Free Republic

The "thumpin'" that the Republican Party received last week will make profound changes in policymaking in Washington and in presidential politics. On the policy side, we have already seen something in the nature of parliamentary government: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lacked the confidence of the new congressional majority and promptly resigned. George W. Bush and Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi both expressed a hitherto indiscernible desire to work together, either out of conviction or out of calculation that it was in their interest to do so. Democrats, having won a small majority in the House and a paper-thin one in the Senate,...

Let's not get lathered up worrying about what Sen. John Kerry meant when he contrasted the value of book learning to the value of getting shot at in a foreign war. Instead let's assess the public reaction and its possible impact on Tuesday's elections. Parsing Kerry's words is a waste of time. Did he mean a lack of education might make one, like George W. Bush, an ignorant warmonger? Or only that hard work and hitting the books will keep one far away from the violent desert sands of volatile Iraq? Most informed speculators have adopted the second interpretation. But...

And now for the definition-impaired, the meaning of the word "naive": "deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment." There was plenty of that on display last week in Pittsburgh and in Washington. At the annual National Conference of Editorial Writers Convention in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania governor and former general chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ed Rendell, addressed a group of pundits on the subject, "Will the Real Democratic Party Please Stand Up?" After running through standard Democratic boilerplate issues - increase the minimum wage, raise taxes (except property taxes), spend more on education (as if too much is not already...