Posted on 11/08/2006 6:35:06 AM PST by flixxx
THIS ONE IS PRETTY EASY TO EXPLAIN. Republicans lost the House and probably the Senate because of Iraq, corruption, and a record of taking up big issues and then doing nothing on them. Of these, the war was by far the biggest factor. Unpopular wars trump good economies and everything else. President Truman learned this in 1952, as did President Johnson in 1968. Now, it was President Bush's turn, and since his name wasn't on the ballot, his party took the hit.
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The Defense Appropriations bill won't be passed until late summer 2007 at the earliest, and won't be implemented until Oct 2007, which is the beginning of FY 2008. I would hope that if the Dims manage to pass any lesser bills before then that cut funding for Iraq, President Bush would veto them. If not, then the WOT wasn't so important to him all along, and I don't believe that's true, so he would veto.
If the appropriations are cut effective Oct 2007, the Bush administration will probably have already begun to 'redeploy' by then. IOW, the point might be moot by then. Or not.
Personally, I think you're full of shit and hope it's your city and not mine that gets it next.
Grandma doesn't need to mention the "i" word. She just needs to keep investigations going.
>>Not much to add...should be an interesting 2 years with (hopefully) a recharged Right in time for 2008...<<
Yup.. This could be a good thing in the long run. If housing tanks, and the economy with it, as much as I suspect it will in 2007-2008, this could be a VERY good thing.
It takes a bit of twisted logic to think the election was a lesson for the Republicans to move right rather than left.
>>I don't disagree with this. Problem is the RATS leave us in a very vulnerable position. The terrorists have to love this.<<
It may be that we need a serious attack to get us off our butts.
We did use "overpowering force" to defeat Saddam and his military. The idea that we could/should carpetbomb Iraq into the stone age is nonsense. We were liberators and used a strategy to deal with the postwar period to include a stable, democratically elected government. Our biggest mistake, using 20/20 hindsight, was not taking out the militias. But you can't unring a bell. You need to deal with the reality on the ground now. FYI: We were welcomed by many Iraqis as liberators. Also, the Iraqi government wants us to stay.
Someone would have t be in REAL denail to see that it hasnt and wont happen that way and that looking back we should have just bombed Saddam into oblivion and screw what the rest of the world thought.
You don't bomb one man or his regime into oblivion. There are million Iraqis to deal with. We had to aid the Japanese and Germans to get back on their feet after a devastating war that destroyed their countries' infrastructure and political system. I think we are winning in Iraq and should continue to support the current government, which has been in power about 6 months. We need patience and resolve to achieve long term objectives, i.e., a stable, democratic Iraq, which will not be a threat to its neighbors or a sancturary for terrorists.
The time to throw temper tantrums is during the primaries. I think I'll take a 2 yr break from FR and come back and try to rally those "true conservatives" you speak about to stop Hillary in '08. Maybe by then they will have come to their senses, or maybe not, maybe they'll still be whining.
I think this DUmmy's city (NY) already "got it." Guess it wasn't devastating enough for him.
I guess you missed all of those terorist attacks on the U.S. while Klintoon was President. You must also have missed how proud the 'Rats were of trying to kill important antiterrorism tools like the Patriot Act, and the Terrorist Surveillance Program. The 'rats are demonstrably not serious about national security, and a lot of innocent people will pay dearly for it.
" The rest of America woke up"
We have to wonder when we will ALL not wake up. Democrats and security??? What a joke.[Not a botched one either] The next 911 will be nuclear.
Well, then I guess we get to see what the utterly corrupt, totally self-absorbed, cowardly new politicos do, now that they run everything.
Ought to be interesting, yes?
Nancy's top priority is to raise the minimum wage. That should be all you need to know about how important the war is to them.
Hi, there!
I'm a busy guy, so I'll just say "bye."
>>The end of America as we know it.<<
I agree, except the America I knew ended a long time ago. The Republicans were reprehensible. They had the power, and were pathetic.
Ultimately though, it is not the politicians that are responsible, it is the voters.
If you want to know what is wrong with the US, just go to the mall and watch it's citizens. Turn on the TV and watch their programming. It is a seriously sick culture and that just comes to the surface in the quality of leaders we choose, on BOTH sides of the aisle.
IMHO, the dims realized that in order to survive they had to move to the center in at least a few areas. Lampson in TX, Webb in VA, and a few others are examples. But the overall lesson of our defeat is that WE WERE NOT FIRED UP ENOUGH TO FIGHT! I talking to that guy who looks at me in the mirror every morning. We have been too complacent, too confident, too stingy with our contributions. I swear that between today and 2008, I will get in the game and knock some heads. The war will be won or lost at the ballot box. This war WILL go on for the next 50-100 years. We lost a political battle; we will not lose the war.
