Incumbent Kansas senator claims U.S. is heading towards "National Socialism"

I found this Talking Points Memo story through Kevin Drum, and even I can't believe it.  From Talking Points Memo:

Incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), who is facing an unexpectedly fierce challenge for re-election, warned Monday at a campaign stop that the United States is heading for "national socialism."

It's not clear whether Roberts intended to make a reference to Nazism or simply meant to invoke the run of the mill looming specter of socialism.

American Bridge, the liberal opposition research group that tracks Republican candidates, posted the video of Roberts's remarks at a Dodge City event.

"There's a palpable fear among Kansans all across this state that the America that we love and cherish and honor will not be the same America for our kids and grandkids," Roberts said, "and that's wrong. That's very wrong."

He lamented that people are "losing faith in their government" and that the government "is losing faith in our people. That is a bad situation to be in." He said he was running to change that dynamic.

"We have to change course because our country is heading for national socialism," Roberts said. "That's not right. It's changing our culture. It's changing what we're all about."

According to TPM's PollTracker average, Roberts trails independent candidate Greg Orman by 1 point, 39 percent to 38 percent.

You can watch the YouTube video here:



An incumbent U.S. senator is now saying that the United States is heading for "national socialism!"  Excuse me Senator Pat Roberts, but do you know what "national socialism" really is?  From Wikipedia:

Nazism, Naziism,^[1] or National Socialism in full (German: Nationalsozialismus), is the ideology and practice associated with the 20th-century German Nazi Party and state as well as other related far-right groups. It was also promoted in other European countries with large ethnic German communities, such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia.^[2] Usually characterised as a form of fascism that incorporates scientific racism and antisemitism, Nazism originally developed from the influences of pan-Germanism, the Völkisch German nationalist movement and the anti-communist Freikorps paramilitary culture in post-First World War Germany, which many Germans felt had been left humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles.

German Nazism subscribed to theories of racial hierarchy and social Darwinism, asserted the superiority of an Aryan master race, and criticised both capitalism and communism for being associated with Jewish materialism. It aimed to overcome social divisions, with all parts of a racially homogenous society cooperating for national unity and regeneration and to secure territorial enlargement at the expense of supposedly inferior neighbouring nations. The use of the name "National Socialism" arose out of earlier attempts by German right-wing figures to create a nationalist redefinition of "socialism", as a reactionary alternative to both internationalist Marxist socialism and free market capitalism.

 Or I could put it in more simple terms by saying that "national socialism" was controlled and refined by this guy:

Now Kevin Drum speculates that Senator Roberts is too dumb to realize that "national socialism" really equates to Nazism--even Talking Points Memo questions Senator Roberts' reference.  According to this Washington Post story by Phil Rucker, Senator Roberts did not mean that the United States was heading towards Nazism, but "more like a European socialistic state..."  Okay, so Senator Roberts is too dumb to realize that "national socialism" really means Nazism. 

But is there a deeper story here? Senator Roberts claims that Kansas citizens are "losing faith in their government," while the government "is losing faith in our people."  Senator Roberts is now running to change that situation. 

And yet, what did Senator Pat Roberts do before this loss of faith between the Kansas citizens and government became apparent to him?  According to Wikipedia, Pat Roberts was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980, serving for eight congressional terms.  Roberts was then elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996, and is currently serving his third term.  In other words, Pat Roberts has been serving in both the House and Senate for a combined 34 years!  And only now Roberts is running to restore the faith between Kansas citizens and the government?  What was he doing for the past 34 years--18 years in the Senate and 16 years in the House?  According to the Washington Post:

Shirley Deege is a proud Republican. For as long as she can remember, the nurse has been voting for Pat Roberts — in the 1980s, when he represented a vast patchwork of dusty plains hamlets in the House; in 1996, when he first ran for the Senate; and every six years after that.

“Looking back over my life, I’m wondering, ‘What major things has he done for Kansas?’ I’m coming up empty,” said Deege, 53, as she sipped coffee while waiting for Roberts to arrive at the county fairgrounds in Kinsley this week.

“He’s spent so much time in Washington,” she added. “I know he has a house in Virginia. Dodge City is supposed to be his home, just up the highway, but I don’t hear of him coming back too much.”

  [....]

Many Kansans feel the same about Roberts after his 33 years in elected office. Many more want him gone, even if it means replacing him with a political enigma named Greg Orman — a wealthy investor running as an independent who has declined to say whether he would caucus with Republicans or Democrats. 

The backlash against Roberts stems not from any single issue — ideologically, he has followed his party’s shift to the right — but from a widespread feeling that he has grown too insular in Washington and fallen out of touch.

“I’m 78 years old, and I’ve been voting for [Roberts] since the beginning,” Darrel Miller, a retired wheat farmer, said after seeing Roberts in Kinsley. “I don’t wish him any ill will. I just think we need a change.”

 What is especially ironic is that Roberts is running in a close Senate race with an unknown independent, in a heavily Republican state.  What is more, Roberts was seen with former Senate Republican leader Bob Dole in Kinsley, Kansas, where the ailing Dole is in the midst of his own farewell tour throughout his native state.  Bob Dole was a powerhouse U.S. Senator, Senate Majority and Minority Leader, and a former Republican presidential candidate in the 1996 election.  What did Senator Pat Roberts do in his career?  National GOP strategist and former Senator John McCain adviser John Weaver said, "He’s basically furniture in the Senate, and the people in Kansas know that....You could give the average Kansan 24 hours to come up with something Pat Roberts has done in the Senate, and after 24 hours, even the crickets would be standing there befuddled." 

The deeper story here is that Senator Pat Roberts is completely out-of-touch with ordinary Kansas citizens.  Pat Roberts was voted in during the same year Ronald Reagan took control of the Oval Office in 1980.   He has been in Washington for almost 34 years, probably voting a staunchly conservative, pro-business legislation and policies throughout his political career.  I'm also guessing Senator Roberts also supported Reagan's supply-sided economic theories and probably did not try to stop the 30-plus years of growing inequality between the extreme one percent rich and everyone else.   Pat Roberts' career was hobnobbing with the powerful political, business, and ubber-rich elites in Washington D.C. to the point of becoming an elitist himself.  He  ignored what's the matter with Kansas for years--decades even, as he played the elitist lifestyle..  Now that Kansas voters are waking up to this piece of furniture in the Senate, Senator Roberts is fighting for his political life in the tired, hard-right conservative meme of fear-mongering among the Tea Party activists in Kansas.  According to the WaPost article, Roberts has brought in former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, Senator Rand Paul (KY), Senator John McCain (AZ), and former Florida governor Jeb Bush to campaign for him.  In addition, the national Republican Party has forced Roberts to replace his campaign staff with out-of-state political operatives, who are now attacking independent Greg Orman, and attempting to "stir suspicions" among Kansas voters that the potential Republican Senate majority hinges on Roberts' re-election.  It is a classic, GOP fear-mongering technique to keep the voter base in check. 

The question to ask now is will the Kansas voters be swayed by the stale, fear-mongering from Senator Roberts and the GOP, or will they decide to go for an unknown change? 

Koch Brothers purchasing Florida's Supreme Court

I found this Miami Herald story via Daily Kos:

The new stealth campaign against three Florida Supreme Court justices is being backed by those meddling right-wing billionaires from Wichita, Charles and David Koch.

They couldn’t care less about Florida, but they love to throw their money around.

Last week they uncorked the first of a series of commercials from their political action committee, Americans for Prosperity. The targets are Justices R. Fred Lewis, Barbara Pariente and Peggy Quince.

They were three of the five-vote majority that in 2010 knocked down a half-baked amendment slapped together by state lawmakers seeking to nullify the federal Affordable Health Care Act.

