From the always enlightening Barone Blog:

My guess is that the left Democrats are not going to be able to get the 41 votes they need for a filibuster. Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Kent Conrad of North Dakota, both up for re-election next year in solidly Republican states, voted for Roberts. So did Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Max Baucus of Montana. They're not likely filibusterers. Bill Nelson of Florida, up for re-election next year, would take some political risks by opposing him. That's five—enough to defeat a filibuster right there. When you add to that the senators listed above from states with large numbers of Italian-Americans, many of whom in my judgment will be lukewarm at best about joining a filibuster, you can see why I think Schumer and company will not get up the head of steam they need.

I think whether Barone turns out to be right or not depends on the first forty-eight to seventy-two hours of the life of this nomination. If the Dems can get even a little bit of traction on Alito early it will feed a sense of confidence and momentum on the part of the Schumer-Kennedy-Durbin crowd that could influence other members of the caucus. The Democrats feel Bush is weak and I suspect the red-staters up for re-election fear a confrontation with this president over a conservative judicial pick far less today than they did even six weeks ago.

Democrats who were eager to strike early and get the upper hand on Alito have to be lamenting this politically tone deaf hatchet job that backfired. If the public relations battle over this nomination is to be won or lost in the first few news cycles, the anti-Alito forces got routed today.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:25 PM | Email Author | Permalink

The last 4 days have not been kind to the Democrats. Thursday morning I wrote:

The Miers withdrawal sets the stage for a dramatic Bush comeback....

And then on Friday, "Fitzmas" turned into a complete bust for all the conspiracy theorists on the Left. David Brooks summed it up perfectly on Meet the Press:

What people want to know, is there a dark, malevolent conspiracy in the middle of the White House? Is there a cancer on the presidency, to use John Dean's phrase.  And I think what Fitzgerald showed, you know, he was in there for 22 months.  He had full cooperation from everybody.  And what he found was no criminal conspiracy to out a covert agent.  He indicted one person of perjury, which is serious.  But the White House has to be breathing a sigh of relief, and the American people have to know that the wave of hysteria, the wave of paranoia, the wave of charges and allegations about Karl Rove and everybody else so far is unsupported by the facts.  So what we have is a serious indictment of a senior government official, but we do not have a cancer on the presidency. 

Now, that's not what many in the press and of course what the Democrats want to hear, but the average Joe American out there knows Brooks is way closer to the truth than the conspiracy spinsters on the Left.

So that is the backdrop coming into this morning when President Bush uncorked Judge Alito. The New Republic's Jeffrey Rosen wrote this about Judge Alito in November last year:

Known as "Scalito," or little Scalia, he is considered less blustering than the big guy, but liberals will undoubtedly balk at his abortion record. In 1991, he dissented from a decision to strike down Pennsylvania's spousal notification provision--a decision the Supreme Court later upheld in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the decision that reaffirmed Roe v. Wade. What should be far more troubling to Senate Democrats, however, is Alito's 1996 dissent from a decision upholding the constitutionality of a federal law prohibiting the possession of machine guns. Applying the logic of the Constitution in Exile for all it's worth, Alito insisted that the private possession of machine guns was not an economic activity, and there was no empirical evidence that private gun possession increased violent crime in a way that substantially affected commerce--therefore, Congress has no right to regulate it. Alito's colleagues criticized him for requiring "Congress or the Executive to play Show and Tell with the federal courts at the peril of invalidation of a Congressional statute." His lack of deference to Congress is unsettling...... 

Their (the Democrats) best hope lies in a principled conservative judge as opposed to an activist eager to undermine Congress's power in the name of the Constitution in Exile. By this measure, Alito, Brown, Clement, or Garza may be worth a Senate fight.

Given that the Right essentially vetoed Harriet Miers, who was a much better bet to end up like O'Connor or Souter, as compared to Alito, who given his 15 year judicial record, is almost a guarantee to line up with Scalia and Thomas, there is no question that the Left will demand a full scale war. The problem is the Democrats simply don't have the votes to defeat Alito outright or the votes to prevent the detonation of the nuclear option if they were to attempt a filibuster.

Like I said, though you might not know it from the MSM coverage, it has been a very good four days for President Bush.

Posted by John McIntyre at 12:06 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Here is the title of the People For the American Way press release on Alito: "PFAW will wage massive national effort to defeat nominee who would dramatically shift balance of Court."