" The rest of America woke up"
We have to wonder when we will ALL not wake up. Democrats and security??? What a joke.[Not a botched one either] The next 911 will be nuclear."
Not according to Rodent...there are no such things as terrorists who wish to do us harm. Bush/Cheney and Rove just made them up to "scare" us.
It's not a matter of right vs. left...it's a matter of integrity. Do what you said you came to do.
It was that very trait that enabled Ronald Reagan to do as much as he did in the face of an opposition congress. Simply put, he did what he said he was going to do.
You obviously think there is no islamic terrorist problem whatsoever. Must be nice to live in your world.
It looks to me like country wants middle of the road people in office.
With all due respect, that's a lot of baloney -- and we had better get off this "inaccurate MSM portrayal of Iraq" horse right now if we have any intention of being credible force in national politics for the foreseeable future. The MSM doesn't have to slant the coverage of Iraq at all when you've got dozens of U.S. military personnel killed and hundreds wounded every month -- more than three freaking years after the President declared an end to "major combat operations."
Ironically, the one guy in the larger scheme of things who comes out of this whole thing looking very shrewd is Muqtada al-Sadr. He knows damn well -- and has known all along -- that the U.S. was going to cut and run from Iraq at some point (due to political pressure in the U.S.) and leave the place in disarray, and he cobbled together his Mehdi Army to prepare for exactly this (so as to prevent a repeat of the 1991 debacle when the first Bush administration left the Shi'ites dangling).
I agree on the use of overwhelming force. Bush is like his father in that he believes in the utter fallacy of limited war.
However you are wrong about the Iraqi people.
The "insurgency" is only that if the people fighting are indigenous to the country where the fighting is taking place. The OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of those fighting our guys come from other countries... and that makes them mercinaries.
Iraq was a democracy for a long time. They are VERY welcoming of their newly-regained freedom.
They're dancing in the streets as they cancel truces.
"With all due respect, that's a lot of baloney -- and we had better get off this "inaccurate MSM portrayal of Iraq" horse right now if we have any intention of being credible force in national politics for the foreseeable future. The MSM doesn't have to slant the coverage of Iraq at all when you've got dozens of U.S. military personnel killed and hundreds wounded every month -- more than three freaking years after the President declared an end to "major combat operations."
To think that the media portrayal of the war in Iraq was not a major factor in the recent elections, is a perfectly ridiculous thing to think.
Two HUGE ISSUES really worry me: Iraq and the illegals. Will the RATs screw them both up forever?
"Remember, the terrorists hate Bush just as much as the Dems do."
Nah, the Dims hate him worse, the Terrorists do at least respect him, or at least respect him enough to know that he will do as he says he will do.
This has been a good opportunity for us to cleanse the GOP of moderates. Many lost yesterday. If we elect new GOP leadership that practices fiscal conservatism, we should have a good base to start from.
All of this may be true, but you can't side with the Dems on illegal immigration, and try to outspend FDR on unwanted social programs and still have an energized base on election day.
One "Oh crap" wipes out a lot of atta boys.
Too much compassionate, not enough conservatism.
I look for TV ratings to sink to the cellar. I know I just can't abide watching Nancy's eyes pop, and Schumer's sneer.
Fox has been getting less appealing for awhile now, and I watch nothing else.
Yep, just whistling past the graveyard. Interesting that the DUmmies use the circular logic that a lack of terrorist attacks shows it is an overblown danger, while ignoring the fact that Bush's anti-terrorist actions might be the reason for the absence of attacks. If Kerry were president right now, they wouldn't be using that logic.
The Republicans got fired for non-performance. If you hired a contractor to remodel your kitchen, and after 12 years all he did was replace the sink, you would fire him.
The government is bigger than ever, the deficit is huge, the national debt is beyond imagination, PBS and NPR are still suckling at the taxpayer's teat, the country is overrun with illegal aliens, the border is still wide open, the Dept. of Education is still run by teacher's unions, and on and on and on....
so what does President Bush need to do today... what should he say to the powerful left and majority of americans.
To the casual observer Iraq is portrayed as a portion better than anarchy and that premise will prevail until Iraq proves otherwise. The certainty of Iraq not serving US interests in a future [unforseen today] conflict confirms the perception of no gain in the security of the United States beyond what existed yesterday. These are truths that prevail in the populace of this country and are not congruent with the agenda of the Republican party.
What HAS changed is that these casualty counts have accumulated over time, and a war that was going on for 1.5 years in 2004 is now going on for 3.5 years -- with no real change in prospects readily apparent to people on BOTH sides of the issue.