The Florida Supreme Court upheld lower court decisions in finding that the proposed amendment contained “misleading and ambiguous language,” the hallmark of practically everything produced by this Legislature. Stoned chimpanzees have a keener grasp of constitutional law.

Conservative groups have gone after local justices before. In Iowa, a place which has nothing but vowels in common with Florida, three state justices were fired by voters after being vilified for ruling against a ban on gay marriage.

On the November ballot, Lewis, Pariente and Quince are up for merit retention, meaning voters can choose to retain them or not. This simple system was put in place to keep the state’s high court above the sleaze of political races.

The mission of the Kochs, hiding as always behind their super PAC, is to get the three justices dumped at the polls so that Gov. Rick Scott can appoint replacements.

This is worth repeating: If the Kochs have their way, Rick Scott — yes, that Rick Scott — gets to pack the Supreme Court with his own hand-picked crew.

Yikes is right.

What we have here is a couple of hard-lined conservatives who are willing to throw hundreds of millions of dollars into buying politicians and judges, who will rule favorably in their own economic, self-interest, over that of the rest of society.  In other words, we no longer have a democracy in the United States--we've got an oligarchy! The Citizens United ruling sealed the deal in allowing the Koch brothers to hide behind their SuperPac, Americans for Prosperity, and purchase these politicians away from public scrutiny.  If the Koch brothers get their way in packing Florida's Supreme Court, you can bet they would have upheld the "half-baked amendment slapped together by state lawmakers seeking to nullify the federal Affordable Health Care Act."  They probably would have struck down stronger environmental laws, labor laws, business regulations, worker safety regulations, making it easier for Koch Industries to pollute the environment, weaken labor unions, creating more hazardous working environments, reducing employee pay and benefits, slashing all forms of business regulations, and consolidating more power and money with the Koch brothers.  What is good for Koch Industries is not good for the United States.  What is good for Koch Industries is only good for Koch Industries, and detrimental to the rest of U.S. society. 

Edwards jumping into the '08 race

Well, it appears that John Edwards is now jumping into the 2008 presidential race. This is from MSNBC News:

WASHINGTON - Former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards intends to enter the 2008 race for the White House, two Democratic officials said Saturday.

Edwards, who represented North Carolina in the Senate for six years, plans to make the campaign announcement late this month from the New Orleans neighborhood hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina last year and slow to recover from the storm.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not want to pre-empt Edwards’ announcement.

[....]

Edwards’ spokesman, David Ginsberg, would not confirm or deny that Edwards planned to announce he would run in 2008.

Ginsberg said Edwards would make an announcement about his future when he is ready.

Word leaked about Edwards’ plans just hours after Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh announced he would not seek the presidency in 2008. Bayh had been a leading candidate in early fundraising and, like Edwards, based much of his appeal on his electability. Bayh and Edwards, friends who went running together daily when they were in the Senate, each won election in Republican-leaning states.

Giuliani Takes First Step in Run for President

This is off The Washington Post:

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has apparently taken the first step toward a presidential run, filing with the New York Department of State late last week to form a presidential exploratory committee .

Papers for the "Rudy Giuliani For President Exploratory Committee, Inc." were filed last Friday in New York. It is registered as a "domestic not for profit organization."

"Mayor Giuliani has not made a decision yet," said treasurer John H. Gross. "With the filing of this document, we have taken the necessary legal steps so an organization can be put in place and money can be raised to explore a possible presidential run in 2008."

Unlike people like Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack (D) or Arizona Sen. John McCain (R), who will file their exploratory committees with the Federal Election Commission, Giuliani chose to file his organization with New York's Secretary of State.

Why? Early reports from campaign finance lawyers suggest that Giuliani will not be required to disclose any of his donations or expenditures through the state registered not-for-profit; he would not have that luxury with a federal committee. With the state-based organization he would not be able to accept any donations over the federal limits (roughly $2,100 per each individual), but would be able to transfer any money he raises into a federal presidential account. The FEC calls this sort of activity "testing the waters" -- and provides specific guidelines for candidates choosing this fundraising route.

In our most recent Friday Presidential Line, Giuliani is ranked as the third-most likely candidate to win the Republican nomination.

Aside from the particulars, Giuliani's toe-dip into the presidential waters isn't terribly surprising. He spent much of the final few months of the 2006 campaign stumping for House and Senate candidates around the country. However, he has yet to begin building campaign infrastructures in early states like Iowa and New Hampshire.

A couple thoughts on this story. First, there is no way that Giuliani, a moderate Republican, can garner enough support from both the neocons and the Religious Right wing sections of the Republican Party to make a serious run for the White House. For all the "thumping" that the Republican Party took in the midterm elections, it is still a Republican Party of George W. Bush's molding, with its emphasis in divisive politics, its refusal to compromise, or even in engaging in bipartisanship with the Democrats. The Republican Party is still a hard right-wing party, no matter what the political pundits are saying in the aftermath of the elections. There is no room for a moderate Republican of Giuliani's stature in the presidential political race.

The second problem with the Giuliani 2008 presidential campaign is John McCain. According to a November 10, 2006 ABC News story:

ABC News has learned that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and his political team have decided it's full steam ahead for his 2008 presidential campaign though he has yet to make the final, official decision.

Sources close to McCain say on Wednesday in Phoenix, he and a half dozen of his top aides huddled and decided to proceed more formally with his quest for the White House.

McCain told ABC News that his team will continue to meet and "go through the process of decision making." But, he added, "I certainly haven't made any decision."

A presidential exploratory committee is expected to be set up this month — perhaps as early as next week.

John McCain has been lusting after the White House since 2000, when McCain lost the Republican presidential nomination to George W. Bush. For the past year, McCain has been courting the Religious Right wing of the Republican Party, delivering a commencement address at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University on May 13. McCain has been courting the Religious Right voters in the hopes of averting the disaster McCain experienced back in 2000, where Bush supporters spread "salacious rumors about McCain in phone calls and e-mail messages. One such rumor accused McCain of fathering illegitimate children." This smear campaign against McCain caused McCain to lose the South Carolina primary to Bush.

The real issue here is that this is probably the last shot that John McCain has for winning the White House. In 2008, John McCain will be 72 years old--McCain will be the oldest president elected to the White House. Ronald Reagan was 69 when he was elected to the presidency in 1980. The last thing that John McCain will want is to have a nasty Republican primary race with the former New York City mayor, and the Republican Party's 9/11 political hero, Rudolph Giuliani. It is no wonder that Giuliani filed his exploratory bid through the state of New York, rather than through the Federal Election's Commission. Not only does this allow Giuliani to accept contributions greater than the FEC limit, but that Giuliani may also realize just how formidable the McCain organization could become, once McCain officially enters the race.

The race for the 2008 White House has just started.

Karl Rove--Steadfast even in face of criticism

Graphic by CQ Politics

I found this off The Washington Post:

Rove's brand of politics aims to sharpen differences with the opposition, energize the conservative base and micro-target voters to pick off selected parts of the other side's constituency. As he has in past elections, Rove designed a strategy to paint Democrats as weak on national security and terrorism, the "party of cut and run."

In an expansive interview last week, Rove said that strategy was working until the House page sex scandal involving ex-representative Foley (R-Fla.) put the Republican campaign "back on its heels," as he put it. "We were on a roll, and it stopped it," he said. "It revived all the stuff about Abramoff and added to it."

The various scandals surrounding convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and other ethics allegations, Rove said, had as much, if not more, to do with the defeat than the Iraq war. In Rove's analysis, 10 of the 28 House seats Republicans lost were sacrificed because of various scandals. Another six, he said, were lost because incumbents did not recognize and react quickly enough to the threat. That leaves 12 other seats lost, fewer than the 15 that Democrats needed to capture the House. So without corruption and complacency, he argued, Republicans could have kept control regardless of Bush's troubles and the war.

