Sniffing the wind
Looks like we’re gonna tip the political bathtub over … the one Grover Norquist wants to drown us all in. Here’s an encouraging collection of articles, including the Republican abandonment of Ohio into the hands of the Blue and the lamest November ploy you can think of.
There’s still time for Bush to cause a scene and rally some support on the “they’re all gonna kill us” front … especially if he gets aggressive with Iran … but I’m wondering at this point if there’s anybody out there that trusts his leadership enough to continue to allow no checks and balances; Pappy Bush’s buddy’s sure don’t, last piece.
What’s clear, though — no matter what November brings — is that the public has turned on George and his One Party Song. If all this accomplishes is to slow them down … the world will be safer for it. Another good sign is the amount of Democrat’s looking to sweep gubernatorial races — the people are speaking. The trust is gone.
About time.
Jude
Time to lower the boom on the party of gloom & doom
Doug Thompson
October 16, 2006
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/content/2006/10/time_to_lower_t.html
Republicans nowadays must feel like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis. With just a little over three weeks to go before the pivotal November mid-term elections, that ache in their gut is only going to get worse.
More and more Republican candidates distance themselves from the fallen leader of their party and his many failed policies, ranging from the Iraq war to assaults on personal freedoms and liberties.
For many, the decision to avoid their faltering President comes too late. By clinging to a flawed political strategy for too long they will go down in flames.
Republicans last week wrote off incumbent GOP Sen. Mike DeWine in Ohio and made a fateful decision to move resources elsewhere. They also know Montana Sen. Conrad Burns, the mouth that bored, is history: Same for right-wing blowhard Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island.
On the House side, GOP strategists concede privately that side is lost and barring a major political event that favors Republicans, Democrats will take control after the November elections.
GOP operatives over the weekend told me the mood in the party of the elephant is as bad as they’ve ever seen. Those old enough to remember the days of Richard Nixon and Watergate say it is even lower than the period following Nixon’s resignation.
“We’re going down and we’re going down hard,” a GOP campaign manager said Sunday, “and, frankly, some in our own ranks say we deserve everything that will happen to us.”
Yes, they do. The Republicans have been monumental failures since they took control of Congress after the 1994 mid-term elections. They fumbled away every opportunity and proved themselves even more corrupt than the Democratic leadership they replaced.
The Democrats deserved to lose in 1994. They had become complacent in power and dizzy from the lust of greed. The fall of power brokers like Speaker of the House Jim Wright and Ways & Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski exemplified a party that put politics above the law.
But Republicans, who promised massive reform and elimination of “business and usual” from the Congressional system, too quickly fell under the intoxication and power. House leader Newt Gingrich soon left under an ethical cloud and the growing Jack Abramoff scandal means a still-undetermined number of Republicans will spend at least part of their retirement years in jail.
Pork barrel expanded to record proportions under GOP leadership. So did the power of special interest groups and the abuse of power.
And, of course, the Mark Foley Congressional page scandal, just the latest example of both the arrogance and incompetence of the party that controls Congress.
Finally, we have Bush - George W. Bush - the despot-in-chief, the man who led this nation to a war based on lies and used a trumped-up “war on terrorism” to gut the Constitution and rip away freedoms that used to form the fabric of American culture. For too long, power-drunk GOP congress rubber-stamped the often-insane actions of a power-mad President.
In Washington, karma has a way of coming around and it’s about to deliver a haymaker to the Republican Party.
With luck it will be a knockout punch and one that is both long overdue and well-deserved.
What remains to be seen is whether or not the Democrats learned their lesson in 1994 and don’t blow their opportunity in 2006.
I’d love to say I’m optimistic. I’m not. I’ve been around too long and watched too many campaign promises disappear in the wind as soon as the ballots are counted. In three weeks, I’m voting to kick the bitches and bastards out. At the same time, I’m praying those waiting in the wings aren’t just more of the same.
In Final Weeks, G.O.P. Focuses on Best Bets
ADAM NAGOURNEY
Oct. 15
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/16/us/politics/16spend.html
Senior Republican leaders have concluded that Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, a pivotal state in this year’s fierce midterm election battles, is likely to be heading for defeat and are moving to reduce financial support for his race and divert party money to other embattled Republican senators, party officials said.
