe should oppose it:

Americans can already see what their country’s future will be if they vote for Pelosi and her band. They only need to watch Europe. That is what America will be like 20 years from now if the Liberals succeed in turning the U.S. into a European-style welfare state. The latter is the cause of all Europe’s problems. It has led to secularization, because people who are catered for from the cradle to the grave no longer need God. It has led to the immigration debacle, because Europe has attracted welfare immigrants who only come for the benefits and not to contribute to the host country’s wealth creation. It has led to the loss of the citizens’ ability to care for themselves, because they expect everything from the state.

However, the current American elections are relevant for Europe, too. If they lead to the American withdrawal from Iraq, Europe will face a widespread intifada. The withdrawal will be perceived as a defeat of the West and the Muslim “youths” in Europe’s cities will become even more arrogant. They utterly despise the Europeans, whom they perceive (not entirely without reason) to be men dressed up as ballerinas, and they hate America because it fights back. In a world ruled by men who only understand the language of power it is better to be hated than despised. If America withdraws the Islamist fanatics will despise America for it. They will take this as a sign that the West has been defeated and that the world is theirs.

In this scenario Europe has more to lose than America. That makes it all the more surprising that Europe’s politicians refuse to support America. They seem to be hoping that the Muslims, although they despise the Europeans, will leave them alone so they can carry on paying the taxes that the immigrants live off. I fear it will not turn out this way. Moreover, the funds are running dry because the welfare state hampers wealth creation.

Europe used to remember that their welfare state came from the luxury of allowing America and the Anglosphere to defend Western civilization. As Belien warns, they may have to learn that lesson again the hard way. (h/t: CQ commenter dnmore)

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Times Signals A Retreat

Adam Nagourney tries to lower expectations a bit in today's New York Times, dashing cold water on some of the more enthusiastic predictions for today's elections. He also notes that those inflated expectations may lead to a big let-down in the ranks of Democrats -- and a round of recriminations as well:

In most midterm elections, an out-of-power party picking up, say, 14 seats in the House and five seats in the Senate could call it a pretty good night.

But for Democrats in 2006, that showing would mean coming up one seat shy of taking control of both the Senate and the House. And it would probably be branded a loss — in the case of the House, a big one.

For a combination of reasons — increasingly bullish prognostications by independent handicappers, galloping optimism by Democratic leaders and bloggers, and polls that promise a Democratic blowout — expectations for the party have soared into the stratosphere. Democrats are widely expected to take the House, and by a significant margin, and perhaps the Senate as well, while capturing a majority of governorships and legislatures.

These expectations may well be overheated. Polls over the weekend suggested that the contest was tightening, and some prognosticators on Monday were scaling back their predictions, if ever so slightly. (Charlie Cook, the analyst who is one of Washington’s chief setters of expectations, said in an e-mail message on Monday that he was dropping the words “possibly more” from his House prediction of “20-35, possibly more.”)

In fact, a midterm switch of 35-40 seats would hardly be unprecedented. Such "waves" occurred in the second midterms of Eisenhower, Nixon/Ford, and Reagan. The only reason it didn't for Clinton was because he had his wave in the first midterm election in 1994.

Thus, the big expectations seemed reasonable when initially formed. However, even with the GOP having its share of problems this cycle, the numbers simply don't support it. Real Clear Politics has been tracking House races for quite a while, and identifies only 47 GOP seats as competitive, as opposed to 6 districts for the Democrats. 20 of the GOP seats lean to the GOP, which makes only 27 of them really at risk -- and the Democrats have to win more than half of them to take control of the House.

That being said, they have a good shot at doing just that. However, while that would give them the House majority, it might be an almost unworkable one, especially if the GOP retains control of the Senate. It's a prescription for gridlock, a massive kicking of the can to 2008, when the presidency is the prize. That isn't what the Democrats want, and in fact it would give them the worst of both worlds. They would have to formulate policy and go on the record with their platform, and then sit and watch it flounder for two years as conservative Democrats who win in this cycle pull the plug on tax hikes and spending sprees.

And that's if they can win a majority.

Either way, the Democrats will find themselves in a fix. If the above happens, the party will wind up making itself more vulnerable to a switchback in 2008 and handicap themselves for the presidential run. If they do not win a majority, especially in the House, the party will tear itself apart in a hail of recriminations and petty political vendettas. Democrats have had it pretty easy for the last six years, being able to sit outside of the governing process and gainsaying the GOP without formulating any specific policies of their own. It's going to get ugly from here if they cannot win substantial majorities in both chambers in today's elections.

UPDATE: Rick Moran highlights the Lucky 13 that could signal a Republican hold on power in the House.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Supreme Court To Rethink Abortion Limits

The Supreme Court will hear arguments tomorrow on the constitutionality of restricting late-term abortions, and as the New York Times reports, this will provide a moment of clarity for the Roberts court. Congress passed the measure in defiance of the court's ruling on a Nebraska state law, and the court -- with its two new members chosen for their judicial restraint -- will have to determine whether Congressional prerogative trumps emanations from penumbras:

THE arguments the Supreme Court will hear on Wednesday on the constitutionality of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act promise much more than a resumption of a familiar debate over a method of terminating a pregnancy.

In defining the permissible limits on access to abortion, only six years after declaring a similar restriction unconstitutional in a case from Nebraska, the court must go a long way toward defining its stance toward precedent, its relationship to Congress, and its view of its own role in the constitutional system. As it decides the new cases, the still-emerging Roberts court will inevitably be defining itself. ...

The administration argues that the federal law and the Nebraska ruling can coexist if the court recognizes an obligation to defer to Congress’s judgment that a health exception is unnecessary. But if the court finds otherwise, Solicitor General Paul D. Clement will argue, then the Nebraska precedent, not the federal law, should fall.