"It plays some role, but if Iraq is the determining factor and it is a dominant opinion, then in a blue state like Connecticut you should not have 60 percent of the voters vote for one of the candidates who said, 'Stay, fight and win,' " Rove said, referring to Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman's victory as an independent. "I don't deny that it's a factor, but it is hard to declare" that it is the overriding factor.

The "one-pager" outlines why, in his view, the losses were not particularly extraordinary and therefore not a repudiation of Bush: The loss of 28 House seats and six Senate seats is roughly comparable to losses suffered by the party in the White House in the sixth year of other presidencies and the same as the average wartime midterm. Moreover, it says, 23 races were decided by two percentage points or less, and it credits the "GOP Ground Game," the Rove-devised turnout machine. Overall, a shift of 77,611 votes would have kept the House in Republican hands.

Others point to different statistics -- voters nearly 2 to 1 casting ballots to express opposition to Bush; one in five conservatives voting for Democrats; fewer Hispanics, Catholics and evangelicals supporting Republicans; most voters favoring withdrawal of some or all U.S. troops from Iraq. Some dismiss Rove's historical comparisons as a rationalization for failure, especially since the gerrymandering of House districts has made it harder to oust incumbents than in past midterms.

Rove believes that his original strategy of divisive campaigning and micro-targeting would have maintained Republican control of Congress if the Mark Foley scandal did not surface just before the election. Rove blames the Foley sex scandal, tacked on to both the continuing Abramoff and Tom DeLay scandals, in causing the Republicans to lose control of Congress to the Democrats. Karl Rove does not believe that Iraq was the determining factor for this midterm election.

There is a real problem with this thinking--Karl Rove refuses to believe that it was a combination of the Republican scandals, the Iraq war, and Karl Rove's own strategy of governing through divisive partisanship and continuous campaigning. The Bush administration's entire strategy of governing was to govern from the extreme right, while ignoring both the center and the left. Over time, Karl Rove and the Bush administration alienated the center. Consider this CQ Politics story:

According to exit polling conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for a combine of broadcast and cable television networks, Democratic candidates were favored by 57 percent of respondents who said they were not affiliated with either major party and who made up 26 percent of voters. The Republicans were favored by 39 percent of independents, which pollsters said was a 9 percentage-point drop for the Republicans from the 2002 elections.

The Democrats dominated among self-described moderates, who made up just less than half of the respondents. The 60 percent to 38 percent Democratic edge among those voters amounted to a 7 percentage-point drop-off for the GOP from 2002. Many of these voters found the Republican message more compelling in 2002 and 2004, especially its emphasis on national security and fighting terrorism in the wake of Sept. 11. The loss of faith in the GOP among many swing voters in the two years since Bush was re-elected — spurred largely by Iraq, Katrina and a series of damaging corruption scandals — contributed to the steep declines in job approval ratings for Bush and the GOP-controlled Congress.

Democrats held big advantages over Republicans, according to exit polling, on most of the big issues that voters said were important to them. On the overriding issue of the war in Iraq, 35 percent of the respondents said the subject was extremely important, and Democrats led among them by 60 percent to 39 percent for the Republicans. On the economy, 39 percent said it was extremely important — and those voters broke 59 percent to 39 percent for the Democrats. And among the 41 percent who said corruption and scandals in government were extremely important, Democrats led 59 percent to 39 percent.

Karl Rove made a huge miscalculation. You can only play divisive politics in campaigning and governing for so long here. The more you isolate the center in governing, the greater the chance of that centrist vote deserting you. And that is what happened with the Republican Party. This was not simply the Mark Foley scandal that caused the Republican Party's losses. This was an accumulation of problems that the Republicans and the Bush administration had brought upon themselves. It wasn't just the corruption. It was the entire system of governing. The Republicans governed for their own extremist base, not for the country as a whole. Look at the Republican "culture of corruption," with Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, and the K Street project. Those examples showed the Republican Party using the government to enrich themselves, their political party, and to maintain the Republican dominance in the federal government for decades--if not eternity. The entire Iraq war and the U.S. foreign policy of imperialism was designed and carried out by PNAC neocons. Instead of dealing with Middle America problems of the rising costs of health care, college tuition, the crushing effects of the Alternative Minimum Tax on middle Americans, and even the failure to raise the federal minimum wage, the Republicans concentrated their energies on tax cuts for the rich, subsidizing corporate interests, and debating such important issues as the marriage amendment, flag burning, abortion, limiting federal funding of stem cells, and reinserting the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance for public school reciting. Such important issues were raised to keep their Religious Right constituents happy within the Republican Tent--forget health care or the minimum wage. And even when the Republicans brought the minimum wage increase for debate in Congress, they linked the minimum wage increase with a cut in the estate tax, which was nothing more than an outright pander to the rich elites. The Republican tent had no room for centrists or independents--it was my way or the highway. And finally, the one scandal that really showed the Republican and Bush administration's true colors at ignoring Middle America, has to be the Katrina disaster. When Katrina was pushing up towards New Orleans, President Bush was vacationing in Crawford Texas. On the day after Katrina hit New Orleans, causing the city to be flooded, President Bush was in San Diego strumming a guitar, presented to him by Country Singer Mark Wills, during a V-J ceremony:

President Bush plays a guitar presented to him by Country Singer Mark Wills, right, backstage following his visit to Naval Base Coronado, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Bush visited the base to deliver remarks on V-J Commemoration Day. (AP Photo/ABC News, Martha Raddatz).

This is a president who lives in his own plastic bubble. And sitting next to the president is the entire Republican Party. They ignored the center, ignored the problems of middle class America. President Bush and the Republicans demanded that government intrude in middle class America's lives where they didn't want it--such as gay marriage, abortion, and flag burning--while ignoring middle class America's pleas for government when they needed it with Katrina. All of these disasters accumulated on the Bush administration, forcing both the Presidents and Republican-controlled Congress' job approvals to plummet. These are the lessons that Karl Rove has failed to learn.

You campaign by courting to your base; you govern by courting the center.

Ken Mehlman has stepped down as RNC chairman

Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, addresses the RNC state chairmen's meeting in Colorado Springs, Colo., in this May file photo. Mehlman will step down from his post when his two-year term ends in January, GOP officials said Thursday. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)

Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman is stepping down from his post. This is on CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman announced he is going to step down at the end of the year.

The White House is already searching for a replacement or replacements to lead the party into the 2008 presidential campaign cycle, sources tell CNN.

Two sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mehlman has made clear to close associates for some time he was likely to leave after the 2006 elections -- and that there is no dissatisfaction with his performance in the midterm cycle.

One name that has come up as a possible replacement is outgoing Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who just lost a U.S. Senate race.

One of the sources, though, said a more likely scenario is for Steele to join the Bush administration in another capacity after the first of the year when a few members of the Bush Cabinet and other senior officials are expected to leave.

One scenario under discussion, should Mehlman leave, according to two of the sources, is to split the RNC leadership duties, a model both parties have used at times in the past.

Under this approach, a party operative would be brought in to run day-to-day affairs, and a prominent Republican, most likely a former officeholder, would be named general chairman.

The name most talked about to run the day-to-day operation in such an approach is Maria Cino, a veteran Republican strategist who currently serves as deputy transportation secretary.

Here's another casualty in the aftermath of the Republican Party's disastrous loss to the Democrats in the midterm elections. Ken Mehlman was a protege of Karl Rove. He believed, along with Rove, that the Republicans could create that permanent Republican majority in both Congress and the White House. He believed in the campaign of divisive, partisan politics. And what is even more amazing is how Mehlman believed that he could continue this campaign of divisive politics even when the country was starting to sour on the Bush administration. Remember this a May 22, 2006 article in the Washington Post:

A top adviser said Rove and White House political director Sara M. Taylor are advising candidates not to duck the issue of Iraq but rather to make it a centerpiece of their campaigns.

