Posted at 1:16pm on Oct. 22, 2006
The Sunday Morning Talk Shows - The Review
Who will help nancy measure for drapes?
By Mark Kilmer
Sunday, October 22, 2006
On TW, the "Tet offensive" remark was not drawing a parallel. It was insignificant. The real headline should have been that he came close to calling Moqtada al Sadr an al Qaeda tool. Or that he pointed out that John Kerry waved the 'white flag of surrender' on Iraq by campaigning for a date certain for withdrawal from Iraq whether or not we had achieved our goals.Steph had to allow JF Kerry a chance to spread his manure in rebuttal, and he mischaracterized the President as saying that Kerry was waving the white flag by demanding a timetable. Kerry pulled out his dudgeon face, which is as awkward as any other, and called it "reprehensible" and called it "a lie."
On MTP, Barack Obama continued is book tour and Tim Russert called him the new generation of Camelot who will lead us from the tired arguments of yesterday.
On FNS, there was Warner, Lugar, Biden, and Levin. The discussion was interesting, but Biden had thought of everything years ago and Levin could only complain. The only thing which struck me as "new" was Dick Lugar's suggestion that we bring Iran into talks about Iraq.
On FTN, Schumer and Dole again agreed to have dinner. Dole said that President Bush was not on the ballot, and Schumer said that "people want change."
On LE, Arlen Specter was happy with the New York Times story, since refuted by the White House, that the President was considering an Iraqi timetable. He said that this was what James Baker was suggesting, though Baker has said explicitly that it is not. Jack Reed, on the other hand, explicitly agreed with Carl Levin.
Read the complete, Show-by-Show review below the fold...
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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