Ironically, this comes a day after the nation's voters will determine whether the Senate will allow more strict-constructionist judicial nominees to be confirmed to the nation's courts, especially the Supreme Court. The Times analyzes the changes in the court over the past six years, and acknowledges the impact that John Roberts and Samuel Alito will have on this decision, especially the latter.

This case holds heavy implications for the concept of the primacy of the people's representatives, no matter how one feels about the specific procedures. Where no text in the Constitution applies to the specifics of the case, the Court should defer to Congress on all matters of policy. That, in a nutshell, is what judicial modesty means, and one has to wonder whether Roberts and Alito will stick with that philosophy in the face of the six-year-old precedent. They will face tremendous pressure to recant in favor of stare decisis, not just from activists but from other members of the Court who supported the Nebraska ruling.

They should stand firm. American democracy has to give primacy to the people's representatives on matters of policy. The judiciary has no business dictating policy, as they have no accountability for those decisions and cannot be recalled by the voters. The Constitution should never have been transformed into a moral-relativist document in which hard text and limited power gave way to fuzzy interpretations and leaps of logic that allow judges to create themselves as benevolent despots. The Founding Fathers did not create the balanced government we have just to allow nine men and women in robes to turn themselves into the American version of the Iranian Guardian Council.

Voters should consider this today, even before the arguments get heard. If the Senate slips into Democratic control, we will see an end to nominees that believe in judicial restraint and the primacy of elected officials in determining policy. At least one Supreme Court slot will likely open in the final two years of the Bush administration, as well as a number of appellate and district court openings. The results from today's elections will determine what kind of judges will fill those slots. Choose wisely.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Free Trade The First Casualty Of A Democratic Win

The Times of London shows tremendous interest in the American midterm elections in its edition today, with a number of articles analyzing the potential effects of the midterms. One area that Bronwen Maddox expects to feel a big impact is free trade. Maddox writes that a Republican loss of Congress will spell the end to free-trade agreements with Europe and the world:

IF THE Democrats win back the House of Representatives today, that is the end of the enthusiasm in the US for free-trade deals — to its own cost, to that of developing countries and, most certainly, to Europe. ...

The first casualty would be President Bush’s “fast-track” negotiating power, which gives him congressional authorisation to conclude trade deals. It runs out next summer and a Democratic House would almost certainly not renew it.

With that goes any chance of the US helping to revive the Doha round of world trade talks, although they may be dead anyway. Those carried the hope that the US might wean itself off farm subsidies — and force Europe to do the same.

Maddox notes that free-trade policies have lost some of their momentum, but that doesn't take into account the economic expansion and the near-full employment in the US. Protectionist sentiment abounded during the short recession and the slow start to the recovery as demagogues from both sides of the aisle railed about "out-sourcing" as the new evil afflicting Americans. However, the term has dropped out of the political lexicon during these midterms as employment concerns have vanished.

The rest of Maddox's analysis seems just as facile; he talks about the border fence as a protectionist impulse, a rather clueless assertion, but his larger point bears consideration. The Republicans and the Bush administration has pushed for free trade agreements since the beginning of Bush's tenure. In fact, Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law, but only because the GOP-controlled Congress supported it. Democrats have opposed these agreements, spurred on by unions towards protectionist policies.

The last three years show that America can profit through globalization. We have sustained tremendous growth and cut unemployment to near-historic lows while engaging other nations in free trade, allowing our exports to enter new markets and extending American economics in the global market. We have been able to outperform the EU, hampered by protectionist regulations. A loss by the GOP will almost certainly end that profitable and engaging trade policy in favor of our own protectionism, which will damage our exports and could start a recession abroad as well as in the US.

We have not heard much about free trade in this election, but it has a tremendous impact on the economic health of the nation and the world. Voters need to consider whether we should throw out what works in favor of a return to Smoot-Hawley economics.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 4:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 6, 2006

A Look Inside That Pew Poll (Updated!)

Bump -- Welcome Rush Limbaugh listeners! Please see update below.

Pew Research has published its crosstabs for the poll that shows the Republicans tightening up the race, which I linked last night. The internals deliver even more bad news to the Democrats, as significant leads in several demographic categories have been cut drastically or wiped out entirely.

The last Pew Research poll was taken in early October. In a month, the Democrats have lost non-minorities altogether. The gap among all whites went from +5 Democrats to +5 GOP, a ten-point swing. White females had supported Democrats by a 15-point margin and a majority (55-40), but now give the GOP a 2-point lead. The Democrats have also lost the middle class, a big problem in this election.

Households earning between $50K-$75K and $30K-$50K have both slipped to the GOP. The former switched from a 14-point margin for the Democrats to an eight-point Republican lead, while the latter has had an even more dramatic shift. Those earners had favored Democrats by 22 points, but now go Republican by 3. The Democrats even lost the tie they had with earners above $75K, and now trail there by seven. They did extend their margin for earners below $30K from 25 points to 30.

In the religious demographics, where the Democrats have tried mightily to find some traction, they also have problems. They held a thin lead (5 points) among all Protestants, but now trail by 9. Their ten-point lead among white mainline Protestants has dissipated into a tie. They lead among all Catholic, having lost three points off of an eight-point lead, but non-Hispanic Catholics now favor the GOP by 5 points, a ten-point shift.

Even in areas where Democrats maintained their leads, they have cause for some nail-biting. They lost part of their margin among self-described moderates, going from a whopping 44 points to 27. They had led in all regions of the country a month ago, but now have lost the South altogether in a 16-point shift, and a 26-point gap in the Northeast has narrowed to nine points -- a remarkable comeback for Republicans in a liberal stronghold. The GOP also cut the Democratic lead among urban voters from 32 points to 10.