The Rove-Taylor view is that one-third of Americans agree with liberal Democrats calling for immediate withdrawal and another third support staying the course. The middle third wants a new strategy, but would be leery of pulling out and leaving behind a volatile Iraq, a position strategists believe leaves those voters open to persuasion.

"Look, we're in a sour time -- I readily admit it," Rove said in a speech last week. "I mean, being in the middle of a war where people turn on their television sets and see brave men and women dying is not something that makes people happy and optimistic and upbeat." But, he added, "Ultimately, the American people are a center-right country who, presented with a center-right party with center-right candidates, will vote center-right."

Perhaps the most important element of the emerging strategy will be to "move from a referendum to a choice," as Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman put it. Instead of a verdict on Bush, Republicans want to frame the election as a contest with Democrats, confident that voters unhappy with the president will find the opposition even more distasteful.

"We're moving from a period where the public looks at things and says thumbs-up or thumbs-down, to a time when they have a choice between one side or the other," Mehlman said.

Thumbs in the middle--just make sure that the middle thumb is pointing rightwards.

Mehlman was also involved in the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal, where it was revealed in the criminal trial of Northeast field director for the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee James Tobin had placed 115 outgoing calls to the White House political affairs office between September 17 and November 22, 2002. The White House political affairs office was headed by Ken Mehlman. The White House refuses to divulge which staffer was assigned the number that Tobin called. The Republican National Committee was also involved in paying for the legal defenses of both James Tobin, hiring the Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly for $2.5 million. This entire phone jamming scandal was enacted to shut down the Democratic phone banks that were being used in a GOTV program to help elect then-Democratic-governor Jeanne Shaheen to the U.S. Senate over Republican John Sununu. Sununu defeated Shaheen in a narrow victory. While Mehlman has not been directly implicated in this scandal, his ties to the scandal raise suspicion.

Mehlman is another tie to the GOP's "culture of corruption." Mehlman and Karl Rove represent the rot of the Republican Party under George Bush--the bitter partisanship, the divisive country, the pandering to the extreme base, no compromise, demonizing opponents, and even using criminality to gain and control absolute power and money.

Good riddance!

Allen concedes defeate--Democrats take Senate

Sen. George Allen, R-Va., delivers a concession speech with his wife, Susan, at his side, in Alexandria, Va., Thursday, Nov. 9, 2006. Allen conceded defeat Thursday to Democrat Jim Webb, sealing the Democrats' control of Congress and the political downfall of a man once considered a White House contender. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Well, the last race has been decided. Virginia senator George Allen has conceded defeate to Democratic challenger Jim Webb. This is from the New York Times:

Senator George Allen of Virginia conceded today that he lost to the Democratic challenger, Jim Webb, ending the last undecided Senate contest and giving Democrats control of the full Congress for the first time in a dozen years.

“In this season the people of Virginia, who I always call the owners of the government, they have spoken,” Mr. Allen said. “And I respect their decision.” He said he had called to congratulate Mr. Webb, who had already claimed victory in the race after Tuesday’s voting.

[....]

The triumph in Virginia effectively gives Democrats 51 seats in the Senate. (Representative Bernard Sanders, the senator-elect from Vermont, is an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut is a Democrat, although he ran for re-election as an independent after losing in the primary.)

This is big. Over the past couple of days, there have been rumors that Allen would demand a recount of the Virginia ballots, hoping to find enough votes to push him over the slight lead that Webb had maintained. In the end, Webb defeated Allen "by less than 1 percent, or 8,805 votes."

So now the Democrats have control of both Houses in Congress. They can initiate their own legislation, use Congress as their own megaphone to blunt the White House bully pulpit, conduct investigations and oversight into the White House scandals, and force the president to select moderate federal and potential Supreme Court judges. That is the good news.

The bad news is that the Democrats could let the power of Congress get to their heads. For over four years, the Democrats have been shut out of governing by a Republican-controlled Congress, and a Republican White House. The desire for revenge against the Republicans can be tempting. The Democrats have to realize that the American voters gave them a referendum to legislate, when they gave the Democrats control of Congress--just as the American voters gave a referendum to the Republicans for their own failure to legislate for the good of the country. This brings us back to bipartisanship. The Democrats are going to need to show the American people that they can also legislate in a bipartisan manner. They need to show to the American people that they can also work with the Bush White House in passing legislation for the good of the country. And just as I've questioned whether President Bush can work with the Democratic Congress in a bipartisan manner, rather than using the Congress as a rubber-stamp, I also pose the same question to the Democratic Congress.

It will be an interesting next year.

A small tinge of sadness here....

Okay, I will admit that I do feel a small tinge of sadness here for these two candidates--Rick Santorum and Katherine Harris.

Let's start with Rick Santorum:

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Pennsylvania voters handed the U.S. Senate's No. 3 Republican his first political defeat Tuesday, rejecting conservative stalwart Rick Santorum in favor of Democrat Bob Casey, the mild-mannered son of a former two-term governor.

Santorum, a strong voice for conservatives in Washington, had long been a polarizing figure in Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania. Although admired for his blunt talk, he alienated voters with his harsh partisanship and his positions on an array of issues, from support of the Iraq war to his complaint that in too many households both parents work outside the home.

[....]

With 84% of precincts reporting, Casey had 1,922,962 votes, or 59%, and Santorum had 1,338,963, or 41%.

[....]

Santorum raised $25 million and Casey $15 million, making it the most expensive Senate race in Pennsylvania history.

Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., appears before supporters in Pittsburgh to concede to Democrat Bob Casey Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

The president's Number 3 man in the Senate was stomped by the son of a former governor--and we're talking an 18-percentage point stomping here!

Santorum was an ideologue. He was against abortion, stem cell research, and gay marriage, to which he likened as a threat coming from terrorists. Santorum believed that intelligent design was a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in public schools. Santorum himself got embroiled in the intelligent design debate when he first praised Dover Area School District's decision to included intelligent design in the science curriculum, but then reversed himself after U.S. District Judge John E. Jones ruled against the school district, calling it "a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory...." And finally, who can not forget Santorum's flip-flopping regarding his residency--is Santorum a resident of Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, where he owns a $106,000 home, or a resident of Leesburg, Virginia, where he owns a $757,000 home?

Talk about a politician with enough skeletons in his closet, regarding his own controversial views and flip-flops. In one sense, Santorum makes politics fun. He is akin to a carnival sideshow within the halls of the Senate. That sideshow has now been replaced.

And then there is Katherine Harris. If Rick Santorum was the carnival sideshow for the Senate, then Katherine Harris was a three-ring circus in the political campaign for the Florida Senate seat:

ORLANDO, Fla. - U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson coasted as expected to a second term Tuesday by trouncing Republican challenger Katherine Harris, who staged a bungled, long-shot bid to unseat the popular incumbent.

Nelson touted his reputation as a moderate senator who could work across party lines. Harris, the Longboat Key congresswoman famous for her role in overseeing the Florida recount that gave George W. Bush the presidency in 2000, couldn't overcome myriad campaign problems and trailed in the polls all along.

With 99 percent of the expected vote counted, Nelson beat Harris 60 percent to 38 percent.

[....]

The challenge for Harris had been making her message heard over the din of campaign troubles and controversy. Besides slow fundraising and initial lack of support from state GOP leaders, including Gov. Jeb Bush, Harris lost a host of campaign staffers, made questionable public statements and had to answer for her dealings with a corrupt defense contractor who admitted funneling illegal contributions to her congressional campaign.

For her part, Harris blamed the media and disgruntled former campaign workers for trying to undermine her and keep the focus off the issues.