Right now I'm trying very hard to stop picturing helicopters on an embassy roof:
Trying not to imagine an Iraq left on its own just in time for the next presidential campaign.
Thtat list is all well and fine, Johnnie, but how many people do you know (besides Freepers) that could not only enumerate all those accomplishments, but comprehend what they mean to the country in the long term?
Discounting us, you could probably count that number on one and half hands, if you were lucky.
Last night's disaster was a long time in the making, and it is marked by easily-identified events (in no particular order):
1. Jack Abramoff, Mark Foley, and Tom DeLay representing a "culture of corruption", and a lack of morals. Add in Trent Lott's arrogance ("the public has no right to know what goes into a spending bill"), Bill Frist's medocrity, Dennis Hastert's mental retardation, John McCain's self-inflating ego, and the general sense that most House/Senate repbublicans could do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, safe behind the "but the terrorists will get you if you don't keep me" shield.
2. Poor Federal response to Hurricane Katrina. It's all well and fine to blame Blanco and Nagin (and they deserve the majority of the blame), but a Federal government that cannot responde to a disaster is a Federal Government that needs to be fixed. DHS is not an effective agency; it is the result of a reshuffling of the Org Chart.
3. Apparent stand-off in Iraq. Victory in this war will not be measured by elections of third-world sh*tholes where such elections are held sans the required democratic institutions that should be established before said votes ever take place. Victory will be measured in the televised execution of Usama Bin Hidin' and every other identified terrorist scumbag, because THIS is the ONLY thing 8.5 out of 10 Americans can understand. After all, this is the country that believes "American Idol" is awesome entertainment.
4. Failure to pass entitlement reform, with a Majority, and eventually caving in(see the Infamous Gang of 14 compromise, i.e. John McCain's initial "f*ck you, Rich Boy!" shot across GWB's bow. He's till smarting from the primaries of '99). We will now go bankrupt as a nation that much quicker whilke the two richest generations of retirees in the history of the planet will get free drugs to cure a whole host of "serious" problems like "Chronic dry eye", "erectile dysfunction", male-pattern baldness, growing prostates and weak bladders, so that they can continue to relive their youth (for the Baby Boomers, youth is measured in sexual potency) in their old age, complete with government-supplied aphrodesiacs and herpes-suppression drugs.
5. Lack of restraint with regards to Federal budgets (Earmark Reform. See Porkbusters.com for more details).
6. Lack of border security - voting for a fence, but leaving it unfunded, caving to the various industries who require cheap labor, courting the hispanic vote by pandering.
These outweigh all the good economic news and the "we haven't been attacked since 9/11" or "Republicans will keep you safe" mantras. Sans another terrorist attack, most Americans with an IQ above room-temperature have already forgotten about September 11th (and unless you were really there, you could never be expected to fully comprehend the true nature of that horror). Those with below-room-temperature IQ's were going to vote democrat in any case.
They have been worn out with the repeated hammering of this one theme for five years (even though it's something they need to be reminded about constantly), and sans something else to talk about, they figured us for a one-trick pony. Even worse, a hypocritical one-trick pony; don't pay any attention to our libertine spending, forget that we're getting bribed by Indian casino interests, never mind that we allow open homosexuals to prey upon your children (Foley), we're still keeping you relatively safe.
Given this background, we're fortunate the outcome wasn't worse.
Time to clean house for 2008 and beyond. New blood and new ideas are required.
I agree on the issue of primaries, but I don't throw temper tantrums. I voted a straight republican ticket.
I am speaking objectively about why the Republicans lost the House, and I am speaking about those who didn't vote.
Take your two-year break. I prefer to stay, in hopes that any effort I put forth on this site or to my elected reps will result in a more educated, stronger electorate and the candidates that represent them.
Absolutely right. Even the Republicans have no ethics anymore. Why? Because they went to the same schools, watched the same junk entertainment, read the same trashy magazines. Our culture is probably terminally ill. It's tragic that so many good people, like our heroic military personnel, are going to suffer along with the sheeple, but history (including the Biblical history of Israel) demonstrates that when nations abandon principle and become morally corrupt, the entire populace has to pay. Seems very unfair, but that's the way it is.
We started down that road eons ago. We can only fight delaying tactics unless we get someone like Ronald Reagan that can turn back the tide. There is precious little will to stop the welfare process and with this president and the last republican Congress no will at all.
OTOH, losing seats in a midterm is the historical norm. That a president who barely won both his elections against repulsive opponents held on until his 6th year is pretty darn good. I don't think this election sent a message to anybody.
I nominate Wombat101 for chief Republican strategist.
Unfortunately, Democrats will vote for corrupt officials, look at Hevesi in NY. Republicans won't. Our guys have to be above reproach.
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