The theme of this poll is the attack on Democratic gains in this election cycle. The GOP has rolled back the Democratic intrusion onto Republican demographics, which leaves the field looking similar to 2004 and 2002. This race may hold some very unpleasant surprises for the Democrats in the House races if these numbers hold up or continue to erode over the next 40 hours.

UPDATE: I started getting e-mails from CQ readers telling me that Rush Limbaugh featured this blog post on the air today, and that Tony Snow had mentioned it during Rush's interview as well. Read the transcript here:

RUSH: Well, you look like you are, and that's infectious in its own way for audience people who watch you and have a chance to hear what you're saying. Let's talk about these polls tightening.

SNOW: Yeah.

RUSH: I have been suspicious of polls for a long time in the sense that I believe news organizations use them to make news that reflects their editorial pages, and the same with the editorial opinion of broadcast network people, and like the Pew poll internals show massive shifts in 30 days of public opinion. One of the things in the Pew poll is that the Democrats have lost all white voters. They've lost women and they've lost --

SNOW: They've lost men. They've lost women. Absolutely right, and I'm glad you pointed that out. Captain Ed Morrissey was one of the guys -- I don't know if you saw that this morning, but he was going through them. There have been really big shifts going on, and I think it's kind of the natural by-product that people really taking a look at what Democrats are doing, which is literally running around and heckling the president rather than trying to think seriously about how to deal with Osama bin Laden or a global war on terror. They're certainly not saying anything constructive about the economy -- and when you come to an election, when the very big issue is Iraq and the other side really doesn't have anything to say about it.

I'm thrilled for the notice, and I certainly thank Tony Snow and Rush Limbaugh for picking up the story. I think this tells volumes about the creakiness of the Democratic "wave" tomorrow. Hugh Hewitt has more from Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman on the same subject. And Newsbeat1 has more from Rush on this post.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 7:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Truth Laid Bear Election Tracker Now On Line

Experienced blog-readers know that NZ Bear at the Truth Laid Bear always manages to develop state of the art blogging tools for the TTLB community. He's done it again with the midterm elections, designing a page that will allow election observers to keep track of the national races. It looks excellent, and while I'm working at the CNN event tomorrow evening, I'm going to keep it open in a tab for quick reference. Check it out and keep the link handy.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 7:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Still Time Left To Make The Right Calls

We've less than thirteen hours before the polls open, and we still need plenty of volunteers to help get out the vote. For instance, in my write-in campaign to become the Mayor of Eagan, we have people at campaign headquarters right now, helping to spread the message. My son has pledged to make a phone call after he finishes working out of the licks for the expert level of Guitar Hero, which I'm assuming means within the next half hour. I just got done walking around my local gas station, and I'm encouraged by the response there as well. The pump accepted my credit card, and the attendant even said hello over the loudspeaker. Momentum is building, and I think I'll even reach that heretofore unexpected level of twenty write-in votes!

However, we need more of an effort for the rest of the Republicans. After this weekend, CQ readers have made over 4600 phone calls for the Get On The Phone campaign, inviting fellow Republicans in key districts to make it to the polls tomorrow. This new and innovative campaign technique caught the eye of CNN in today's Situation Room, and Abbi Tatton featured CQ in her report:

There's still time to get more people to the polls. If you haven't signed up for calls yet, it's easy. Follow the link and register, and you will get 30 people to call. That's it -- just 30 calls, something that can be finished in 30 minutes. If all that separates us from Republican management of Congress is those 30 minutes, isn't that a bargain? Heck, that's a better bargain than my write-in campaign and a Fresca -- and that's saying something!

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Troops Speak Out Against Withdrawal

We have heard a lot from the Democrats in this election season about supporting the troops by withdrawing them from Iraq. Terms like "phased redeployment" and "event horizon" have been thrown around by critics of the war. However, the people that will have to execute those maneuvers do not have much enthusiasm for them, the Washington Post reports:

For the U.S. troops fighting in Iraq, the war is alternately violent and hopeful, sometimes very hot and sometimes very cold. It is dusty and muddy, calm and chaotic, deafeningly loud and eerily quiet.

The one thing the war is not, however, is finished, dozens of soldiers across the country said in interviews. And leaving Iraq now would have devastating consequences, they said.

With a potentially historic U.S. midterm election on Tuesday and the war in Iraq a major issue at the polls, many soldiers said the United States should not abandon its effort here. Such a move, enlisted soldiers and officers said, would set Iraq on a path to civil war, give new life to the insurgency and create the possibility of a failed state after nearly four years of fighting to implant democracy.

"Take us out of that vacuum -- and it's on the edge now -- and boom, it would become a free-for-all," said Lt. Col. Mark Suich, who commands the 1st Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment just south of Baghdad. "It would be a raw contention for power. That would be the bloodiest piece of this war."

The soldiers declined to discuss the political jousting back home, but they expressed support for the Bush administration's approach to the war, which they described as sticking with a tumultuous situation to give Iraq a chance to stand on its own.

Not only do they see "phased redeployment" as a potential disaster, they see an improvement in the situation in Iraq. One New Jersey officer recently returned to Iraq for the first time since 2003 and tells the Post that Iraq had made real progress. A self-proclaimed liberal, he said, "Pulling out now would be as bad or worse than going forward with no changes," and predicted an end to democratic self-government almost immediately.

Worse still, the troops have worked hard to gain the trust of Iraqi civilians for over three years. They have created a network of relationships and intelligence links in the general population and alliances with tribal leaders. It took a long time for Iraqis to forget the betrayal of 1991, when the US failed to support a rebellion against Saddam Hussein after failing to march on Baghdad during the first Gulf War. A "phased redeployment" would abandon those same people all over again to the terrorists within and outside of Iraq.