There has been a lot of happy talk this morning about how Alito will be able to win Democratic votes because he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 1990, blah, blah, blah. I'm not buying it. The liberal special interest groups are going to wage massive war on Alito and they're going to demand absolute purity from the Democratic caucus when it comes time to vote.

Remember, once upon a time Scalia was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, too. Despite being universally acknowledged as one of the best and brightest (if not THE best and brightest) legal minds of the era, how many votes would Scalia win from Democrats if Bush nominated him today?

Posted by Tom Bevan at 08:33 AM | Email Author | Permalink

On the front page of the USA Today web site there is a link to the new CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll that says, "Poll: Presidency failing." Click through to the data and you'll find Bush's job approval for current sample (Friday 10/28- Sunday 10/30) at 41%. That number is unchanged vs. previous pre-Libby indictment sample (Monday 10/24 - Wednesday 10/26).

Other interesting tidbits about the "failing" Bush presidency: Bush up 2 points (versus last survey) on question of whether he's seen as "honest and trustworthy." Bush up 3 points on question of whether he's seen as a "decisive leader." VP Cheney favorable rating down one point and Karl Rove favorable rating up two points.

A forty-one percent job approval rating is nothing to crow about, but it's laughable that USA Today can suggest the Bush presidency is "failing" when the President's approval rating is unchanged from earlier in the week. It would be the equivalent of USA Today running a headline "MARKET CRASHING" with the knowledge that Dow Jones Industrial Average hadn't dropped a point.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:52 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Posted by John McIntyre at 07:23 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Great post from Mark Levin at Bench Memos:

I have known Judge Alito for two decades. We served together in the Meese Justice Department, where he worked in the Solicitor General's Office and was considered the sharpest of Charles Fried's assistants. He is every bit as smart and personable as Chief Justice John Roberts. He is an expert on constitutional law. And he obviously has a longer judicial record, so his judicial philosophy is well-known. Judge Alito is soft-spoken. He is his own man (efforts in the media this morning to paint him as "Scalia-lite" or "Scalito" are intended to fire-up the leftwing base). If he is not qualified to serve on the Supreme Court, then no conservative is qualified.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:20 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Statement from Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY):

It is sad that the President felt he had to pick a nominee likely to divide America instead of choosing a nominee in the mold of Sandra Day O’Connor, who would unify us.

This controversial nominee, who would make the Court less diverse and far more conservative, will get very careful scrutiny from the Senate and from the American people.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:17 AM | Email Author | Permalink

It's Scalito.  100% guaranteed to send Ralph Neas and Nan Aron into cardiac arrest and to put the  Senate Dems on a war footing.  The main focus, of course, will be Alito's dissent in the abortion rights case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Patterico has already done the analysis on it, and you can read it (in part) for yourself here.

For more on Alito, see this recent US News profile and this more dated look from Law.com. We've set up an Alito resource page with bio information and links to notable opinions.

Now quickly to the politics. You can expect almost every Dem to oppose Alito.  But as I've written before, the nomination really comes down to a Republican Gang of Four:  McCain, Graham, Warner, and DeWine. The GOP can (and probably will) lose the usual "moderate" suspects in Chafee, Collins, and Snowe.  They can afford to lose up to two more Senators and still have 50 votes, which would allow Cheney to come down and cast the tie-breaker (something that would drive the Dems even more insane). 

So Bush has to have at least two of the Republican Gang of Four supporting Alito, and that's assuming there are no other random defections in the GOP ranks (like, say, Voinovich). Yesterday Graham made some aggressive noise that a filibuster would not be tolerated, and McCain has made similar sounding statements recently which would suggest this nomination is going to be in decent shape when all the dust settles. And there will be a lot of dust.