Florida Republican U.S. Senate candidate,Rep. Katherine Harris, R-Fla., left, concedes the senate race to incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., as her husband, Anders Ebbeson, right, looks on, during an election night gathering, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006, in Sarasota, Fla. (AP Photo/Steve Nesius)

The Harris campaign was a walking disaster. Harris was first embroiled in the MZM scandal, where defense contractor MZM Inc. gave Harris $50,000 in political campaign contributions, with $32,000 of those contributions bundled together illegally. Harris failed to report to the feds that MZM wanted her help in funding "a Navy counterintelligence facility in Sarasota." After that, it was all downhill. Karl Rove and the National Republican Senatorial Committee tried to talk Harris out of running for the Senate. She refused. Florida governor Jeb Bush doubted that Harris could win, and there was even GOP talk of enticing Florida House Speaker Alan Bense as a late entry into the Florida primary race to challenge Harris. Bense refused. The Harris campaign was plagued with problems. According to Time Magazine:

[The Harris] campaign has suffered from two en masse walkouts of staffers who describe her as erratic and abusive to staff and who often go on to dish insider tales to the media. Her congressional office also has seen a lot of turnover. Harris believes she has been sabotaged by former staffers and the national party, who she said were "putting knives in her back," according to the Tampa Tribune.

On August 17, Harris promoted a major campaign event at the Orlando Executive Airport hosted by top party officials including Sen. Mel Martinez and Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings. When none of the dignitaries and no elected officials showed up, Harris said they were probably lost when a tree fell on the original hangar and the event was moved. However, airport officials said no hangar had been damaged and the event was held where originally scheduled.

When newspapers aren't covering the more than two dozen staffers who have departed her campaign, her press often veers toward the salacious: her clothing choices are inappropriately tight-fitting to emphasize her bust line; she is so hooked on Starbucks coffee that she requires all Starbucks stores be mapped out on her campaign routes.

The latest headlines revolve around Harris's comments to a Florida Baptist journal that the separation of church and state is "a lie" and that if Christians are not elected, politicians will "legislate sin." She has since backtracked, claiming that she "had been speaking to a Christian audience, addressing a common misperception that people of faith should not be actively involved in government" and that her comments reflected "her deep grounding in Judeo-Christian values". Nonetheless, major newspapers around the state are endorsing 71-year-old LeRoy Collins Jr. whose biggest selling points are that he is the son of Florida's beloved 1950s Gov. LeRoy Collins, he has promised to serve only one term — and most important of all, he is not Katherine Harris.

I believe that either The Three Stooges or The Marx Brothers can run a better senatorial campaign than Katherine Harris.

In a sense, both Rick Santorum and Katherine Harris represented the ideological extremes that this Republican Party has embraced over the past six years. Santorum was the GOP poster boy. In fact, Congressional Quarterly ratings show he [Santorum] voted with his party 92 percent of the time in 2005 and with Mr. Bush 95 percent of the time...." Rick Santorum was the face of the successful, extremely ideological Republican legislator. Katherine Harris represented another part of this extremism. Harris was the loyal, ideological, GOP operative who would happily follow whatever orders were given to her. She dutifully performed her role in helping Republican George W. Bush become elected president during the 2000 Florida recount. Because of her service in providing Bush the presidency, Harris may have felt that the GOP owed her the Florida Senate seat. And yet as a result of either her own incompetence, mismanagement of her campaign, or even the stigmata of her involvement in the Florida debacle, the Republicans deserted her. You could say that the Republicans used Harris to get Bush elected in the Florida recount, and then left her as Harris cast her ambitious political eyes on the Senate. The Harris campaign shows just how little loyalty the Republican Party may have for its own members, when their own political ambitions conflict with greater GOP strategic goals. This can also be seen with the Republican Party's desertion of Connecticut Republican senatorial candidate Alan Schlesinger for Independent Joe Lieberman. And yet in the 2006 midterm elections, the American voters rejected these two Republican ideologues from the U.S. Senate. So yes, I do have a tinge of sadness as Rick Santorum and Katherine Harris take a bow, and leave the political scene.

But not that much....

Some thoughts on the election yesterday

I've been reading a number of the mainstream news stories and blogs regarding yesterday's election and the disaster for the Republicans. The big question I'm asking is what exactly happened to cause this disaster for the Republican Party? Why did the Democrats re-take the House, and are now on the verge of capturing the Senate, with Democrat Jon Tester's win over Republican Conrad Burns in Montana? What happened?

The pundits are already spinning the Election Day story. CNN has an election poll story saying that voters were angry at Bush over Iraq, while there is another story saying that the White House plans to extend an olive branch to the Democrats. Time is proclaiming an end to the Republican Revolution. Newsweek is calling this a humility for the Bush administration. The New York Times says that the election will bring a new landscape to the capitol. McClatchy says that Americans have delivered a message to Bush.

There is a bit of truth in all of these stories. In reality, this was the referendum of President Bush's presidency. This election was the election that should have taken place in 2004, but didn't due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and constant state of fear-mongering. For the past six years, President Bush has been pushing the government further rightwards, while ignoring the center and left constituencies. According to the Los Angeles Times:

Bush and [chief White House political advisor Karl] Rove placed their main emphasis on unifying and energizing Republicans and right-leaning independents with an agenda that focused squarely on the goals of conservatives.

But Tuesday's broad Democratic advance underscored the risks in that approach: In many races, Republicans were overwhelmed by an energized Democratic base and a sharp turn toward the Democrats by moderate swing voters unhappy with the president's performance.

"The story line really is that the Democrats are winning the middle," said Democratic pollster Al Quinlan.

Veteran GOP pollster Bill McInturff said: "Iraq is front and center of this election, and people voted for change. The GOP base held — was motivated and voted — but the margins among independents and moderates [for Democrats] was too much to overcome."

The National Election Pool exit polls conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International showed that 80% of voters who disapproved of the Iraq war voted Democratic for Congress, while 80% who approved voted Republican. But only about two in five voters approved of the war, while nearly three-fifths disapproved, according to figures posted by CNN.

In other words, both President Bush and Karl Rove decided that they could govern from the right through a combination of energizing their extreme right base, marginalizing and then ignoring both the center and the left, and finally demonizing any criticism against the Bush administration's policies--President Bush and Karl Rove tried to govern the country as a continuous election campaign, rather than adopting a legislative agenda and policies that would appeal to a broad center of the country. Consider some of these examples: The GOP tied a minimum wage increase with a permanent repeal of the estate tax. There is the entire Katrina disaster, both the Bush administration's failure to recognize andrespond to the emergency, the White House's constant shifting of blame to everyone except themselves, and even suspicions of profiteering as a result of the disaster. President Bush signed an emergency bill "to allow brain-damaged Terri Schiavo's parents to ask a federal judge to prolong their daughter's life," effectively siding with the religious right regarding the Schiavo debate. President Bush instituted a massive domestic spying program with NSA wiretappings, and allowed the FBI to investigate anti-war protesters. It is this type of governing from the hard right that has angered both the center and the left, creating a voting bloc that has now shot down President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress.