None of them have any illusions that Iraq will suddenly and miraculously find peace. The soldiers and Marines on the ground believe it will take a long time and much hard work to bring a democratic Iraq to full viablity, at least completely. They tell the Post that the Kurdish region is only about four or five months away from full autonomy and self-sufficiency in terms of security (economically, they're farther ahead than that). Baghdad will be the toughest nut to crack, they all acknowledge, and that might take years of effort. However, all of them believe in the mission and see that the alternative consigns the Iraqis to tyranny and terrorism for decades or more.

The mission has had its failures, but it has had tremendous successes as well. If the US turns its back on the Iraqis now, Somalia will pale into insignificance in comparison to the disaster, both militarily and strategically, we will have brought upon ourselves. Native populations will never -- never -- trust us to stand by and protect them after risking everything to assist us. Tyrants and terrorists will laugh at our threats, knowing they can outlast us, especially if they can create enough propaganda to distract American voters.

The soldiers and Marines understand that victory cannot be replaced by "phased redeployment". If the tactics need changing or adjustment, then bring in better ideas -- but we cannot allow retreat and capitulation become the only other option for Iraq.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Two Reminders Of Minnesota's Choices

Minnesotans go to the polls tomorrow with some tough decisions to make, and two articles should remind them of the stakes. Joel Mowbray writes about MN-05 Congressional candidate Keith Ellison in his Front Page article, "CAIR's Congressman":

Barring a cataclysmic event, Minnesotans tomorrow will elect the first-ever Muslim to the U.S. Congress, and odds are the media serenade won’t be far behind.

What remains to be seen, though, is how many journalists will be willing to strike a discordant note by questioning Keith Ellison on his Nation of Islam past or his open embrace of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group founded by two self-identified supporters of Islamic terrorism.

Defenders of the Democratic frontrunner thus far have dodged most legitimate questions, instead choosing to smear critics as Islamophobic bigots. The tactic has worked, enabling Ellison to win comfortably the September 12 Democratic primary—and soon the general election.

But no amount of obfuscation or misdirection changes some simple facts: Ellis had a much deeper involvement with the Nation of Islam than he’s acknowledged, and he has forged an extremely close alliance with CAIR. The organization’s officials, in fact, have helped raise over $50,000 for Ellison. These are obviously legitimate—and necessary—questions, but few in the mainstream media have the stomach to go against the tide. And with Ellison becoming the first-ever Muslim Congressman, the media “tide” isn’t hard to predict.

Read all of Mowbray's reporting on the subject, which follows Scott Johnson's valiant efforts to show the media how to do their jobs. Speaking of Scott, he has written a lengthy analysis at Power Line showing that Mike Hatch has acted unethically in his attempts to bully a judge into ruling for him through ex parte conversations:

Persuasive evidence establishes that Hatch has committed serious violations of the rules of professional conduct governing lawyers -- and then lied to cover them up. The violations involve more than mere technical mistakes. The violations are of the sort that properly can lead to an attorney being severely disciplined if not disbarred from the practice of law. ...

Hatch's public statements that only one call had occurred, that it had been one minute in length (counting the transfer from the clerk’s office), and that it was not of the substance or duration Judge Leary had said were deliberately misleading. It is not a crime to lie to the press, but it is improper under the Minnesota Rules of Professional Conduct for a lawyer to "engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation" (Rule 8.4(c)). Another rule flatly states that a lawyer representing "shall not knowingly make a false statement of material fact or law to a third person." (Rule 4.1(a)).

Moreover, it is also professional misconduct knowingly to file a false, sworn affidavit. Hatch’s affidavit, made under penalty of perjury, is cagier than his public statements, but still deceitful: "I talked to Judge Leary. The call lasted one minute." This was, at best, a quarter-truth. In context, it appears to have been deliberately false and calculated to mislead.

Once again, Scott does the reporting that our local media should be doing themselves, and gives Minnesota voters the information they need to cast an educated vote in tomorrow's election. Be sure to read all about the DFL's chosen candidate for Governor at Power Line.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Will The Exit Polls Leak?

The networks insist that they will not release exit polling data until the polls actually close in this election, the Washington Times reports. They recall only too well the disaster that ensued when incomplete -- and as it turned out, inaccurate -- exit polling hit the wires, creating an expectation of a John Kerry landslide that never materialized. That promise will not keep the networks from playing a bit of partisan hardball with their analysts, however (h/t: Newsbeat1):

The 2006 elections have garnered more broadcast coverage than the last midterm elections, much of it billing them as bringing political change, and although the networks have vowed that they will not make any premature calls tomorrow night, virtuous reserve may not stem partisan flirtations. ...

Election-night coverage will feature big names and multiple components. ABC, NBC and CBS will offer hourly updates and one-hour specials at 10 p.m.

ABC will use dozen correspondents, a special edition of "Nightline," continual coverage online and even commentary from former Sen. Fred Thompson, a Tennessee Republican and a senior analyst on ABC Radio. NBC will bring back former anchor Tom Brokaw to the news desk alongside Brian Williams and Tim Russert. CBS will hand the election night reins to newly minted anchor Katie Couric.

The cable networks are frantic. After five prime-time hours of "multiplatform" results delivered by 40 correspondents, CNN's coverage will continue until 5 a.m. when the network airs "complete postgame election results." MSNBC has predicted that the election "could lead to a seismic shift in political power" and will hold forth on the idea from 6 p.m. through 6 a.m. Wednesday. The Fox News Channel begins coverage at 7 p.m. with Brit Hume, Fred Barnes and others on analysis, and Chris Wallace to cover those tricky exit polls.