Obviously, the other key player in this drama is Arlen Specter.  He's pro-choice but has ties to the NJ-born, long-time 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals judge. It's hard to imagine Specter won't support Alito, and his blessing will provide additional cover for members of the GOP caucus who might start feeling uncomfortable when the liberal attack machine revs up and portrays Alito as a right wing monster. Specter also has control over the process, which is no small thing.  In other words, it's time for Specter to earn that Judiciary Committee chairmanship and to return the favor to the White House for backing him over Pat Toomey in the 2004 PA Senate primary.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:06 AM | Email Author | Permalink

In The New York Times this morning, Frank Rich gives us his best effort at the "Watergate redux" argument:

To believe that the Bush-Cheney scandals will be behind us anytime soon you'd have to believe that the Nixon-Agnew scandals peaked when G. Gordon Liddy and his bumbling band were nailed for the Watergate break-in. But Watergate played out for nearly two years after the gang that burglarized Democratic headquarters was indicted by a federal grand jury; it even dragged on for more than a year after Nixon took "responsibility" for the scandal, sacrificed his two top aides and weathered the indictments of two first-term cabinet members. In those ensuing months, America would come to see that the original petty crime was merely the leading edge of thematically related but wildly disparate abuses of power that Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, would name "the White House horrors."

 On the same page David Brooks says the exact opposite:

On March 21, 1973, John Dean told President Nixon that there was a cancer on his presidency. There was, Dean said, a metastasizing criminal conspiracy spreading through the White House.

Thirty-two years later, Patrick Fitzgerald has just completed a 22-month investigation of the Bush presidency. One thing is clear: there is no cancer on this presidency. Fitzgerald, who seems to be a model prosecutor, enjoyed what he called full cooperation from all federal agencies. He found enough evidence to indict one man, Scooter Libby, on serious charges.

So who's right? Let's just put it this way, Brooks is writing about the facts as we know them and Fitzgerald's own declaration that the"substantial work" of his investigation is done . Rich is speculating (and fantasizing) about what might be in the future based on nothing more than his assumption that Bush is Nixon and Cheney is Agnew.

Another must-read piece of the puzzle is Matt Cooper's new column in Time Magazine. Cooper says the only thing Mr. Libby did was respond to a question by by him about Joe Wilson's wife working at the CIA with the phrase "yeah, I heard that too." It seems insane that Libby would grant waivers to all of the reporters in the case allowing them to testify about conversations with him before the grand jury and then go in there himself and purposefully lie.  Cooper seems mystified by this as well:

I was surprised last week that the Libby indictment even mentioned me. But apparently his recollection of the conversation differed from mine in a way that led the prosecutor to think he was lying. As for me, I still have no idea if Libby or anyone else has committed a crime.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 08:02 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Since hurricane references are in vogue these days I'll use one for the Libby indictment: it's Wilma, not Katrina. I mean two things by that: first, that it could have been a lot worse. Fitzgerald apparently didn't have or couldn't prove a conspiracy charge and he couldn't indict on either of the main underlying laws of the case. An indictment (albeit a solid five-count one at that) of a single player in the Bush administration who is not well known to the public will not do nearly as much lasting damage to the Bush presidency as either mulitple indictments or the indictment of Rove would have done.

The second reason the Libby affair looks to me like hurricane Wilma is because if the Libby indictment is, in fact, all that ends up coming of Fitzgerald's probe, it's going to hit and be gone as a media event outside the beltway. The frenzy will continue through the weekend and the Sunday shows tomorrow,  but the Libby story won't be packing nearly the same punch on Monday or Tuesday morning when America wakes up to find that President Bush has nominated someone new to the Supreme Court.

I'm under no illusions that the mainstream media (especially those in Washington who live and breathe this stuff every day) won't try to keep the Libby story as big as possible for as long as possible.  But unless there is damaging new information that comes out or until such time as there is a trial with some very high profile witnesses, if the White House is smart and stays on the offensive with a SCOTUS appointment and big policy announcements, the Libby affair will go from being a Category 3 storm back to a tropical depression pretty darn fast in the eyes of the public.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 08:51 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Posted by Tom Bevan at 05:15 PM | Email Author | Permalink

My initial reaction is Scooter Libby is in BIG trouble. Fitzgerald in his press conference made a devastatingly effective case against the Vice President's Chief of Staff. At first, that may seem like bad news for the Bush administration, and while it certainly is bad news for Mr. Libby, the fact that Fitzgerald came across as such a competent, aggressive and in control prosecutor makes the fact that he did not charge anyone with the original alleged crime and the fact he did not charge Karl Rove or anyone else, that much more powerful.

In his answer to the first question Fitzgerald makes it pretty clear that he is basically done and these five counts against Libby are likely the only charges we will see in relation to this entire investigation.

