Posted on 12/12/2006 6:08:52 PM PST by CharlesWayneCT
I was a big supporter until this last year even though doubts were creeping in earlier. Harriet Miers (sp) really started the downhill trend because she was such a bad choice. Now this Iraq Commission has done me in completely. I also don't particularly like his choice for Secretary of Defense Gates. He is starting to remind me of his Dad in 1992 and too many of his Dad's people are now around IMHO starting with Baker and now Gates.
He is not a communicator which is getting more obvious. When he nominated people, he didn't spend a lot of political capital to get them approved. Even when the House/Senate voted against or didn't consider his initiatives, he didn't call them up to take them to take them to task.
Milk toast describes what I see right now along with pandering to various groups, and I don't like it. Really got fed up with the Administration the night of the election and have been ever since.
People around here applaud when he gets sarcastic with the media but in the end, all the people see on the nightly news are clips of his sarcasm. Ignoring the media is not how to handle them IMO. Ronald Reagan was a master and all Republicans should learn from him how to handle the media IMO. I can truthfully say after supporting the man since 1994, I am extremely disappointed in him in the last year. We won in 2004 because we had a coherent message that resonated, and the President stood up -- since then, milk toast for the most part except when he gets mad at the media in press conferences. Appointing Baker to head this Iraq Commission was one of the dumber moves I have seen. He has left himself wide open to criticism time and time again because of lack of communication. In today's environment, communication is one of the most important tools a person can have and why students today need to learn how to write and speak.
Yeah, for successful political family, Bushes seem particularly afflicted with this "disease".
I really wanted Bonilla to win, but I feared that, if he did, conservatives would get self-satisfied and think that there are no changes needed. The silver lining here may be that the GOP will be forced to realize that we can't just pretend that everything is hunky-dory and make no changes. And, by changes, I am thinking about Iraq, in particular.
Can't argue with much of what you said (nor do I want to), but a few thoughts:
1. I wouldn't worry too much about ISG and its report, both have been (rightly) discredited even before they were finished. Sure, they'are and will be used by Dems and other usual suspects, but that's why these commissions exist in DC - to be used, and if not this commission, then something more credible and more difficult to disregard would have been used, so this ISG may be a blessing in disguise. ISG was praised by Iran, Syria, "Palestinian" leaders, Jimmy Carter and criticized by Israel, Iraqi government and even more sane Democrats - so it's at best a double-edged sword and could be a downright poison pill for Dems on The Hill.
2. Like Rummy implied, with the new Congress, SecDef's job has changed from actually running the DoD to spending most of the time liaising with Congress, i.e. his job is being a "diplomat" which Gates can do credibly given the right instructions. He's not that much of Bush-41 "inside man" as Baker-Scowcroft-Powell et al gang.
3. It's not very easy to explain even with good communications skills (even to some on FR) that Crips-Bloods ...er, make it Sunni-Shia 13 centuries-old internecine warfare and settling of old scores and fight for power in Iraq doesn't at all mean that "we are losing war in Iraq" and may actually be helpful to our long-term goals and our immediate efforts in fighting al-Qaeda and other Islamo-nazis in GWOT. That's supposed to be understood, at least by conservatives, and Bush tried to make that point implicitly in a few speeches before elections, and it should've been driven home by election machinery.
4. As far as elections, he couldn't be that effective when Congress-critters ran away from him and policies and played to al-Media. Also, many lost because Dems provided "faux conservatives" with money and conservative scripts, and GOP election committees haven't reacted at all - not with money, not with the message, not with strong GOTV effort beyond simply repeating phone banks' calls to landlines which are at best ignored and at worst are annoying. Not on national nor local level.
I would put 90% of the blame on elections results on lame performance of GOP Congress itself during the year, caring more about scoring points with al-Media against the President and also almost no efforts in pointing out the obstractionist Dems (difficult when they had made little effort to pass anything except pork bills). Pork never works for Republican base, only for Democrat base and many independents - GOP played the Dems' game on Dems' field. Many in the conservative base stayed home on election day. Even with all that many Dems wins were razor-thin, and they won thanks to old Clinton machine tactics of pretending to be "conservative" or at least not San-Francisco liberals in values and ideology.
5. Ideology is important, communicating ideology and policies stemming from it clearly and effectively is equally as important.
Paraphrasing Einstein's "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind", "Ideology without communication is lame, communication without ideology is glib".
Lack of communication skills and efforts are my biggest disappointment in President and most of his Cabinet and his PR apparatus (remember Scott McLellan?).
So the "baby" CONGRESS created, the Iraq Study Group, is now Bush's fault, too? Have I got that right, PKM?
"The Bush Administration was not involved in creating the Iraq Study Group."
"It was created at the direction of a bipartisan group of members of the U.S. Congress."
Fact Sheet: Iraq Study Group: United States Institute of Peace
http://www.usip.org/isg/fact_sheet.html
You mean members from his father's administration like Dick Cheney, 41's Secretary of Defense, who has been at his right hand for six years as Vice President of the United States?
Note:
.70,412 votes in the runoff
123,799 in the Nov. race
.53,387 vote difference.
Where did Bonilla's voters go?...
