Posted on 02/05/2006 5:31:56 AM PST by new yorker 77
President Bush was in trouble. Nothing was going right, and the war in Iraq was rapidly losing support. Democrats smelled victory but kept bungling the chance. Their nominee was so unappealing that Bush and the GOP scored a giant victory. That's a short history of the 2004 elections, when Bush won a second term and the GOP gained seats, and kept control, of both houses of Congress.
Fast forward and 2006 is shaping up like deja vu all over again.
Bush hasn't seen 50% approval in the polls for months, Iraq is stuck in bloody neutral and congressional Republicans are under fire for ties to a corrupt lobbyist. With midterm elections in the fall, Dems should be able to take one or both houses and exert much more influence over the last two years of Bush's term.
But Democrats are still getting in their own way, and could blow their chances again. The most prominent party leaders, including Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy, have become so extreme that their attacks make Bush look good by comparison.
Clinton seems to have gone off the deep end. She followed up on her stupid remark at a Martin Luther King Day event that the House is "run like a plantation" by charging the White House with a "deliberate policy of neglect" in rebuilding New Orleans. She suggested in a San Francisco appearance that Bush saw the hurricane as "a mixed blessing" and that he was afraid "all those Democrats might come home." NAACP Chairman Julian Bond topped that by saying Republicans would be happy to fly the Nazi flag.
Such nutso talk feeds the rage of party fanatics, but it's a surefire turnoff to the independents who decide close elections. The situation recalls Israeli Abba Eban's memorable line about Palestinians - "they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." So it seems with Democrats.
Their blunders allow Bush to defy political gravity despite having only one issue where the public trusts him - keeping America safe from terrorism. Sentiment turns against him on most everything else.
A recent Los Angeles Times poll, citing the economy, health care and Iraq, found that more than 60% of Americans say the country needs to change course. Only on whether Bush's policies had made the nation more secure did a slight majority give him a thumbs up. That's pretty much where he was when he beat John Kerry in 2004.
Yet as bad as he is doing, Bush has higher approval ratings than congressional Dems - 43% to 36%, the poll found. And that poll was taken before Kennedy finished his disgraceful attempt to smear Samuel Alito and before Bush's forceful State of the Union address.
The Kennedy episode is the perfect example of what's wrong with Democrats. Alito is a smart and humble man whose conservative views are a prime reason Bush nominated him to the Supreme Court. Kennedy tried to bring him down by outrageous attacks on his integrity.
The hypocrisy was breathtaking. From his two expulsions from Harvard for cheating to his leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to drown off Chappaquiddick to his notorious philandering, Kennedy has zero standing to lecture on ethics. But there he was, smearing Alito in ways that would have made Joe McCarthy proud. And not a single Democrat rebuked him.
Just think: If Dems take the Senate, Kennedy's seniority would give him enormous clout and a committee chairmanship. You don't have to love Bush to say, no, thanks.
Originally published on February 5, 2006
"Unlike some dog breeds, the Pembroke Welsh Corgi does not have a traceable breed history. Its origins are obscured by tales and folklore and even contain ties to the wee folk of the British Isles. According to legend, two children tending their family's cattle on royal lands found a pair of puppies, which they thought were foxes. When they brought the puppies home, they were told the dogs were a gift from the fairies. Welsh legends tell us that the fairies would use the little dogs to pull their carriages or as mounts for them to ride into battle. If you look, you can still see the marks of the fairy saddle on their shoulders (especially pronounced in the sable color). As the little puppies that the children brought home grew, they learned to help their humans watch over their cattle, a task to become a responsibility for their descendants for the centuries to follow.
smearing Alito in ways that would have made Joe McCarthy proud.
Joe McCarthy and Ted Kennedy - two alcoholics who should have attended AA and not served in the Senate.
Big difference - Joe McCarthy did not "smear" people. His accusations were based in fact, unlike teddy kennedy's. As you say, he didn't murder anyone, he wasn't a philanderer, etc. I won't debate the AA part.
All the whiners and snivelers here who continually threaten not to vote republican just don't realize what would happen to the country if the dims were to return to power.
Oh, that little thing.
They would have to say, "I/We was/were wrong." Don't look for that.
I was kidding around with those Corgi posts, but that info is something new to me.
I think this breed of dog is great, because if it tries to run away, you can chase it down easy.
True. Redistricting has eliminated most surprises in the short term. Over the long term, demographics are inexorably tending toward increased, not diminished, red state dominance. With every census, blue states lose house seats to red states.
In complaining about "unattractive" democratic candidates the author neglects the deeper truth: democratic candidate unattractiveness traces to democratic ideology unattractiveness. Punitive taxation, unrestricted abortion, military defeatism, and gay marriage just aren't very palatable to swing voters.
This is just one of the reasons I can't vote Democrat anymore. The Democrats remind me of the so-called "moderate" Muslim. Can't bring themselves to condemn the terrorists in their midst.
Huh. The first sentence has three errors in it.
President Bush was steady in the Rasmussen Poll. He had national security and the economy in his favor and most likely voters did not want to abandon Iraq as 77% of Iraq vets planned to vote for him in polls. Libs saw none of this.
stupid is as stupid does
This kind of rhetoric is downright reckless and dangerous, IMHO. The Dems are convinced that the Pubs are Nazis, and that they're going to have to fight in the streets to get their freedom back. If they lose a couple of more elections (and I suspect they will), this scenario could turn into reality. When men who should know better, like Julian Bond, say these kind of inflammatory things, he is pushing our country toward violence.
Aside from that, regarding the headline, the Dems are blowing it because, hey, the Dems just basically blow.
Julian Bond is a very dumb person.
Retarded zoo animals have an edge on him.
He almost won.
This goes to the heart of the issue. With the Democratic "base" moving farther and farther to the left, appealing to them loses the independents.
This is the first lie/delusion. For months, we here at FR have been noting that the polls have been horribly skewed in terms of % Dem/Repub/Indy, in favor of the Dems. So of COURSE Bush "hasn't seen 50%" and of course, it's utterly irrelevant.
Real polls, done with real-life percentages, would have had him at or near 50% most of the time.
Rush dealt with this the other day. The chickens of falsifying poll data are coming home to roost, because the Dems now believe their own polls, and thus cannot take corrective action.
I've said for some time that the Dems are "un-reformable." They are beyond fixing themselves at this point, and soon will be the Federalists of the 21st century: an obsolete, elite, northeastern, anti-war party whom the nation leaves behind because it could not adapt to the threats facing the country.
You nearly nailed it. But forgot to finish the description.
You've painted yourself into a corner with outrageous, and often illogical statements. You have no exit strategy. You have no clue why, or that it's even happening.
See? Better. ;)
Thanks. I just had a horrible image of John Kerry as Beeker, and Ted Kennedy as the Swedish Chef! ;)
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