The decision to effectively write off Mr. DeWine’s seat, after a series of internal Republican polls showed him falling behind his Democratic challenger, is part of a fluid series of choices by top leaders in both parties as they set the strategic framework of the campaign’s final three weeks, signaling, by where they are spending television money and other resources, the Senate and House races where they believe they have the best chances of success.
Republicans are now pinning their hopes of holding the Senate on three states — Missouri, Tennessee and, with Ohio off the table, probably Virginia — while trying to hold on to the House by pouring money into districts where Republicans have a strong historical or registration advantage, party officials said Sunday. Republicans also said they would run advertisements in New Jersey this week to test the vulnerability of Senator Robert Menendez, one of the few Democrats who appear endangered.
Senior national Republican strategists who had been briefed on decisions made during the party’s internal deliberations discussed the overall strategic thrusts but declined to provide specific dollar figures, saying that would give too much information to the Democrats.
The decision involving Mr. DeWine offers the most compelling evidence so far that Republicans are circling their wagons around a smaller group of races, effectively conceding some Senate and House seats with the goal of retaining at least a thin margin of control when the 110th Congress is seated next January. Democrats need to win 6 seats to capture the Senate and 15 seats to win the House on Nov. 7.
Mr. DeWine has proved to be a successful fund-raiser on his own, and, with $4.5 million on hand, already enjoys a large financial advantage over his Democratic opponent, Representative Sherrod Brown; he is not dependent on financial support to keep campaigning. The Republican National Committee and the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee have already spent $4.6 million on his race; party officials said they concluded that there were now simply more opportune races to focus on.
Asked about the decision, a spokesman for Mr. DeWine, Brian Seitchik, said, “We’ve been pleased with the support we’ve received from the R.N.C. thus far.” Mr. Seitchik declined to comment further.
Republicans noted that Mr. DeWine, in addition to having a sizable financial advantage, was a well-liked figure in Ohio who handily won his first two terms in the Senate and still had enough time to recover, even though recent internal party polls showed him lagging badly.
Brian Nick, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said, “The committee doesn’t discuss internal strategy in terms of where financial resources are allocated.”
Democratic strategists said Sunday that they were polling in search of other races with vulnerable Republicans, pointing to Representative Richard W. Pombo of California as one incumbent they might take aim at.
Republicans said they remained confident that the party’s considerable financial advantage would allow them to hold back a Democratic onslaught over the next three weeks, and they said they were preparing to spend significantly to bulk up any Republican who their polling over the next few days suggested might be faltering.
A critical question in the days ahead is the size of the Republican financial advantage for the final three weeks; the next filing reports are due on Friday.
Still, in interviews, Republican strategists said that the flow of bad news out of Iraq and the resignation of Representative Mark Foley after admitting he had sent sexually suggestive messages to teenage Congressional pages had soured the environment for incumbents and blunted the impact of a long-planned crush of negative advertisements Republicans had prepared to undercut Democratic challengers this month.
In one sign of the shifting political environment, as of this weekend, national Republicans were running advertisements in 29 districts; of those, 26 are held by Republicans and 3 by Democrats, though Republicans plan to begin running advertisements this week against an Illinois Democrat, Representative Melissa Bean. National Democrats are on the air in 30 districts, and defending Democrats in just 3 races.
“For a midterm election in the sixth year, based on historically the number of seats lost, you’ve got to play defense,” said Carl Forti, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “We have the luxury of being in the majority, so all we have to do is hold our own.”
National Republicans are no longer running advertisements in three districts where they once thought they had a chance to take over Democratic-held seats — in South Carolina, West Virginia and Ohio — as well as a district in Arizona now held by a Republican. The party has not broadcast any advertising in four days on behalf of Representative Chris Chocola, one of three Indiana Republicans who polls suggest are headed for defeat, though Republican officials said that does not mean they have written off Mr. Chocola’s seat.
Even before this development, Republicans had been bracing for the defeat of three sitting Republican senators: Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Conrad Burns of Montana and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, based on polling.
At the start of the fall campaign, national Republican leaders developed a strategy to pour most of the national money into three states — Ohio, Tennessee and Missouri — to create a firewall against a Democratic takeover. One Republican Party official said Mr. DeWine’s continued problems in Ohio had persuaded them to in effect rebuild a firewall that has now partly collapsed, and to find a state to replace it.