The real question is whether journalists will keep early exit polling to themselves. Although the networks have pledged not to report on exit polls before voting ends in the affected states, the results will start getting shared around 5 pm ET with pool reporters for "background":

Well, I'll tell you a brief description of what we will be doing with the networks and the Associated Press. We're going to put in place systems in which no one, even at the networks, can view any of this data before 5 p.m. on Election Day. This will be very similar to procedures used in England and Mexico and other places to strictly control the dissemination of data, and the number of people who get to look at it before 5 o'clock. We'll have one or two rooms in which people will,in essence, be in a bubble, quarantined. They'll have to give up their cell phones, their pagers, any internet activity, anything of that sort and stay in that room until 5 o' clock in order to view the data so we know there is no possibility of communication with the outside world.

Journalists will be hermetically sealed, so to speak, until 5 pm -- but after that, they will be free to report on the live results from exit polling. That would be 2 pm on the West Coast, and for most of the nation, people will still be at the office waiting to cast their ballots that evening. We can expect to see Drudge Report headlines and wire service analyses shortly afterwards, and the cat will be out of the bag ... even if it's the wrong cat, as in 2004.

I think we can expect to see the networks casting aside their vows of obedience by 6 pm ET, with veiled allusions to the exit polling as it hits the wires. It will be up to voters to recall the abysmal data that first came out of the exit polls in 2004 and give them the credence they deserve.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Hamas Folds In The Face Of Technocracy

The Palestinian factions at dagger point have reached an accord, the Jerusalem Post reports, that will replace the current government. Ismail Haniyeh has apparently agreed to step down as Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, although no one knows who will replace him:

Hamas and Fatah have reached an agreement on the establishment of a unity government in the Palestinian Authority, senior Palestinian sources told the Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported late Sunday night.

According to Army Radio, the sources said that current PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh will not head the unity government, but have not yet revealed who will. Haniyeh and PA President Mahmoud Abbas are expected to meet in the next few days.

Will this actually happen? It's been rumored for weeks now. Abbas got tired of waiting a couple of weeks back and started threatening to form a technocracy of appointed apolitical experts with or without Hamas, a threat he leveled again recently.

If the Palestinians want to repair the damage done to their standing, they'd better hope this report is true. Hamas leadership has left them broke and under siege. The free-for-all in the territories has reduced them to little more than gang turf. They have proven that Hamas cannot govern in a representative government, but only know how to rule by the bullet.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

JoePa, Get Better

I know it's election season and everyone wants to concentrate on the political stories, but I want to offer my best wishes for a speedy return to the sidelines for Joe Paterno, the legendary head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions. JoePa broke his leg on a freak play where his own played collided with him, and he may need surgery:

The 79-year-old Penn State coach broke his left leg and damaged a knee ligament when two players ran into him during the Nittany Lions' loss to Wisconsin, and team officials said Sunday that surgery was being considered.

Paterno's son and quarterbacks coach, Jay, said he spoke with his father Sunday and there was "no thought whatsoever of not coming back this year. ... It's not even in the discussion. There's nothing more to read into this in terms of his career."

Paterno fractured the top of his tibia, or shin bone, on Saturday, according to team doctor Wayne Sebastianelli. The injury typically heals on its own with rehabilitation, though doctors and team officials were considering whether surgery would help the leg heal faster, said Guido D'Elia, director of communications for football.

CQ readers know I live and die with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, but every football fan with a heart has a place for JoePa in it. Paterno has led a classy program for decades, concentrating on both winning and helping his student athletes to become winners in life as well. He has provided the model for college athletic leadership, and his legacy has long since been secured.

Get better, Coach. We want to see you pacing the sidelines as soon as possible.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 4:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 5, 2006

Rebounding Across The Polls

The Washington Post poll wasn't the only one to pick up on a shift in momentum, as it turns out. Gaius Arbo at Blue Crab Boulevard points readers to the latest from Pew Research, which now shows the generic Congressional ballot within the margin of error:

A nationwide Pew Research Center survey finds voting intentions shifting in the direction of Republican congressional candidates in the final days of the 2006 midterm campaign. The new survey finds a growing percentage of likely voters saying they will vote for GOP candidates. However, the Democrats still hold a 48% to 40% lead among registered voters, and a modest lead of 47%-43% among likely voters.

The narrowing of the Democratic lead raises questions about whether the party will win a large enough share of the popular vote to recapture control of the House of Representatives. The relationship between a party's share of the popular vote and the number of seats it wins is less certain than it once was, in large part because of the increasing prevalence of safe seat redistricting. As a result, forecasting seat gains from national surveys has become more difficult. ...

Republican gains in the new poll reflect a number of late-breaking trends. First, Republicans have become more engaged and enthused in the election than they had been in September and October. While Democrats continue to express greater enthusiasm about voting than do Republicans, as many Republican voters (64%) as Democratic voters (62%) now say they are giving quite a lot of thought to the election. About a month ago, Democratic voters were considerably more likely than GOP voters to say they were giving a lot of thought to the election (by 59%-50%). As a result, Republicans now register a greater likelihood of voting than do Democrats, as is typical in mid-term elections.

Pew has good news for the GOP across the board. It shows that the Republicans have picked up support not just from their own base, but also from independents. Democrats still lead among unaffiliated voters, but the gap has narrowed from 18 points to 11. Over the last six weeks, Democrats have lost six points off of the generic ballot, some of which went to the GOP and some of which went into the Undecided column. And Pew says that Republicans have an edge among the latter group as well.

The elections seem to have turned around somewhat. It should be an interesting 48 hours.

UPDATE: Gallup also detects a momentum shift, and like Pew, they have settled on John Kerry's remarks as the likely culprit (via AJ Strata):

President Bush's last-ditch push for votes and Sen. John Kerry's comments that seemed to denigrate the education level of U.S. forces in Iraq have helped energize GOP voters. A Democratic advantage of 23 percentage points a month ago and 13 points two weeks ago is now down to 7.

A Pew Research Center survey released Sunday also showed that an 11-point edge for Democrats on the congressional ballot two weeks ago had narrowed to 4 points among likely voters. "It's gone from a slam-dunk for Democrats to take the House to a pretty good chance," says Andy Kohut, director of the center.