Question: Mr. Fitzgerald, this began as a leak investigation but no one is charged with any leaking. Is your investigation finished? Is this another leak investigation that doesn't lead to a charge of leaking?

Fitzgerald: OK, is the investigation finished? It's not over, but I'll tell you this: Very rarely do you bring a charge in a case that's going to be tried and would you ever end a grand jury investigation.I can tell you, the substantial bulk of the work in this investigation is concluded.

And then later on in response to another question:

Question: A lot of Americans, people who are opposed to the war, critics of the administration, have looked to your investigation with hope in some ways and might see this indictment as a vindication of their argument that the administration took the country to war on false premises.

Does this indictment do that?

Fitzgerald: This indictment is not about the war. This indictment's not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.

This is simply an indictment that says, in a national security investigation about the compromise of a CIA officer's identity that may have taken place in the context of a very heated debate over the war, whether some person -- a person, Mr. Libby -- lied or not.

The indictment will not seek to prove that the war was justified or unjustified. This is stripped of that debate, and this is focused on a narrow transaction.

And I think anyone's who's concerned about the war and has feelings for or against shouldn't look to this criminal process for any answers or resolution of that.

Of course the indictment of the Vice President's Chief of Staff is not a trivial matter, but politically the bar had been set much, much higher by the press and the left; and at the end of the day given the realm of possibilities I suspect the White House is feeling very relieved. 

Posted by John McIntyre at 03:11 PM | Email Author | Permalink

New Rasmussen poll has Kaine moving slightly ahead of Kilgore (46-44) with Potts at 4.  Our RCP average of the last four polls in the race currently has Kaine up less than a point over Kilgore. Nearly every poll taken in the last three months has fallen within the margin of error, so it's safe to say that with 11 days left it remains anybody's race.

And if you haven't been following the Gilliard-Kaine controversy here's a rough outline of what went down:

• On Wednesday morning at 8:41am Steve Gilliard put up a post calling MD Lt. Gov. Michael Steele "simple sambo" and portraying him as a minstrel.
• About two hours later, Robert George decried Gilliard's outrageous antics in a post titled "Why I Am Not a Democrat (Part II)"
• Two hours after that, at 12:31pm, Andrew Sullivan linked to Gilliard's post (and George's response) under the title "The Racist Left."
• Thursday morning Gilliard received an email from the Internet Director of the Kaine campaign asking him to pull the ad. At 11:08am Gilliard published the email request along with a lenghty diatribe against George, Sullivan, and the Kaine campaign titled "Tim Kaine is a Coward."
• An hour and a half later Robert George circled back in reponse to Gilliard with this post: "Gilliard's Kaine Mutiny"
  

Posted by Tom Bevan at 10:27 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Todd Purdum leads off the NY Times' front page news analysis:

George W. Bush has been in the White House for 248 weeks, through a terrorist attack, two wars and a bruising re-election. But it seems safe to say that he has never had a worse political week than this one - and it is not over yet.

This may be the MSM wisdom on the state of the Bush White House and how bad this week has been for the President, but it completely misunderstands the political dynamics at play. In reality, the worst week the President has had since reelection was three weeks ago when he nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. The core of George W. Bush's political strength has always been the unified support of his conservative base. That energized base is one of the core reasons the President was able to win reelection with 51% of the vote and pick up seats in Congress in both 2002 and 2004.

With one seriously misguided decision the foundations of that support were starting to crumble.

It is not as if conservatives don't have disagreements with this White House, they certainly do; from the inability to control spending, to the unwillingness to seriously address the lawlessness on our border. But tax cuts, national security and the courts were always big agenda items where the President and his base were on the same page. The Miers nomination needlessly kicked out a key leg of that support.

His father kicked out the tax leg in his Presidency, laying the seeds for his ultimate defeat in 1992 to Bill Clinton. Had the Miers nomination been pushed through, a disastrous 2006 for the GOP would almost have been guaranteed.

With Miers doing the President an enormous favor and gracefully bowing out under the cover of documents and presidential prerogative, the President is now poised to reestablish control. Claims that this has divided Republicans are equally misguided, if the President follows through with an A+ nominee in the mold of Roberts or more recently Bernanke for the FED, Republicans will rally hard and enthusiastically around Bush.