The decision about Mr. DeWine’s seat came after recent internal polls showed Mr. DeWine’s Democratic challenger, Representative Brown, jumping to a large lead. Mr. Brown’s surge came despite a barrage of Republican advertisements intended to portray him as weak on national security — the very line of attack that had given party officials confidence earlier this year that Mr. DeWine would be re-elected.
Normally, a party would be averse to scaling back its help for a senator in a state with as many as five competitive Congressional races also on the ballot. But in this case, Ohio Republicans said, Mr. DeWine and Republican Congressional candidates face the added problem of being dragged down this November by the party’s candidate for governor, J. Kenneth Blackwell, who polls show is facing a double-digit loss to the Democrat, Representative Ted Strickland.
The next important decision for Republicans is whether to compete in New Jersey; they plan to spend about $500,000 on advertising this week, followed by polling to see how vulnerable Mr. Menendez is to his Republican challenger, Thomas H. Kean Jr. Going into New Jersey is a costly gamble, because it requires advertising in both the New York City and Philadelphia markets, which party strategists said could easily eat up $2.5 million a week.
An alternative being strongly considered by some Republican strategists is Virginia, where Senator George Allen, a Republican once viewed as breezing toward re-election, is now struggling. A poll published in The Washington Post on Sunday showed Mr. Allen in a tie with his Democratic challenger, Jim Webb. Virginia is a much more Republican state than New Jersey, not to mention less expensive, and thus might prove an easier place to make a stand.
Some Republican strategists have been pushing the party to go after Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, but other party officials said that based on the most recent polling data, Ms. Stabenow seemed assured of re-election. On the other side of the scale, Democrats said they were increasingly skeptical that they would be able to knock out Senator Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican who had been on an early target list.
In the House, the Republican committee has spent $61 million so far, compared with $50 million by Democrats, aides to both parties said Sunday.
For Republicans, the vast majority of that money has gone to protecting incumbents. The party is on the offensive in races for three seats: two held by Democrats, Representatives Leonard L. Boswell of Iowa and Jim Marshall of Georgia, and one being vacated by Representative Bernard Sanders, an independent from Vermont who typically voted with the Democrats.
Mr. Forti said Republicans had now placed $1 million into protecting the Florida district that was represented by Mr. Foley, the Republican who resigned in the page scandal. Party officials had at first written off that seat, because it was too late to replace Mr. Foley’s name on the ballot with the name of the Republican who replaced him, State Representative Joe Negron. Party officials said their polling showed that the district was so overwhelmingly Republican — Mr. Foley won 68 percent of the vote in 2004 — that they believed they could succeed again. In any event, they said they were not prepared to write off any seats in this environment.
“When you look at the polling numbers, they don’t want to vote for the Democrat,” Mr. Forti said. “Believe me, we are not going to waste two million bucks if we don’t think we have a shot.”
Aron Pilhofer contributed reporting from New York.
The Working Family Blues
Robert L. Borosage
October 16, 2006
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/10/16/the_working_family_blues.php
Popular music changes dramatically. The crowd moves from folk to rock ‘n’ roll, or from rock ‘n’ roll to hip-hop, and the old songs lose their power to get people moving. So it is with politics. Times change, opinions change and the old tunes lose their attraction.
In this campaign, struggling with congressional scandals at home and catastrophic fiascos abroad, Republicans have sensibly rolled out the old standard—”Democrats will raise your taxes.” The great bulk of their ad buys echo this theme. The president has made it his campaign mantra: “They will raise your taxes and figure out new ways to spend your money.”
Powerful stuff. Tried and tested. Voters, struggling with stagnant incomes and rising costs, are surely worried about more taxes. But as the old tune plays, it is clear it doesn’t have its old power to get people on their feet. The ad buys go up, but voters don’t seem to be listening any more.
Perhaps that’s because they’ve been mugged by reality. Most Americans didn’t do all that well from the much-hyped tax cuts. For middle-income families, the average value of the tax break this year is $746. Some, particularly those with children, do better; many do much worse. For low-income families—specifically, those at the lowest 20 percent of the income scale—the tax breaks will bring in, on average, a negligible $23 a year. (Millionaires, of course, have every reason to be worried: They pocket on average over $111,000 a year in tax cuts.)