Iraq. If there is any issue or policy that defines the Bush presidency, it is Iraq. The Bush administration started marketing their invasion of Iraq just before the 2002 midterm elections. President Bush argued that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Then National Security Advisor Condi Rice declared that Iraq's nuclear program should not advance from "the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." President Bush had also declared that Iraq had high-level contacts with al Qaeda. The Bush administration even found a way to link Saddam Hussein with the September 11th attacks. This argument of Iraq being responsible for the 9/11 attacks continued into 2004, This line of argument continued in September 2006, where Vice President Cheney insisted that Iraq was still developing WMDs, and had contacts with al Qaeda. The Bush administration chose to go to war with Iraq. The Bush administration has consistently attacked critics of their war in Iraq, claiming such critics would "rewrite the history of how that war began," calling such critics "Dishonest and Reprehensible," and even aiding the terrorists. Even as the Bush administration was receiving reports on the deteriorating situation in Iraq just before the election, the administration continued to spin U.S. progress in Iraq, even to the point of claiming that the increase in Iraqi violence was linked to the 2006 midterm elections. The Bush White House chose to go to war in Iraq. The war turned sour on them. And in the end, the administration was forced to deal with the consequences of this disaster, where "57 percent of all voters disapprove of the war in Iraq and 58 percent disapprove of Bush's job performance." Iraq was a decisive factor in the Republican's defeat.

Of course, there is certainly more. Hurricane Katrina was just as an important domestic factor against the Bush White House, with both criticism mounting against the government's response to Katrina, and the consequential political effects of the disaster. But the real smoking gun here had to be the release of the videotape a presidential videoconference where ex-Fema chief Michael Brown gave stark warnings of the disaster New Orleans would be facing as Katrina would hit the city a day later. President Bush sat at a table in a small room at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. He did not ask any questions. This videotape showed both the Bush administration's insensitivity towards average Americans, and their incompetence at responding quickly towards a crisis. And while Katrina may not have been immediately on their minds as Americans voted, the disaster certainly contributed towards the long-term souring of the Bush administration's job performance.

Finally, there is the Republican scandals and "culture of corruption." This certainly played a major part in the American voter's revolt against the Republican Party. The Washington Post reported that "Indictments, investigations and allegations of wrongdoing have helped put at least 15 Republican House seats in jeopardy...." And this wasn't just the Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, or Mark Foley scandals. On November 3, 2006, the Associated Press reported that GOP Representative Don Sherwood had paid his mistress Cynthia Ore $500,000 to not reveal publicly allegations that Sherwood had chocked her. Virginia Senator George Allen was continuously plagued with allegations of using racist statements, and was even caught saying that a 20-year-old volunteer of Indian descent was a "macaca," which is a racial slur against African immigrants. The real damage here to the Allen campaign was that the "macaca" comment was videotaped by that same Indian volunteer. Of course, the Allen campaign was also marred in another scandal where staff members assaulted blogger Mike Stark as he tried to question Allen about his sealed divorce records. The assault on Mike Stark was captured on video. And finally, we've got the drug and gay sex scandal involving televangelist Ted Haggard, which came out just three days before the election. I have never seen as many scandals being exposed in the last months--and even the last couple of weeks--before the election, as I have seen with this Republican Party. Even as the American voters were exposed to these latest scandals, they were also continually reminded of the long-running GOP scandals involving both Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay. All of this was pounded into the American voters just before they went to the polls.

So what will happen next? Obviously, the Bush administration will have to find a new way to deal with a Democratically-controlled House, and possibly a Democratically-controlled Senate. The American people decided for a change in Washington. They decided for a course change away from the Bush administration's agenda by providing the Democrats with control of their own branch of government. We are now back to a divided government. The question now is whether both the Democrats in Congress and the Republicans in the Bush White House will both accept real compromise in solving the serious problems this nation is embroiled in.

Rumsfeld is resigning

CNN is now reporting this story:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, architect of an unpopular war in Iraq, intends to resign after six stormy years as Secretary of Defense, Republican officials said Wednesday.

This is a huge story here. Talk about the second big casualty in the Bush administration--the first being the president's destroyed political mandate by yesterday's election-day blowout by the Democrats. President Bush and the Republican Party campaigned on a "stay the course" theme. The president was never going to change anything in his Iraq policy. President Bush had no intention of replacing Rumsfeld. Bush even stated that Rumsfeld would stay on as Defense Secretary on until 2008. Had the Republicans maintained control of Congress, you can bet that Rumsfeld would still have a cabinet job.

Everything changed after the Democrats smashed the Republican control of the House by picking up 28 Republican seats in the House and four seats in the Senate (with the senate races in Montana and Virginia still too close to call). This midterm election was about the Bush administration's war in Iraq. CNN reports:

According to CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider, voters were angry and wanted change -- and the old adage that all politics is local did not apply this year.

Schneider said as he interviewed voters across the country, "a lot of voters said, 'I'm going to vote Democratic.' They didn't even know the name of the Democrat, but they said, 'I'm going to vote Democratic because I don't like Bush, I don't like the war, I want to make a statement.'"

According to exit polls, 57 percent of all voters disapprove of the war in Iraq and 58 percent disapprove of Bush's job performance.

Most voters cast their ballots on national rather than local issues, with 60 percent saying national issues mattered most to their vote, while 34 percent said local issues mattered most.

Independents, who make up 26 percent of the national electorate, were the swing constituency. They voted for Democrats by a 59 percent to 37 percent margin.

"We haven't seen that big a vote for one party among independents since exit polling began about 30 years ago," said Schneider.

Forget the Republican spin that the election was really about individual races--this election was a referendum on President Bush's war in Iraq. Rumsfeld was a key figure in the planning of the invasion of Iraq by using a small number of troops with superior firepower. His invasion plan worked. However Rumsfeld failed to plan for the American occupation of Iraq, reconstruction, and the worst-case scenario of an Iraqi home-grown insurgency. While Rumsfeld's invasion plan worked, he did not have enough American troops in Iraq to both maintain order, and to guard the numerous Iraqi weapons depots. It is these failures that have brought us into this disaster. Now with the Democrats in control of the House, you can bet that there were going to be House investigations, with subpoena powers, into the Bush administration's role into the marketing of the invasion of Iraq, and the post-reconstruction and occupation of Iraq. Rumsfeld would be on an even hotter seat than he has been for the past four years. Keeping Rumsfeld on until 2008 with a Democratic-controlled House, and possible Democratic-controlled Senate, became a liability for the Bush White House.

Thus, Rumsfeld had to go.

daily show rocks midterm elections

Okay, so this little YouTube video was released for the 2002 midterm elections. But still it is wickedly funny, considering all the advantages that incumbents have in winning the midterm elections. So I have to include this as a little political satire.

From YouTube--Jon Stewarts The Daily Show Rocks Midterm Elections:

Special Commentary by Keith Olbermann--just before the election!

We've got another powerful Special Commentary by Keith Olbermann here. This one is especially potent since Olbermann really asks both the American people and President Bush, "Checks and balances. Where did that go, Mr. Bush? And what price did we pay because we have let it go?"

Both Crooks and Liars and MSNBC have the transcript and video of Olbermann's Special Commentary.

YouTube has the video here:



There is one part of Olbermann's commentary that I would like to highlight here. Olbermann starts off talking about the latest death sentence against Saddam Hussein:

Saddam Hussein, found guilty in an Iraqi court.

Who can argue against that?

He is officially, what the world always knew he was: a war criminal.

Mr. Bush, was this imprimatur, worth the cost of 2,832 American lives, and thousands more American lives yet to be lost?

Is the conviction of Saddam Hussein the reason you went to war in Iraq?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because of the weapons of mass destruction that did not exist?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because of the connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda that did not exist?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to break the bonds of tyranny there, while installing the mechanisms of tyranny here?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because you felt the need to wreak vengeance against somebody, anybody?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to contain a rogue state which, months earlier, your own administration had declared had been fully contained by sanctions?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to keep gas prices down?

How startling it was, sir, to hear you introduce oil to your stump speeches over the weekend.

Not four years removed from the most dismissive, the most condescending, the most ridiculing denials of the very hint at, as Mr. Rumsfeld put it, this “nonsense.”

There you were, campaigning in Colorado, in Nebraska, in Florida, in Kansas -- suddenly turning this ‘unpatriotic idea’ into a platform plank.