The politics of this is very simple to distill: 24 hours ago liberals were giddy in anticipation of multiple indictments and what other early Christmas presents the Special Prosecutor might bring. Meanwhile, conservatives were despondent over the prospect of having to beat up on a President they want to support, all because of the unfortunate Miers nomination.

With the announcement of Miers' withdrawal everything changed. Conservatives are the happiest and most energized they have been in months. Liberals like Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy have a sick feeling in their stomach, because they realize the conservative suicide pact has been called off and the Senate is likely to get a rock solid appointment who is anathema to everything they believe - and they know there is little they can do to stop that person from getting on the court.

Posted by John McIntyre at 06:57 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The headline from today's NY Times says "Pataki Goes West to Test Presidential Waters," but George doesn't have to look much further than this NY state poll from Strategic Vision to see that the answers about presidential waters are, unfortunately for him, "ice cold" and "not very deep." 

Despite having a respectable but slightly-above-middling job approval rating of 47%, Pataki registers just 9% among New York Republicans when asked who they would support for president in 2008.  That's 37% less than fellow New Yorker Rudy Giuliani and only 5% better than conservative icon Newt Gingrich.

Even worse, in Patrick Ruffini's most recent online straw poll which generated more than 17,000 votes among a national audience of conservative-leaning readers and activists, Pataki finshed dead last out of a field of 11 candidates with only 95 votes (0.5%).

Both McCain and Giuliani would have to bail on 2008 to give Pataki any chance to offer himself as a "moderate" or "centrist" alternative in the Republican primaries - and even then his odds would be minimal at best. Even a VP nod seems unlikely.  A cabinet post or an ambassadorship in a future administration is possible, but in the meantime the only thing Pataki is likely to get out of these cross country trips is a lot of frequent flier miles.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:31 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Posted by Tom Bevan at 04:11 PM | Email Author | Permalink

The Boston Globe wins the award for the most painfully ironic title of the day:  "Democratic leaders offer a national security plan." You don't say? I guess coming up with something four years after being attacked by Islamic fundamentalists is better than nothing.

Award for the most painfully ironic quote goes to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who presented the Dems' new national security initiative by announcing, ''The Democrats are basically supportive of the troops." (emphasis mine).

Finally, the award for the most painfully clueless former Presidential nominee goes to John Kerry, who demonstrated again yesterday why he lost the 2004 election and why he doesn't have a prayer in 2008:

''History will judge the invasion of Iraq as one of the greatest foreign policy misadventures of all time," he [Kerry] said.

But later, during a question and answer session, Kerry resisted comparisons to the Vietnam War, and said he told US troops in Iraq that ''their cause is noble" in risking their lives as Iraq stumbles toward democracy.

 Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.....

Posted by Tom Bevan at 04:01 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Posted by Tom Bevan at 11:15 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Repeat after me: Axis. Of. Evil. That phrase has been roundly ridiculed by internationalists since Bush first used it in his 2002 State of the Union address, but the shoe just keeps on fitting:

Iranian Leader Causes Storm Over Call To Wipe Out Israel

Reverting to the vitriol of Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian revolution, Mr Ahmadinejad urged the destruction of Israel by Palestinian militants: "There is no doubt that the new wave in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot from the face of the Islamic world," he said. "As the Imam (Khomeini) said, Israel must be wiped off the map."

"Anybody who recognises Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury. Anybody who recognizes the Zionist regime is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world," Mr Ahmadinejad is reported to have said.

Within hours of the speech a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up in an Israeli market, killing five people in the deadliest attack in the country in three months.

According to Shimon Peres, Ahmadinejad's remarks are unprecendented: since the United Nations was established in 1945, no head of a sitting member state has ever publicly called for the elimination of another member state.  Peres is calling for Iran to be expelled from the U.N.

Ahmadinejad's call to "wipe Israel off the map" is generating the typical condemnations from the international community ("disturbing", "deeply troubling", etc), but words simply aren't good enough any more.  At some point, no matter how impolitic it might be to say out loud, responsible nations have to accept the fact that the current Iranian regime is evil at its core and represents a dire threat to peace and stability. For the world to allow the Iranians to acquire nuclear weapons is utter insanity.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 09:45 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The Miers withdrawal sets the stage for a dramatic Bush comeback, irrespective of whatever Fitzgerald may or may not do.