60,175 Bonilla Nov. 7
32,165 Bonilla Dec. 12
28,010 difference
| U. S. Representative District 23 | ||||
| August G. "Augie" Beltran | DEM | 2,647 | 2.13% | |
| Rick Bolanos | DEM | 2,564 | 2.07% | |
| Henry Bonilla(I) | REP | 60,175 | 48.60% | |
| Adrian DeLeon | DEM | 2,198 | 1.77% | |
| Lukin Gilliland | DEM | 13,728 | 11.08% | |
| Ciro D. Rodriguez | DEM | 24,594 | 19.86% | |
| Craig T. Stephens | IND | 3,341 | 2.69% | |
| Albert Uresti | DEM | 14,552 | 11.75% | |
| ----------- | ||||
| Race Total | 123,799 | |||
| RACE | NAME | PARTY | EARLY VOTES | PERCENT | TOTAL VOTES | PERCENT | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| U. S. Representative District 23 |
|||||||
| Henry Bonilla - Incumbent | REP | 14,419 | 46.05% | 32,165 | 45.68% | ||
| Ciro D. Rodriguez | DEM | 16,896 | 53.95% | 38,247 | 54.32% | ||
| --------------- | --------------- | ||||||
| Total Votes Cast | 31,315 | 70,412 | |||||
| Precincts Reported | 267 | of | 267 Precincts | 100.00% | |||
| -------------------------------------------- | |||||||
Sad, isn't it.
I still don't like an election law that says that winning less than 50% in a general election isn't "fair", and then give the election to someone a month later who gets only 2/3rds as many votes as the winner of the general election.
How is that "better" for democracy? It seems like instead of 60,000 people having their choice for a representative, we now have the choice of 38,000 people.
On the other hand, Bonilla couldn't get his people out. I guess they are demoralized.
I think "Not a Democrats" post back at number 18 probably sums it up. 3 Bonilla voters in a family, a month to get ready, two weeks to vote, and none of them either got an absentee ballot, or was able to drive to a polling place any time in the 2 weeks leading up to today's election.
I know this is true. Henry touted his pro-life record in ads, stating that Ciros voted for partial-birth abortion. Henry couldn't overcome the Democratic machines in the southern counties, Republican voter turnout was abysmal and National DNC really was out to get this seat.
This may be naive, but I think Republicans need to reach out to Hispanics, so they really see us and not the way the media and Dems portray us. I belong to some Republicans women's club and they are way too "country-clubbish" for my taste. Nice people, but I don't see them working in the barrios.
I may be that Bonilla lost the day the district was revised, but I believe he lost because of what has happened since Nov. 7 -- absolutely nothing helpful to Republicans. South San Antonio though is as Democrat as San Francisco.
The law you are talking about was passed about 1959. It was actually passed to retaliate against the late Senator Ralph William Yarborough, who won his Senate seat in a special election in 1957 with 38 percent of the special election vote. Thereafter, special election "runoffs" have been required in TX. The Nov. 7 election was NOT a primary but a special election. In TX one must have a majority to win either a primary or a special election, but he need not have a majority for a general election, as witnessed with Mr. Perry. I understand that Perry has hopped on the illegal immigration bandwagon too SINCE the election.
How do we know that it was the "Religious Right" which stayed home on Nov. 7? Remember 1/3 of the "Religious Right" voted for Clinton and Gore in 1996, according to a George Barna survey. Barna does surveys of church peoples. It may have been just people in general who stayed home because the Republicans did not give them, in their mistaken view, a "reason" to "bother" to go to the polls.
Yep, and once we have another Xlinton in the white house the last nail in the coffin will have been driven.
The only thing that could halt the third Clinton term was OH, and OH went as Democrat as neary any other state on Nov. 7. I think OH is returning to its Glenn-Metzenbaum roots. With OH lost, the "fertile" pickings become MN, WI, maybe OR. Not much chance there
"I may be that Bonilla lost the day the district was revised, but I believe he lost because of what has happened since Nov. 7 -- absolutely nothing helpful to Republicans. South San Antonio though is as Democrat as San Francisco."
That maybe part of it. However South San Antonio is losing population as the trend is northward.
Again part of it was the run off just after the GOP got hammered and some probably thought why vote. And part of it is the GOP screwing itself with the anti Hispanic rhetoric. Tom Tancredo and crew will not win the GOP national elections and certainly will not win the GOP elections in marginal districts like Bonillas.
I need someone to explain "Religious Right" to me.
I will compromise on just about any issue except one. I won't compromise my right to own and carry (keep and bear) just about any durn firearm I want.
Gun owners, for decades, allowed the antis in our own party to negotiate away our liberties not realizing that whatever the other side didn't get in any single legislative session, they got the next. Nobody on their side "compromised" on anything. Incrementalism at it's most blatant. Make no mistake, any GOP politician that is anti-gun is a RINO without doubt. Compromise on such a basic RIGHT is unconscionable.
The NRA got smart and GOA got smarter and tougher. Democrats must have a reason to vote Republican. The gun owning Dems are the folks who gave GWB West-By-God Virginia (a RAT bastion for 80 years prior) and Gore's home state of Tennesee in 2000. In a similar but lesser vein, the pro-life and anti-gay folks fell into line with Bush on religious grounds rather than party.
But if the GOP runs a (BARF) "centrist" or left leaning candidate all that demonstrates is an abandonment of party roots leading to political destruction. If an opposition candidate closely mirrors the social positions of your own party's candidate, why bother? Social issues are what drive the agendas on both sides.
Why do you think Reagan is widely regarded as the best President in modern history? He ran as an unapologetic conservative and then he walked it like he talked it. See there are a LOT of closet conservatives in the Democrat Party. They are truly concerned about things like gun control and almost in full panic mode over border issues and illegal immigration but they can't be vocal or they risk the alienation of fellow party members. But if the GOP candidate agrees with the Dem on these critical social issues, why bother?
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