So, who's the Idiot?*
By Moe Lane Posted in The Parties — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
John McIntyre over at RCP spends 1,125 words saying essentially "You tell me, Sparky" - but they're interesting words, so we forgive him.
This is a hard election to analyze because of the myriad cross-currents running through the political landscape. The Republicans are faced with the historical difficulties of a 2nd administration off-year midterm, Iraq, small government-libertarians upset with spending, unrest over the inaction on illegal immigration and just a general feeling of fatigue with the current politics. Democrats have to deal with the growing empowerment of the far left in their party, no plan or program of any substance (unlike the GOP in '94), and most importantly a perception that they simply do not have the will or the inclination to fight the war against Islamic terrorism.
Where does that leave us with less than 45 days until the election?
Read on.
Personally, I'm starting to wonder whether we all have the wrong end of the stick here: if there's a thread going through the narrative it's that incumbents are not having a swell time of it this go-round. This is, of course, more heartening news to Democrats than it is to Republicans - the latter controls the legislature, after all - but if they wake up Wednesday morning to discover that, say, MD and NJ have gone red it'll take some of the joy of seeing, say, RI and PA turn blue. Particularly since certain elements of the Democrats have confidently promised wins across the board, new committee head positions all around and the attaining of the Millenium.
My own zogby? -3 in the Senate, -10 in the House and the mother of all Supreme Court nomination fights in 2007. But that's just me.
Moe
*It's an old poker maxim. If you sit down to play poker and haven't figured out who the idiot is within 30 minutes, the idiot is you.
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So, who's the Idiot?* 6 Comments (0 topical, 6 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
That if the Democrats had a shred of the "moral decency" they continually crow about, they would have been the first in line to help guarantee that Social Security and Medicare were on a firm financial foundation throughout the rest of this century.
They not only lost that chance, they deliberately sabotaged the effort. They've made the problem worse by pushing a workable solution off, all because of their partisan vanity. They're a complete disgrace, and when I remember that fiasco, and Dan Froomkin's editorializing in the Washington Post, it makes me wonder again how any of those people can even look at themselves in the mirror.
Of course, there's always the possibility that you are playing poker with an entire table of idiots. The 2006 election seems like that sometimes.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
if you've been at the table for 10 minutes and don't know who the sucker is, it's you.
But I get your point.
Add to your NJ, MD list the names of Granholm and maybe even Stabenow and Cantwell.
People ain't happy
...but I've found that the first few hands of a game are always kind of scattershot. Particularly if you're using a new deck. People need time to settle in.
Moe
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
However, the Democrats have become more and more publically crazy.
As disappointing as the Republican Congress has been over some issues, the Dems are just plain looney.
But it really isn't that complicated. On a moral level, the duplicity of the Democratic Party should be more than enough to tell any thinking person not to vote for them. But let's leave morals aside and go wade rest of the murkiness, because that's where the Democrats live:
The economy is strong and stable. It isn't a mirage, it isn't an accident, and it isn't a phantom -- the incremental growth in the strength of the U.S. economy is continuing to provide the best opportunities in the world for people in the United States who want to work, make a living, do better than they did previously, and get even get rich -- if they're lucky or skillful, or both.
The GWOT is precisely what the President has explained on numerous occasions that it would be: a difficult, long struggle. It's not a "McSolution" and it will never be one, but for the first time in (post)modern history the United States is the only nation in the world that is leading the fight against a new and incredibly dangerous form of ideological fascism, while the rest of the world twiddles its thumbs and supports people like Hugo Chavez.
When gasoline was $3.00 a gallon, it was still cheap in real dollars by the standards of 1965. Now gas prices are dropping in complete accord with the rules of supply and demand: and if Americans want to keep those prices low, they will vote to expand America's energy supplies and refinery capacity.
The Democrats are as venal and hideous as they've ever been. The New York Times has decided that it wants to protect the Kennedy family by leaking snippets of yet another classified document. But maybe they should have just asked if they could see it. The President doesn't think that's such a big deal.
Global warming is a worry, sure. But let's look at the Forbes 400 this year: they're all billionaires. And that means that they have a tremendous amount of money to donate to philanthropic causes and private initiatives to combat global warming.
C'mon. There's so much more in the way of news that's encouraging and promising that the rest of this comment could write itself. We're sitting in a country with a 4.7% unemployment rate and a near record DOW, we're taking the fight to terrorists overseas, and our gasoline prices are lower than they've been, historically, since about 1955 at this point. And the entreprenurial and market-driven spirit of America has never been so strong as it is today. We're weathering the storms and we're doing it exceptionally well.
Frankly I don't understand why we should lose *any* seats in the House or Senate. If I had my way, we'd be *exchanging* seats, so that the current makeup would become a little more fiscally conservative. But on the merits, this country is doing very well right now.