"You can imagine a world in which these extremists and radicals got control of energy resources," you told us. "And then you can imagine them saying, 'We're going to pull a bunch of oil off the market to run your price of oil up unless you do the following.'"

Having frightened us, having bullied us, having lied to us, having ignored and rewritten the Constitution under our noses, having stayed the course, having denied you’ve stayed the course, having belittled us about "timelines" but instead extolled "benchmarks," you’ve now resorted, sir, to this?

We must stay in Iraq to save the $2 gallon of gas?

Mr. President, there is no other conclusion we can draw as we go to the polls tomorrow.

Sir, you have been making this up as you went along.

This country was founded to prevent anybody from making it up as they went along.

It is rather disturbing to know that we have an administration that has been making up everything as they've gone along. And it is especially depressing to watch this spin go one--time and time again--by this administration which has no honesty or respect for this nation's government and the Constitution. We've seen this type of excuses in Iraq--not just on the lack of Iraqi WMDs, but also with the Bush marketing spin on why the United States even went to war with Iraq. You remember some of the spin--Iraq had WMDs, Iraq was harboring al Qaida terrorists, Iraq was responsible for 9/11, Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator, Saddam Hussein is just like Adolf Hitler--killing his people, we need to protect the Iraqi oil from the al Qaida terrorists, the Iraqis will welcome the U.S. soldiers as liberators and throw flowers at their feet. I know that in my blog, I've stated so many times how these "excuses" by President Bush were nothing more than marketing spin--that the Bush White House is really a marketing and sales office to sell to the American people. But even I'll have to admit some surprise at just how much the Bush administration refuses to admit any errors, accept any responsibility, and continues to make excuses to their own mistakes. It is endless.

Olbermann ends his commentary by not blaming President Bush and the Republicans for the destruction of the delicate system of checks and balances within our government. Instead, Olbermann blames all of us--the American people--for allowing President Bush to "go to war in Iraq to oust Saddam or find non-existent weapons or avenge 9/11 or fight terrorists who only got there after we did or as cover to change the fabric of our Constitution or for lower prices at The Texaco or…?"

The American people have been letting President Bush make everything up as he went along. We've allowed this Bush administration to go unchecked and unbalanced.

Vote.

A roundup on the latest election news stories--tomorrow is Election Day

Tomorrow is Election Day. It will be the day when we'll find out if the Republicans will maintain control of Congress, or will the Democrats snatch a devastating victory away from the Republicans and the Bush administration? Both the Democrats and Republicans are engaged in a massive effort of last-minute campaigning, GOTV voter drives, and even voter suppression scams. So for today, I thought I would give a round-up of some of the last-minute election stories taking place.

We'll start with an ABC News report saying that Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist will not attend a Florida campaign rally with President Bush. This story is already racing through the mainstream media news sites. According to ABC News:

Crist insists that backing out of the appearance was not a snub at the president but a campaign necessity, and he emphasized his need to spend time in major television markets and more competitive parts of the state, where his lead could be stronger.

Whatever the reason, the fact that Crist was willing to pass up an opportunity to share the stage with Bush speaks volumes about the president's popularity — or lack thereof — this campaign season.

Who will stand by the president's side in Florida? In addition to his brother and first lady Laura Bush, he'll have Rep. Katherine Harris, who is more than 20 points down in her bid for the Senate against Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson.

I'd say that Crist pulling out at the last minute is not making the president happy. Of course, Karl Rove is "a little uppity" at Crist's sudden cancellation of his campaign appearance with President Bush.

CNN is now projecting President Bush's popularity at 35 percent, "with 41 percent of likely voters saying their disapproval of his performance will affect their vote in Tuesday's elections for control of Congress." CNN is also stating that the war in Iraq could be the single most important issue that tips the control of Congress to the Democrats.

The Los Angeles Times has a fascinating article contrasting the voter turnout strategies between the Democrats and Republicans. The Republicans engage in a turnout strategy based on niche-marketing, engaging in voter outreach through the use of computerized micro-targeting of potential voters using a vast database the GOP has built up over the years. While the Democrats are trying to build their own program of niche-marketing, along with creating a database of potential Democratic voters, the main Democratic strategy appears to be repeating the same message--Iraq is a mess. The Republicans and President Bush got us into this mess. It is time for a change. The big question is which strategy will work tomorrow?

MSNBC is reporting that the Republicans might just maintain control of the Senate. MSNBC is claiming that the races in Montana, Missouri, Rhode Island and Virginia have been tightening, where the polls are showing a virtual tie in the Senate races of all four states. In Tennessee, MSNBC is reporting that Republican Bob Corker currently has a 12-point lead over Democrat Harold Ford, 50 percent to 38 percent with 9 percent still undecided. McClatchy also reports that the Republicans could maintain control of the Senate, citing the same MSNBC poll numbers.

Saddam Hussein's execution and American politics. With Saddam's execution verdict announced just two days before the election, there has been some speculation over whether President Bush or the Republicans were involved in the timing of this verdict as a means to benefit the Republicans before the election. MSNBC looks the history Republican's involvement with Hussein during the Reagan administration. Media Matters reports that the Saddam verdict may have also been postponed until before the election, citing evidence of the Bush administration's "history of timing national security-related actions to the political calendar." The Nation also questions the timing of this Saddam verdict, noting that it is "the last full news-cycle day in the US before the elections." And finally, The New Zealand Herald saying that the Saddam verdict was "rigged for Bush."

The New York Times reports a disturbing story where the Republicans are using an automated telemarketing ploy which steers voters towards Republican candidates. In other words, it is an automated version of the "push poll--a campaign tactic that is often criticized as deceptive because it involves calling potential voters under the guise of measuring public opinion, while the real intent is to change opinions with questions that push people in one direction or the other." In fact, there are a number of reports coming out regarding voter supression by the Republicans. Reports are starting to come out that the Republican senator George Allen's campaign is using voter suppression tactics against Democrat Jim Webb. There are a number of diary postings on Daily Kos regarding the Republican Party's use of robo-calls against potential Democratic voters. The Republican Party's robo-call scam is becoming widespread. Here's a Times-Herald-Record story reporting that the Republican's robo-calls are taking place in New York's 19th Congressional District against Democrat John Hall. The Chicago Tribune is also looking into the story. CBS News is reporting that this GOP robo-call scam has been launched in 53 competitive House races. Philadelphia Daily News reporter Jill Porter has written a personal column on how the GOP robo-call are making her sick. This is a big scandal that is just starting to break out against the Republicans. WMUR Channle 9 in New Hampshire is reporting GOP robo-calls taking place against 2nd Congressional District Democratic challenger Paul Hodes. Talking Points Memo has been all over this GOP robo-call scam.

GOP Sen. Conrad Burns recieved campaign contribution from attorney, then recommends the attorney to a federal judgeship a day after.

Here's another Republican scandal to chew on--with our old friend Conrad Burns. I really don't know what to say about this one, except that the timing really stinks. This is from The Billings Gazette:

WASHINGTON - Republican Sen. Conrad Burns received a $2,000 campaign donation from an attorney one day before recommending him for a federal judgeship five years ago.

Democrats immediately questioned the propriety of the contribution and Burns' action. A senior Burns aide called any link "absurd" and noted that the state's other senator, Democrat Max Baucus, also recommended the attorney.

The Senate confirmed the judicial nominee, Sam Haddon, by a vote of 95-0 on July 20, 2001.

The donation was listed in Burns' 2001 filings to the Federal Election Commission. Days before the election, the donation was noted in a report conducted by the Center for Investigative Reporting and circulated by rival Jon Tester's campaign.

Haddon and his wife, Betty, gave $2,000 to Burns' campaign on February 12, 2001 _ one day before Burns and Baucus announced their recommendation of Haddon to be a U.S. district judge for Montana.

