Posted on 10/22/2006 3:36:41 AM PDT by Alas Babylon!
The Talk Shows
Sunday, October 22nd, 2006
Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows:
FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., John Warner, R-Va., Joe Biden, D-Del., and Carl Levin, D-Mich.; business mogul Richard Branson.
MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.
FACE THE NATION (CBS): Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C.
THIS WEEK (ABC): President George W. Bush; Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.; professional bowler Kelly Kulick.
LATE EDITION (CNN) : Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.; Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas; former Secretary of State Alexander Haig; former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Do they have any parks by Nancy's house?
Did she ask her about the scam with Murtha and his brother... along with a relative of hers?
Nevermind, dumb question.
Plastic surgeon.
Since interns aren't being "used" in the same fashion as the last White House I'm betting that there are a few lurkers assigned here from the White House, as well as DOD, Secret Service and several other government agencies. If they're not here they're not doing their jobs. By the same token, if the Secret Service doesn't have a team dedicated to DU then they are seriously slipping.
He was probably looking for the Over 65 Black Homosexual Demographic to poll.
Pray for W and Our Troops
A Democratic sweep and then what?
By Robert J. Caldwell
October 22, 2006
The conventional wisdom (how often does it prove wrong?) is that the 2006 midterm elections will be 1994 in reverse. The Republican tsunami of that year will be replicated this year by a Democratic wave that will wrest control of the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate, too, from the GOP.
That may happen. Certainly the polls suggest a dismal night Nov. 7 for the Republicans.
And yet, there is one especially startling difference between the 1994 GOP blowout and the apparently pending Democratic sweep this year.
In 1994, Republicans nationalized the midterm congressional elections by uniting around a national agenda, Newt Gingrich's Contract With America, endorsed by 370 Republican congressional candidates. In stark contrast, the Democrats this year have no agreed-upon national agenda.
The Democrats' strategy, to the extent they have one, is to make the 2006 midterms a referendum on an unpopular president and an unpopular war. That may be enough to get them elected, but then what?
Here is where the 1994 analogy breaks down completely. Gingrich and the new Republican majorities in the House and Senate went on to pull Bill Clinton's erratic presidency back toward the center from its liberal excesses of 1993-94. Welfare reform, spending restraint, and a balanced-budget compact followed by successive years of budget surpluses were all products of the Gingrich revolution in Congress.
What, pray tell, would Congress' new Democratic majorities offer on the morning after Nov. 7?
A solution to the Iraq war? The Democrats don't have one.
Fiscal conservatism as an antidote to Republican overspending in the Bush era? Surely you jest.
A better economy? Thanks in part to the Bush tax cuts that many Democrats favor repealing, it's already humming along quite nicely. The Bush economy boasts record-low unemployment, six million new jobs, steady growth, the Dow at a historic high of 12,000 and a booming revenue stream that cut the deficit by 22 percent in just the last 12 months.
Reform the entitlement programs that threaten a fiscal train wreck sometime after 2020? Democrats wouldn't even agree last year to discuss Bush's pilot program for a very limited partial privatization of Social Security.
Clean up the corruption in Congress? The Democrats did nothing this year on lobbying reform and ending the wholesale abuse of pork-barrel spending earmarks.
Fix immigration? Divided Republicans at least agreed on a lot more border enforcement. Democrats were just divided.
Well, then, you say, maybe we can expect a more effective prosecution of the war on terrorism. Fat chance.
Two-thirds of House Democrats voted against renewing the counterterrorism Patriot Act. Many Democrats then opposed the Bush-McCain compromise on standards for terrorist interrogations. Speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi represents the Democrats' left-leaning, MoveOn.org wing that would hobble U.S. intelligence monitoring and give captured terrorists unfettered access to American courts.
The fact is that, unlike the Republicans in 1994, congressional Democrats in 2006 have no coherent governing agenda.