At the same time, Americans are getting hit with soaring costs. Even after their recent decline, gas prices are up about 50 percent from last year. The Department of Energy expects this year’s home heating oil will cost more than 47 percent more than it did last winter. That will cost the average family over 400 bucks. Half of low-income households—many of them elderly—couldn’t afford last year’s heating bills. One third reported that they sacrificed on medicine to pay for heat. One-fifth gave up food for a day or more. And now it gets worse.
Meanwhile, Congress just blocked efforts to limit price gouging, and voted billions more in subsidies to oil companies wallowing in record profits.
At the same time, Americans are getting hit with rising health-care premiums—up over 87 percent since 2000, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. This last year, they continued to rise at double the rate of inflation and of wages. Companies are passing more and more of those costs onto workers—if they provide health benefits at all. We’re paying the highest drug prices in the world, and Congress just handed the drug companies a multibillion-dollar boondoggle, prohibiting Medicare from negotiating a better price for prescription drugs.
Families with college-age children are confronted with tuition costs at public colleges that the Department of Education says are up 42 percent since 2000. Interest rates on student and parent loans just got hiked, even as Congress cut $12 billion out of the student loan funds. For middle-income families with children in college, the tax breaks won’t even cover the rise in tuitions.
Americans have responded to these pressures by working longer—we now work longer hours than any other industrial country, including the Japanese—and by working harder and smarter– productivity is up. But while this has generated obscene CEO bonuses and record corporate profits, it hasn’t been reflected in rising paychecks.
So Americans have taken on record levels of debt. They’ve re-mortgaged homes and added to credit card balances. Now interest rates are rising and families are hitting the wall. Family bankruptcies are at record highs. So Congress made it more difficult for hard-hit families to write off their debts in bankruptcy—while doing nothing about credit card companies that are hiking fees and late payment penalties, and charging interest rates that make Shylock seem like a philanthropist.
No wonder the old tax cut hymns can’t be heard over the working family blues. The tax cuts don’t begin to pay for the stagnant wages and rising costs—even as they rack up deficits that our kids will have to pay. With costs rising for basics, Congress has made things worse.
Conservatives may find out this fall that it is time to update the hymnal.
Americans Question Bush on 9/11 Intelligence
October 14, 2006
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/13469
Many adults in the United States believe the current federal government has not been completely forthcoming on the issue of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a poll by the New York Times and CBS News. 53 per cent of respondents think the Bush administration is hiding something, and 28 per cent believe it is lying.
Only 16 per cent of respondents say the government headed by U.S. president George W. Bush is telling the truth on what it knew prior to the terrorist attacks, down five points since May 2002.
Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked and crashed four airplanes in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people. In October, after Afghanistan’s Taliban regime refused to hand over al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the U.S. launched the war on terrorism.
On Aug. 6, 2001, a Presidential Daily Briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” mentioned “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.”
On May 17, 2002, Bush discussed the situation, saying, “The American people know this about me, and my national security team, and my administration: Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people.”
On Sept. 11, Bush referred to the attacks, saying, “Five years after 9/11, our enemies have not succeeded in launching another attack on our soil, but they’ve not been idle. Al-Qaeda and those inspired by its hateful ideology have carried out terrorist attacks in more than two dozen nations. And just last month, they were foiled in a plot to blow up passenger planes headed for the United States. They remain determined to attack America and kill our citizens—and we are determined to stop them.”
Polling Data
When it comes to what they knew prior to September 11th, 2001, about possible terrorist attacks against the United States, do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?
Telling the truth
Oct. 2006 16%
May 2002 21%
Hiding something
Oct. 2006 53%
May 2002 65%
Mostly lying
Oct. 2006 28%
May 2002 8%
Not sure
Oct. 2006 3%
May 2002 6%
Saddam to be the November surprise
What a co-inky-dink!
Evan Derkacz
October 16, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/43071/
Umm, so, it looks like Saddam Hussein’s trial is scheduled to end on November 5 — otherwise known as two days before Election Day. Not only will the verdict come in on that Sunday, but sentencing will be handed down that day as well.
If I’m Saddam, I’m shitting bullets. Unless of course he’s insane enough to believe that the Bush Admin had nothing to do with this auspicious timing.
Or, auspicious re-timing, as the case may be:
That trial adjourned July 27 to allow its five-judge panel to consider a verdict. The court was to have reconvened Monday to hear a verdict.