Kerry. The gift that keeps on giving.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 7:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Making The Right Calls

I just finished making the calls for the Get On The Phone effort by the Republican Party. When my sister came into town this weekend, I had to juggle the schedule around -- I originally planned to make my calls on Saturday, but that didn't work out.

Now, I have made my living in call centers for almost twenty years, but making these calls makes me a little more nervous than normal. That's been true every time I've volunteered, but every time I've always been glad I did. I get to talk with nice people and let them know we're counting on them, and they almost always react positively.

Tonight was no exception. The GOP assigned me a district in Missouri, where Jim Talent is fighting off a challenge from state auditor Claire McCaskill. All that I needed to do was to remind people that the election was on Tuesday, and the hours of operation for the polls. If no one was home, I left a message, and if the phone number was incorrect, I just talked to whomever answered.

The entire exercise took about 30 minutes, and then I was back visiting with my sister; right now, we're watching Thank You For Smoking and having dinner. It hardly puts a dent into your schedule at all, and it gives you the satisfaction of knowing you have contributed to the effort to keep Congress under Republican management. Click here to sign up for your own list to call.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

30 Minutes To Victory!

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Note: This post will ride near the top all weekend long.

It's come down to the ground game. If Republicans want to ensure that the GOP continues to control Congress after the midterms, we need to get organized in the final hours.

The Republican Party has a great way for the blogging community to get involved and to help get voters to the polls. We need people to man the phones and encourage voters to cast their ballots, and now readers can work from home to do it. Simply click here or on the logo above to volunteer, and the Republican Party will assign you a short list of people to call. It shouldn't cost you any more than 30 minutes to complete your calls, and you can use your free cell phone minutes on the weekend, so it won't cost you any money at all.

Let me give you the short, blog-version of the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V. If November 8th arrives and we have lost control of the House or Senate, or both, and you didn't spend that 30 minutes doing your best to keep Republicans in office, how will you feel? Will it be more important to secure the majorities, or to watch the Vikings blow another game on television?

In the end, elections do not get won or lost by stump speeches alone -- they hinge on broad-based efforts to extend those personal invitations to vote. Get your list and start extending your invitations. This is the time to be counted.

Note: I'd still suggest volunteering at your local GOP precinct office apart from this. It's fun to work with a group of enthusiastic volunteers in the hours before an election.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Vanity Unfair: A Response To A Misleading Press Release

National Review Online has a symposium of people quoted in a press release by Vanity Fair that purported to show neoconservative abandonment of the Iraq war. VF had agreed not to release the artice before the midterm elections, but in a bit of dishonesty, repackaged quotes out of context in order to build interest in the article. Now, the sources of those mangled quotes strike back at VF.

David Frum:

There has been a lot of talk this season about deceptive campaign ads, but the most dishonest document I have seen is this press release from Vanity Fair, highlighted on the Drudge Report . Headlined “Now They Tell Us,” it purports to offer an “exclusive” access to “remorseful” former supporters of the Iraq war who will now “play the blame game” with “shocking frankness.” ... My most fundamental views on the war in Iraq remain as they were in 2003: The war was right, victory is essential, and defeat would be calamitous.

And that to my knowledge is the view of everybody quoted in the release and the piece: Adelman, Cohen, Ledeen, Perle, Pletka, Rubin, and all the others.

Michael Ledeen (a very good friend of CQ):

So it is totally misleading for Vanity Fair to suggest that I have had second thoughts about our Iraq policy. But then one shouldn’t be surprised. No one ever bothered to check any of the lies in the first screed, and obviously no fact-checker was involved in the latest “promotion.” I actually wrote to David Rose, the author of the article-to-come, a person for whom I have considerable respect. He confirmed that words attributed to me in the promo had been taken out of context.

Richard Perle:

Vanity Fair has rushed to publish a few sound bites from a lengthy discussion with David Rose. Concerned that anything I might say could be used to influence the public debate on Iraq just prior to Tuesday’s election, I had been promised that my remarks would not be published before the election.

I should have known better than to trust the editors at Vanity Fair who lied to me and to others who spoke with Mr. Rose. Moreover, in condensing and characterizing my views for their own partisan political purposes, they have distorted my opinion about the situation in Iraq and what I believe to be in the best interest of our country.

I believe it would be a catastrophic mistake to leave Iraq, as some are demanding, before the Iraqis are able to defend their elected government. As I told Mr. Rose, the terrorist threat to our country, which is real, would be made much worse if we were to make an ignominious withdrawal from Iraq.

Michael Rubin:

Vanity Fair’s agenda was a pre-election hit job, and I guess some of us quoted are at fault for believing too much in integrity. What the article seeks to do is push square pegs into round holes. Readers will see that the content of the piece does not match the sensational headlines. ...

I absolutely stand by what I said. Too many people in Washington treat foreign policy as a game. Many Washington-types who speak about Iraq care not about the U.S. servicemen or about the Iraqis, but rather focus on U.S. electoral politics. I am a Republican, but whether the Republicans or Democrats are in power, Washington’s word must mean something. Leadership is about responsibility, not just politics. We cannot go around the world betraying our allies — in this case Iraqis who believed in us or allied with us — just because of short-term political expediency.

The article has much more, especially in conveying a sense of betrayal and abandonment of ethics at Vanity Fair. All of them had been told that their interviews would not be published until January, and more than one of them said they raised their concerns about their words being taken out of context before agreeing to the interview. Vanity Fair, it seems, has much more interest in partisan politics than in honest analysis and journalism -- which is hardly surprising, given the track record to which Michael Ledeen alludes.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 10:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

WaPo Ombud: We Were Unfair To George Allen

The Washington Post ombud, Deborah Howell, addresses reader complaints that their coverage of the George Allen campaign has been relentlessly negative. Her verdict -- they're right:

Allen supporters think he can't catch a break; I sympathize. The macaca coverage went on too long, and a profile of Allen was relentlessly negative without balancing coverage of what made him a popular governor and senator. But it must be remembered that Allen shot himself in both feet with the "macaca" remark and his clumsy handling of the revelation of his Jewish heritage. Then he declined to talk to The Post for the profile. The profiles of both Webb and Allen were critical, but Webb's was leavened by his quotes.