Posted by John McIntyre at 08:34 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The Krauthammer strategy reaches a successful conclusion:

Bush said he reluctantly accepted her decision to withdraw, after weeks of insisting that he did not want her to step down. He blamed her withdrawal on calls in the Senate for the release of internal White House documents that the administration has insisted were protected by executive privilege.

"It is clear that senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House — disclosures that would undermine a president's ability to receive candid counsel," Bush said. "Harriet Miers' decision demonstrates her deep respect for this essential aspect of the constitutional separation of powers — and confirms my deep respect and admiration for her."

One interpretation of the Miers withdrawal is that the President realized (or was informed by GOP Senators) that she didn't have a chance of being confirmed. A more speculative interpretation of the timing of the withdrawal is that the President knows there are indictments coming down tomorrow and needs to have his base support consolidated.  He can use news of a new appointment to deflect attention from any possible bad news from the Fitzgerald investigation.

Indictments or not, expect Bush to nominate someone who will immediately set off a firestorm from liberal special interest groups and provoke a major battle on the hill that will get his administration off the defensive.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 08:32 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Foundering auto-parts supplier Delphi submitted a proposal to the UAW with cuts even stiffer than previously imagined:

According to the proposal, Delphi wants new hires to accept wages as low as $9 an hour, compared with $14 an hour today. The company wants hourly workers making $25 to $27 an hour to accept wages between $9.50 and $10.50 an hour. Delphi also wants overtime to be accrued after working a full week, as opposed to a full day.

Moreover, Delphi wants to freeze its pension plan and said it does not want to accept new pension plan participants after Jan. 1.

Out-of-pocket costs for health care would increase to a maximum $5,000 a year for a family or $2,500 annually for an individual. That would compare to the $500 per family and $250 per person workers currently contribute to the company's traditional health care plan.

Additionally, vision and dental benefits would be eliminated. The company said it also would discontinue "current health care options" but may offer other affordable plans in the future.

The proposal to the UAW concludes, "Delphi recognizes the hardship that this proposal imposes on your members. There is no alternative."

Delphi is the fourth largest publicly traded company in Michigan, where 14,700 of their 185,000 employees live and work.  The company filed for bankruptcy on October 8 after losing $4.8 billion last year. Needless to say, Delphi's predicament is dire and failure to come to terms with the unions may set off a strike that could mortally wound a U.S. auto industry already hemorrhaging cash and groaning under the weight of ballooning health care costs and expensive pension plans.

We've run some great commentary on the Delphi case recently, so if you're interested and you missed it the first time around, here are a few pieces worth reading:

Public Sector Unions Still Living In A Dream World - Thomas Bray, Detroit News (10/23)
GM Rolling Out of Its Welfare State - George Will, Washington Post (10/20)
GM's Suicide Pact With The UAW - Daniel Gross, Slate (10/19)
The Fate of 'Made in the USA' - Robert Samuelson, Washington Post (10/19)
Bailout For Auto Industry Not Likely This Time - Thomas Bray, Detroit News (10/16)
The Delphi News - Michael Barone, Baroneblog (10/14)
The Vanishing Middle - Harold Meyerson, Washington Post (10/12)

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:46 PM | Email Author | Permalink

The Republican majority is in jeopardy.... There is this wave that hits, and it is worth between 4 and 6 percent [of the total vote]. These are people who don't even know who they are voting for because they are just voting against [incumbents]. Am I predicting that the Republicans will lose in 2006? No. If this were Oct. 25, 2006, I would say yes, they would lose the majority. But they have an entire year to get their act together.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 04:24 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Obviously, lots of bad news in the national polls for Republicans these days. Bush's job approval stands at a paltry 41.3% in our latest RCP Average. Congress' job approval is an even more dismal 29.8%.  Less than 3 in 10 Americans feel the country is headed in the right direction, and Democrats lead Republicans by more than 7 points in the generic Congressional vote.

Even worse than the topline numbers, however, are the results from some of the internals. Here's one in particular that should send chills down the spine of the GOP leadership in Washington: in the new Battleground Poll Democrats had a 14-point advantage over Republicans (49-35) when respondents were asked which party would do a better job holding down federal spending. A related question found that 72% of people favored "removing items from the recent highway bill that are not directly related to road construction."

Similar stuff from today's Gallup poll. Dems led Republicans by 6 and 8 points respectively on the issue of handling Iraq and, if you can possibly believe it, on taxes. That may be a first. 