If they win Nov. 7, we'll have divided government and potential gridlock. Bush will discover his veto power and Democrats will revel in the unaccustomed luxury of opposition oversight and investigations. Odds are, overwhelmingly, that nothing much will get done.
Americans are said to be tired of the partisan warfare in Washington. They'll get more of it, not less, if Nov. 7 produces a Democratic Congress determined to hamstring Bush.
If giddy Democrats overplay their hand, they will hurt their party's chances to regain the White House in 2008. Impeach Bush hearings in the House, a John Conyers fantasy, would likely mean a President McCain or Giuliani in 2008. Americans may have soured on Bush and a frustrating war in Iraq but they won't embrace the specter of banana republic government.
The Democrats' lack of a governing agenda allows the Republicans an opening they can yet exploit. It's never a plus in politics if you can tell voters what you're against but not what you're for.
Beyond the Democrats' missing agenda, Bush strategist Karl Rove and Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman have one last ace to play. In the final 72 hours before this election, they will implement the most sophisticated and best-financed plan ever devised for mobilizing the GOP base and getting its voters to the polls. Democrats have nothing like it.
Facile comparisons with 1994 miss key differences in 2006. One wonders if the Democrats have noticed.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061022/news_lz1e22caldwel.html
Fear of too many babies is hard to bear
http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/105366,CST-EDT-steyn22.article
Thanks so much, Ali. Bookmarking the limks.
I'm sure there are some interns lurking, if not posting on FR. I would hope the Secret Service monitors the DUmp, the daily Kos, etc.
I refuse to go to DU from home and it's been blocked from work for the past few years. I just can't take the filth posted there, even as a military man of over 34 years service.
I know, I'm admitting my age.
You have that right----we cannot let the dems get control of the House or the Senate...
The rest we will worry about Nov. 8th.
Wonder if -- assuming Barron's and Drudge are right and the Republicans keep the Congress -- the moonbats will finally go over the edge and commit to Bolshevik-style revolution?
Remember, the Bolsheviks only called themselves that (deliberately lying).....and they called the majority in opinion the Mensheviks, or "minoritarians"........this happened in American history, too, when the Antifederalists were the majority in 1787/8/9 but the Federalists talked and propagandized their way to a win on the Constitution.
The moonbats might just decide that their moral superiority entitles them to go for it anyway.
What think?
It's not the years. It's the mileage.
LOL....yeah, I surely don't qualify for that demo.
I like the sound of the last part of that...re: Rove's plan!
Believe me, most of my "miles" were incurred before the age of 20 working on the farm. When I got to basic training in 72, I went from 145 lbs to 185 lbs in eight weeks. I was not used to three squares and a full seven or eight hours sleep per night.
I had several drill SGTs asking why I was up before 0600 on weekends, and I'd tell them "I'm used to work days starting before 0500." They couldn't believe I actually had trouble sleeping in past 0600.
Just came back after a couple hours watching TV with my husband. Yes, trivial stuff leads one to fascinating discoveries, which is why I like knowing a bunch of stuff (even if for all of these years I have had the wrong name for Alexander's horse! THAT will teach me humility! LOL.)
I certainly agree with being a whackjob with all the stuff about encouraging everyone to vote democratic next month.
Ugh...not something I hope to have to go through.
My husband has been chosen twice..and my son has also...neither of them had to stay longer than a half a day, each time.
I would be the one picked for a sequestered jury that would take a MONTH...LOL
Why aren't pundits asking Nancy Pelosi what will she do when she loses her imperial dream of becoming the first female speaker?
And furthermore, maybe the GOP ought to be out pumping iron, like Rocky Balboa, who never lost a fight when the going got tough. Seems like too many conservatives and republicans are buying into leftwing jabberwocky and rolling over to give them the win.
I say give President George W. Bush another "W"in this November.
It would be absolutely delightful to see the baleful squeals and forlorn despair upon the faces of the democrat loving media and the losing democrats.
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