It was bothersome that so much weight was given to "Fifth Quarter," the 2000 family memoir by Allen's sister, Jennifer. The book described family problems and portrayed Allen as a teenage bully. She called it a "novelization of the past," and Post reporters were unsuccessful in corroborating her account. Except for one brief remark, neither Jennifer Allen nor her brothers would comment on it.

Even in acknowledging the bias, Howell misses the point. Their coverage of the "macaca" incident went on far too long, and their editorial positions on the race seem to point to a bias in that might explain it. The "Fifth Quarter" exercise was completely lacking in editorial judgment. The Post reported this as if it were a contemporary allegation of marital abuse rather than an unsubstantiated account of supposed meanness by a teen-age Allen, which has absolutely no bearing on Allen's qualifications for political office. It's not bothersome that "so much weight" was given the novel, but that the Post took it seriously at all, to the point of trying to corroborate stories about Allen's temperament as a teenager.

Isn't anyone at the Post even slightly embarrassed by that?

The Post has consistently ignored Allen's record as Governor and Senator. Allen has repeatedly won statewide elections in Virginia, but the Post has never given any indication why that might be. Instead, it has done its best to mix water and dirt as ammunition in the nation's slimiest race. Howell might want to address that in her next ombud column, and give us an explanation of the editorial judgment that allowed it.

Howell also addresses their coverage of Michael Steele. She admits that their coverage of Benjamin Cardin has been "relentlessly positive". Howell also says that the Post underplayed the story about the Prince George's County endorsements for Steele, a significant political story, by giving it a one-column space in the Metro section. All of this is true, but Howell still doesn't connect the dots. We know all of these stories got mangled by the Post. Howell needs to tell us why all of these editorial decisions and slights affected one party in this race, and she needs to do so honestly.

Until then, the Post's political coverage will remain suspect, and their overall credibility diminished. (via Extreme Mortman)

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 10:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Maryland Democrats Watch African-American Voters Defect

Maryland Democrats have big problems in this election. The choice to back Benjamin Cardin over Kweisi Mfume has had serious consequences on their election prospects, and they may well lose a Senate seat to the GOP because of it. Now it also looks like the Democrats may have thrown away their chance to grab the governorship as black leaders endorsed incumbent Republican Robert Ehrlich over Martin O'Malley:

Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. received the endorsement yesterday of a half-dozen black ministers who could sway Democratic voters in the battlegrounds of Prince George's County and Baltimore to cross party lines in the election Tuesday.

Mr. Ehrlich, a Republican, stood on a street corner in South Baltimore surrounded by the ministers and touted his record of reaching out to minorities and implementing policies for urban voters, including programs for drug treatment instead of prison time.

"This is an agenda for people regardless of color," he said. "This is white and black and Hispanic and Republican and Democratic. We are changing Maryland for the better."

Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, the Democratic nominee for governor, said yesterday during his final campaign run that he has stopped trying to win over undecided voters as he focused on rallying party faithful to get to the polls.

"The conversation is over," he said. "People have pretty much decided. Right now, it is just a matter of mobilizing. There is a certain number of people who have decided that, on balance, I would be a better governor for the next four years, and those are the people that we are communicating to now."

When Mfume got passed over by Democratic leadership in favor of Cardin, partly because of some personal pecadilloes, he warned that the move would untether black support from the Democrats in Maryland. Apparently the power brokers in the party assumed that their huge margin in party registrations in the state (56%-25%) would shield them from any adverse impact, and took their most loyal demographic for granted in the upcoming midterm elections. After all, they must have reasoned, the GOP got less than 10% of the African-American vote in the last presidential election -- what risk could there be?

Now they have found out. The Republicans nominated Michael Steele, Maryland's Lt. Governor and a dynamic presence on the stump, to run for Paul Sarbanes' open Senate seat. His connections to the black community has garnered him important endorsements that the Democrats assumed they would retain, including the same ministers that just endorsed Ehrlich. Steele's entree has allowed his executive partner to gain the same endorsements in the heart of Baltimore, the power base for Maryland Democrats, among their most loyal voters -- up to now.

Maryland's Democrats badly miscalculated. O'Malley has lost his lead in the race, according to Rasmussen, and now Ehrlich has walked away with key endorsements in O'Malley's backyard. The Democrats may have outsmarted themselves and torpedoed the national party's plans for power as well.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 9:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Chafee Takes The Lead

I know, I know, he's not my favorite Senator by a long shot -- but Lincoln Chafee looks like he may hold onto a Senate seat most analysts thought was lost weeks ago. Ironically, in a period in which Republicans appear to have gotten their second wind, Chafee's own resurgence can be attributed to his meager GOP ties:

If Sen. Lincoln Chafee wins re-election in Rhode Island on Tuesday - and a new McClatchy Newspapers-MSNBC poll indicates he might - it will be because he is one of the most rebellious Republicans in Congress.

Although Chafee had been trailing Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in previous polls, the latest McClatchy poll showed him with 46 percent support, compared to 45 percent for Whitehouse. About 9 percent of voters remained undecided.

While Chafee's slim lead was within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, it was the first indication in weeks that he might survive the anti-Bush mood in his state. The poll of 625 Rhode Island residents was conducted Oct. 31 to Nov. 2.