“The Dujail trial will resume Nov. 5 when the presiding judge will announce the verdict and the sentencing,” Juhi said.
One proud Poppy … but W follies mar legacy, ex-Prez’s aides gripe
The elder Bush voices public support for his son, but many of the former president’s closest aides beg to differ.
THOMAS M. DEFRANK, DAILY NEWS
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/461894p-388588c.html
WASHINGTON - At this month’s christening of the nuclear aircraft carrier bearing his name, former President George H.W. Bush delivered a rousing endorsement of his son.
“I am very proud of our President,” the elder Bush said in rain-swept ceremonies in Newport News, Va. “I support him in every single way with every fiber in my body.”
Yet many of his closest former aides beg to differ.
Indeed, one of the worst-kept secrets in Bush World is the dismay, in some cases disdain, harbored by many senior aides of the former President toward the administration of his son - 41 and 43, as many call them, political shorthand that refers to their numerical places in American presidential history.
For five years, the 41s have bit their collective tongues as, they complain, the 43s ignored their counsel. But as the war in Iraq has worsened and public support for the current administration has tanked, loyalists of the elder Bush have found it impossible to suppress their disillusionment - particularly their belief that many of 43’s policies are a stick in the eye of his father.
“Forty-three has now repudiated everything 41 stands for, and still he won’t say a word,” a key member of the elder Bush alumni said. “Personally, I think he’s dying inside.”
To 41 loyalists, the bill of indictment is voluminous. Some alleged 43 has betrayed his father’s middle-of-the-road philosophy by governing as a divider, not the uniter he promised in the 2000 campaign. Others, like former 41 speechwriter Curt Smith, argue 43 isn’t conservative enough.
“Conservatives want limited government, a balanced Middle East approach, a foreign policy that builds, not destroys, and general, not special, interest,” Smith said. “Bush 41 endorsed all of the above. Bush 43 supports none.”
A common refrain of the 41s is that 43’s muscular approach to foreign affairs - what one derided as “cowboy diplomacy” - has estranged the U.S. from its allies and diminished its authority around the globe.
The ultimate sticking point for the old guard is Iraq. They cite the appointment of 41’s close friend and former secretary of state, James Baker, to chart a new Iraq policy as belated vindication.
The 41s remain incensed, however, that Brent Scowcroft, 41’s national security adviser and once a top outside adviser to this administration, has been demonized since he wrote a 2002 article opposing an Iraq invasion.
“What Brent said is now the accepted wisdom,” a senior 41 hand said, “and everyone believes 41 agrees with him, though he’ll never say it.”
While the 41s do most of the finger-pointing, aides to the current President reject the criticism as nitpicking from out-of-touch malcontents.
They also bash the 41s for going public, charging much of the damaging material in Bob Woodward’s new book, “State of Denial,” was provided by 41 partisans.
“Nobody has a monopoly on wisdom,” a 43 staffer said, “especially those whose information may not be as good as when they were in power.”
The family-feud fault lines were on dramatic display at the carrier christening festivities, where both camps turned out in full force.
“We’re all on our best behavior,” a top 43 official joked.
A few moments later, however, one of 41’s most prominent counselors couldn’t resist.
Trading social gossip at a reception, the ex-aide noted that former Secretary of State Colin Powell was in attendance. “He should be here,” the adviser noted. “We didn’t fire him” - a barbed reference to Powell’s departure as 43’s top diplomat after four years of bureaucratic fisticuffs with Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, two frequent targets of the 41s.
“Everyone knew how Rumsfeld acts,” another key 41 assistant said. “Everyone knew 43 didn’t have an attention span. Everyone knew Condi [Rice] wouldn’t be able to stand up to Cheney and Rumsfeld. We told them all of this, and we were told we don’t know what we’re doing.”
Another top former 41 loyalist confided that several ex-colleagues remarked on a perceived “stature gap” between father and son as they sat on the dais.
The 41s concede their broadsides are awkward for their ex-boss, but say they’re motivated by a desire to protect his legacy.
In fact, the 41s suggest a singular irony: the unpopularity of the son’s administration may be rehabilitating the father’s.
“By comparison, the old man looks better and better,” a senior 41 hand said, with undisguised satisfaction.
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
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