At this point, the only issue where Republicans still maintain a big lead over Democrats in the polls is fighting terrorism. That's a biggie, of course, but probably not enough by itself to maintain a majority if the GOP continues to lose ground to Democrats on key domestic issues like taxing and spending.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 04:21 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Washington is buzzing in anticipation of potential indictments from the Special Prosecutor either today or tomorrow. The excitement on the left is bubbling over in the hope that finally the Bush administration will be exposed as the criminals and liars they have always presumed them to be.

There is no question that the White House should be on edge before Fitzgerald lays down the law. However, because of the ratcheting up of the hype and expectations by the media there is plenty of room for some major disappointment on the left.  

The way things stand right now, anything less than an indictment of Rove will be, in political terms, a victory for the White House. Of course, the indictment of the Vice President's Chief of Staff is not on its surface a minor issue.  But because almost no one outside of Washington has ever heard of Scooter Libby (coupled with the massive expectations for much, much, more) indictments of Libby and one or two other smaller players from the Vice President's office won't be the Bush killing moment so many are hoping for.

On the other hand if Rove is indicted, along with a host of others, the President is going to have a problem he is going to have to deal with. It won't be the Watergate redux that so many in the media and on the left are pining for, but it would be foolish for Republicans to spin this as anything but bad news. If Rove gets indicted you can almost guarantee that the Miers nomination will be withdrawn (which would be a big plus for the President).

On the extremes of what Fitzgerald could do, no indictments at all will cause all of this frenzy and speculation to backfire utterly on the MSM and will be a huge boost to the President's climbing out of his current hole. And of course if the left-wing nirvana scenario comes down and somehow Joe Wilson is right and Cheney is indicted along with Rove, Libby, et al, the Bush administration is going to think the last 6 weeks weren't that bad in retrospect.

Posted by John McIntyre at 09:43 AM | Email Author | Permalink

It's truly hard to fathom how warped the media culture is in this country.  Most major newspapers are leading this morning with the 2,000th U.S. combat death in Iraq.  Apparently, this is a "milestone" the media deems worthy of expanded coverage - including news analysis of the "grim" numbers, stories of family grief, and "interactive graphics" of our fallen men and women.

Buried at the bottom of all the coverage ostensibly intended to "honor" our troops is the little tidbit that, oh by the way, the Iraqi constitution passed.

Look at the treatment at The Washington Post web site, which even manages to negatively phrase news of the Iraqi charter vote:

How about above the fold at The New York Times? 

This isn't honoring our soldiers, it's using their deaths to try and negatively influence the public about the war in Iraq.  You think I'm being too harsh? Ask any soldier in Afghanistan or Iraq if they think this type of coverage  "honors" their fallen comrades or their mission and see what kind of response you get.

The problem is that to truly honor something means, by definition, to hold it in high respect and esteem.  Members of the media may hold the sacrifices of individual soldiers in esteem but it's fair to say that, as a whole, they have significantly less respect for or belief in the causes for which those soldiers are fighting and dying in Iraq. The result is that much of the mainstream media can't separate the men from the mission, and feel that to write positive stories about Iraq or stories truly honoring our soldiers would be seen as propaganda supporting the policy (and indirectly the President).

To get a better idea of what I'm talking about, look at this:  

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Posted by Tom Bevan at 06:23 AM | Email Author | Permalink

In his freshly minted column, Charlie Cook says it's time to shake things up at the White House. Cook's recommendations include:

• Bring in someone who is experienced but not a loyal friend to replace Andy Card. Possible names include Ken Duberstein, Dennis Thomas, Will Ball, Howard Baker, Vin Weber, or Bill Cohen.
• Get Karen Hughes out of the State Department and back in the White House as Deputy Chief of Staff as soon as possible.
• Hire someone with experience and gravitas to run the Congressional Laison office and put greater emphasis on managing relationships on the Hill. Cook suggests former Congressional leadership aide Dan Mattoon.
• Finally, bring in some new blood on national security. Cook suggests John Lehman (fmr Navy Sec), Richard Armitage, Robert Zoellick, or possibly John Danforth.

Generally, I think the prospect of change among the senior White House staff is good and would provide a needed spark and energy and enthusiasm to help the administration get back on track. That said, there is value in continuity of leadership and a potential danger of too much change happening too quickly.