Well, Chafee won the primary, so I'm supporting him now, and this really is good news. Chafee may vote with the Democrats more than some Democrats, but he caucuses with the Republicans. The national party has not wavered in its support for the incumbent despite his often-infuriating actions in the Senate. If he can hold off Sheldon Whitehouse, it will remove one more prop for the Democratic takeover of Congress.

If Chafee wins, we will not have to worry about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. That's good enough for me.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 9:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

WaPo Spins Republican Resurgence

The Washington Post attempts to spin its election coverage this morning by burying the big story of Republican resurgence in the polls below four paragraphs of declaring Democrats the winners at the midterms. In fact, their own polling shows voters returning to the GOP even on the generic Congressional ballot in the final days of the midterm election cycle:

Two days before a bitterly fought midterm election, Democrats have moved into position to recapture the House and have laid siege to the Senate, setting the stage for a dramatic recasting of the power structure in Washington for President Bush's final two years in office, according to a Washington Post analysis of competitive races across the country.

In the battle for the House, Democrats appear almost certain to pick up more than the 15 seats needed to regain the majority. Republicans virtually concede 10 seats, and a split of the 30 tossup races would add an additional 15 to the Democratic column.

The Senate poses a tougher challenge for Democrats, who need to gain six seats to take control of that chamber. A three-seat gain is almost assured, but they would have to find the other three seats from four states considered to have tossup races -- Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and Montana.

In governors' races, Democrats are likely to emerge with the majority for the first time in 12 years. Five states are almost certain to switch parties, including the key battlegrounds of New York, Massachusetts and Ohio. Four races are too close to call, but only one of those seats -- in Wisconsin -- is held by a Democrat.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows some narrowing in the Democratic advantage in House races. The survey gives the Democrats a six-percentage-point lead nationally among likely voters asked which party they prefer for Congress. It was 14 points two weeks ago, but this remains a larger advantage than they have had in recent midterm elections.

This matches the momentum we have seen in the various Senate races around the country. After fading back significantly most of the election cycle, Republicans have surged in the final days to put most races in a dead heat. MS-NBC now also shows the GOP retaining control of the Senate, and perhaps losing as few as two seats -- certainly a shift in perception over the last two months:

Just days from the midterm elections, the final round of MSNBC/McClatchy polls shows a tightening race to the finish in the battle for control of the U.S. Senate. Democrats are leading in several races that could result in party pickups, but Republicans have narrowed the gap in other close races, according to Mason-Dixon polls in 12 states.

If this trend keeps up for the Senate seats, then it stands to reason that it will impact House seats as well. Of course, one could question whether we're seeing momentum -- or an attempt by pollsters to provide better accuracy in the final snapshots before the actual election. In either case, the news looks much better than predicted for the GOP -- and a strong get-out-the-vote effort might save both majorities.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 8:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Swingin' Saddam

The Iraqi tribunal has convicted Saddam Hussein and two of his co-defendants for crimes against humanity in the 1982 Dujail massacre, and have sentenced all three to death by hanging. Saddam refused to stand and face the court when the verdict was read, and had to be hauled to his feet by bailiffs:

As he, his half brother and another senior official in his regime were convicted and sentenced to death by the Iraqi High Tribunal, Saddam yelled out, "Long live the people and death to their enemies. Long live the glorious nation, and death to its enemies!" Later, his lawyer said the former dictator had called on Iraqis to reject sectarian violence and refrain from revenge against U.S. forces. ...

Saddam and his seven co-defendants were on trial for a wave of revenge killings carried out in the city of Dujail following a 1982 assassination attempt on the former dictator. Al-Maliki's Islamic Dawa party, then an underground opposition, has claimed responsibility for organizing the attempt on Saddam's life.

In the streets of Dujail, a Tigris River city of 84,000, people celebrated and burned pictures of their former tormentor as the verdict was read.

Saddam may not die by the rope soon. He has an automatic appeal to a nine-judge panel, which can take all the time it wants to review the case, and in the meantime Saddam will stand trial for the massacres of the Kurds during his reign. The appellate panel may choose to allow that entire trial before giving its verdict on the appeal, as Iraq would have to execute Saddam within 30 days of their decision if they uphold the verdict. The Kurds might want Saddam alive for the entirety of this next trial, although security concerns might convince them otherwise.

The normal silliness continued in the courtroom for the verdict. Ramsey Clark, who never met a dictator he didn't like, got thrown out of the court before the verdict was read. He filed a brief with the court that called the trial a travesty. The Iraqi judges, who tend to think of Saddam's reign as the real travesty, issued the Amityville Horror order in response to the memorandum: Get Out.

Normally I oppose the death penalty, but in cases of crimes against humanity by former tyrants, I think I have to make an exception. The Iraqi people need definitive closure on their torment and suffering, and they have chosen this path to do it. I have no complaint with the same sentence that was handed out to people like Hermann Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, General Jodl, and the rest of the Nazis being given to Saddam Hussein. Goering, of course, committed suicide just prior to his scheduled hanging, and I wouldn't be surprised if Saddam didn't try it as well. It's the appropriate exit for cowardly, brutal tyrants when their victims finally get a measure of justice.

It's worth reflecting that Saddam would not ever have faced justice at all had we not acted to remove him from power. He and his sons would still run Iraq as their personal abbatoir, and the sons would have been worse than Saddam given the opportunity to run the nation. Kurds and Shi'ites would still wind up in mass graves and face the rape rooms at hospitals and police stations; they would still have their tongues cut out for speaking out against tyranny and their hands chopped off for any perceived rebelliousness. Instead, Uday and Qusay have shuffled off this mortal coil for significantly warmer climes than the Iraqi desert, and Saddam will stretch a rope after having been tried in a much fairer court than Iraqis ever experienced under his rule.

That's justice, and it was born in the rumble of American troops crossing the desert towards Baghdad.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 8:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack


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