[....]

Burns took about $150,000 in campaign contributions from convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, his clients and associates, all of which he has since given away.

This goes even way beyond Republican absurdity--Burns gets a $2,000 contribution from an attorney, and then recommends that attorney to a federal judgeship the day after?

Can you say conflict of interest here?

Newsweek Poll--President and GOP need a lifeboat

Here's the latest Newsweek poll regarding the upcoming elections:

Nov. 4, 2006 - As President George W. Bush jets across Red State America this weekend, Republican candidates are falling further behind Democratic rivals, according to the new NEWSWEEK poll. While the GOP has lagged behind Democrats throughout the campaign season, the trend in the past month—when NEWSWEEK conducted four polls in five weeks—had suggested the Republicans were building momentum in the homestretch.

No more. The new poll finds support for Republicans (and for President Bush) receding. For example, 53 percent of Americans want the Democrats to win enough seats to take control of one or both houses of Congress in the midterm elections on Tuesday. Those results are close to early October levels, while less than a third of Americans (32 percent) want Republicans to retain control. If the elections were held today, 54 percent of likely voters say they would support the Democratic candidate in their district versus 38 percent who would vote for the Republican-a 16-point edge for the Democrats.

Despite round-the-clock coverage of John Kerry’s Iraq gaffe this week and non-stop rallies in which the President paints Democrats as weak-on-terror tax lovers, the political momentum has returned to the Democrats. Maybe that’s because nearly a third of registered voters (32 percent) now say Iraq is the most important issue in deciding their vote. The economy comes in second at 19 percent. And just 12 percent say terrorism, the Republican trump card in the last three elections, is their most important issue. In fact, as millions of Americans fill in their employers’ health-care selection forms for next year, terrorism is statistically tied with health care at 11 percent.

Meanwhile, the President’s approval has fallen back to 35 percent, after a slow but steady rise from 33 percent at the beginning of October to 37 percent in the NEWSWEEK poll last week.

The good news for Republicans is that their voters are coming home; 90 percent of likely Republican voters say they would vote for the GOP’s candidate if the elections were held today, not far behind the 95 percent of Democrats who back their party’s nominee. But independents say they would vote for the Democrat over the Republican in their district nearly 2 to 1 (26 percent versus 51 percent.)

And the President’s campaign stops this weekend suggest that the GOP has given up on reaching beyond its base and that the strategy now is focused on getting supporters to the polls come Election Day. Most of Bush’s stops are in the reddest of the red states: Kansas, Montana, Texas.

Also in a column by Newsweek reporters Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey:

Four years ago, Bush and the GOP were not weighed down by worries over Iraq or ethical scandals. The White House has worked hard to squelch talk that Bush’s low poll numbers have made him politically radioactive on the campaign trail. But the numbers don’t lie.

In 2002, Bush hit 17 cities in 15 states in the final five days of the campaign. This year, a tentative schedule released by the White House has Bush working at half that pace: eight cities in seven states between now and Election Day.

In 2002, Bush devoted the final days of the campaign to helping his party’s most vulnerable candidates—a list that included four Senate candidates, nearly a dozen House races and a handful of Republican gubernatorial candidates. His itinerary included public rallies in states like Tennessee, Missouri, Minnesota, Illinois, Florida and Iowa.

Today most of those stops are scheduled in what has been traditionally regarded as Bush country, a list that includes Iowa, Kansas, Montana and Texas. This week alone, Bush held rallies in what should be friendly territory—including Tom DeLay’s old congressional district in Texas and two straight days of campaigning in Georgia.

Administration officials have said they are keeping Bush’s schedule flexible to aid any last-minute political maneuvering, so additions to his itinerary may yet come.

Both of these stories show a relationship between the rapidly dropping poll numbers of the Republican Party, and President Bush's campaign schedule. In a sense, President Bush has become politically radioactive for this campaign year. His job approval rating has remained within the 33 to 40 percent for the past year--depending upon which poll you examine. For example, a February 2006 CBS poll measured President Bush's approval rating at 34 percent. AnApril 20th, Fox News poll measured Bush's approval rating at 33 percent. A May 8th, 2006 USA Today/Gallup poll show's Bush's approval rating at 31 percent. An August 22, 2006 New York Times poll shows Bush's approval rating at 36 percent. A September 13, 2006 Pew Research poll shows President Bush's job approval rating at 37 percent. And finally, a November 2, 2006 New York Times/CBS News poll reveals President Bush's job approval rating at 34 percent--Bush's job approval ratings are exactly the same as the February 2006 CBS poll. The last thing President Bush is going to do is travel to the battleground states where the GOP candidates are most vulnerable--you're not going to see President Bush attending a campaign rally for Tennessee Senate race for Bob Corker--instead First Lady Barbara Bush campaigns at a Corker rally. President Bush campaigns in GOP-safe states, attacking the Democrats from afar. It is a liability for both the president and the Republican Party.

We'll soon see if it is a great enough liability to allow the Democrats to capture control of Congress.

G.O.P. Glum as It Struggles to Hold Congress

We're coming down to the wire here. This is from The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 — The battle for Congress rolled into a climactic final weekend with Republican Party leaders saying the best outcome they could foresee was losing 12 seats in the House, and that they were increasingly steeling themselves for the loss of at least 15 and therefore control of the House for the first time in 12 years.

Democrats and Republicans said the battle over the Senate had grown fluid going into the final hours before the elections Tuesday. Democrats said they thought they were almost certain to gain four or five seats and still had a shot at the six they need to take control.

Republicans were pouring money into Senate races in Michigan and Maryland this weekend to take advantage of what they described as last-minute opportunities, however slight, in states currently held by Democrats, while a new poll Saturday showed that Senator Conrad Burns, the Montana Republican, was tied with his challenger after a visit there by President Bush.

Party strategists on both sides, speaking in interviews after they had finished conducting their last polls and making their final purchases of television time, said they were running advertisements in more than 50 Congressional districts this weekend, far more than anyone thought would be in play at this stage.

Nearly all of those seats are held by Republicans, underscoring the degree to which President Bush and his party have been forced onto the defensive two years after he claimed that his re-election had given him the political capital to carry out an ambitious domestic and foreign agenda.

"It's the worst political environment for Republican candidates since Watergate," said Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster working in many of the top races this year.

As the final weekend began, the parties made their final tactical moves as candidates sparred over the war, the economy, corruption and competence and as elaborate get-out-the-vote campaigns were rolled out. At stake was not just control of the House and the Senate, but also potentially the course of the Bush presidency in its last two years and the debate over how to proceed in Iraq.

This is the last weekend of political campaigning for the candidates before Election Day. This weekend really caps a terrible week for the Bush administration. Four military papers have just called for Rumsfeld's head. Iraq has become the campaign issue for this election--in fact the issue was reinforced when 101 Americans have died in Iraq over the month of October. The U.S. also failed to track arms destined to the Iraqi security forces, and may have ended up in the hands of insurgents. Vice President Cheney even felt it was okay to dunk terrorist's heads in water. Evangelist Ted Haggard resigned from both his New Life Church and the National Association of Evangelicals after revelations of drug purchases and gay sexual relations with a male prostitute became known. And what did the Republicans try to latch on over this past week? How about an attack against John Kerry's botched joke on the president--which stayed in the headlines for about three days, and happy talk about the job market and the U.S. economy--happy talk that the American voters are apparently ignoring for the more serious issue of Iraq. And all of this can be superimposed over October's continued GOP scandals involving Mark Foley, George Allen, Jack Abramoff, North Korea's nuclear test, and even the criticisms of the Republican Party's use of extreme negative campaign ads.

With the barrage of bad news, is it no wonder that the Republicans are in trouble?