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The GOP's Cassandra
By Robert D. Novak
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Pollster Frank Luntz for the past decade issued warnings to his fellow Republicans that they did not want to hear, but never has been so out of touch with them as he is today. "The Republican message machine is a skeleton of its former self," Luntz told me. "These people have no idea how the American people react to them."
Luntz sees a disconnect between Republicans and voters that projects a grim future for the party. That contradicts what House and Senate Republicans are saying to each other in closed party conferences. While Luntz views 2006 election defeats as ominous portents, the party's congressional leaders see only transitory setbacks and now dwell on bashing Democrats.
Like Cassandra of ancient Troy, Luntz's prophecies of impending disaster have been both accurate and disregarded. Republicans never have been that comfortable hearing critics in closed conferences. He is not invited to such meetings today. "They do not want to hear the truth," Luntz told me. While truth-telling is celebrated by Republican reformers who include presidential front-runner John McCain, it is a decidedly minority view in the GOP.
Luntz's truth is summarized in a 10-page "addendum," inspired by the 2006 election fiasco, to his new book, "Words that Work" (about political use of language). He delayed publication and lost Christmas sales in order to deliver a wakeup call to his party.
"The Republican Party that lost those historic elections was a tired, cranky shell of the articulate reformist, forward-thinking movement that was swept into office in 1994 on a wave of positive change," Luntz wrote. He went on to say that the Republicans of 2006 "were an ethical morass, more interested in protecting their jobs than protecting the people they served. The 1994 Republicans came to 'revolutionize' Washington. Washington won."
...
Novak is more out of touch than any of the Republicans he mentions:
Yet, the Republican minority overwhelmingly re-elected Boehner as leader against the reform candidate, Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana.
Uh, this would be Mike Pence of the George Bush Trojan Horse Immigration "Compromise" - and, he wasn't just overwhelmingly defeated - he was annihilated. It's the first positive sign I've seen that some in the Party have, indeed, "gotten it". "Reform candidate" - LMAO.
Immediately after the 2006 election returns were accompanied by exit polls...
Exit polls???!!! EXIT POLLS??????!!!!!! O.K., Bob - pay attention here. In order to participate in an "exit poll", one must first have, ummm....ENTERED THE VOTING BOOTH. Any attempt to discern what the voters were saying in 2006 must begin with the understanding that many of them voted - with their middle fingers - from their homes.
...indicating voter concern with scandals, Pence said: "The greatest scandal in Washington, D.C., is runaway federal spending." Luntz agrees, and so do McCain and a few other members of Congress.
McCain???!!! McCAIN??????!!!!!! We appreciate your help, Bob - we really do. But, if you would write a prescription for the Republican Party, do us all a favor and flush out you headgear first. Come back when you've stopped combining the diametrically opposed concepts of "McCain" and "future of the Republican Party".
MM, Novak is just reporting on Luntz. Luntz I believe, is and has been correct. Too many opted out of the last election from the GOP side. The reason, disgust with the leadership. It's now going into overdrive, with the 'resolutions' against the war.
Some will have missed the message, without a doubt. So much the worse for them, when the piper comes to call. But, I'm watching the core Party closely, and sensing that they are quietly moving in the right direction. The annihilation of Pence was a good start.
The problem is not the 'core' the problem is an non-responsive leadership that become more and more tone deaf.
Non-responsive and tone deaf, indeed - to its core ideals, to its constituency; one doesn't stay in business very long that way - as "leadership" is finding. Who among them will absorb the hard lessons? We shall see - and soon.
I knew we couldn't be in disagreement!
February 02, 2007
Memories of Vietnam
In a courtroom in Washington DC, where Scooter Libby's trial is in progress, faulty memories are on display on a daily basis. That isn't the only place in Washington, however, where recollections are untrustworthy. Recall, a few weeks ago, Ted Kennedy's dismissal of the suggestion the precipitous withdrawal from Iraq could lead to a humanitarian catastrophe. Nonsense, Kennedy said; people predicted disaster if we withdrew from Vietnam, too, and nothing happened.
It's easy to imagine, of course, that Kennedy's rewriting of history could be due to a guilty conscience. It's harder to understand why John Warner would invent a guilty conscience over Vietnam, again in the context of urging withdrawal from Iraq. Bill Kristol makes the point in his Weekly Standard editorial, "A Terrible Ignominy," which decries the drift of some Senate Republicans toward defeatism:
Consider John Warner. Is he worried about 2008? No. It's memories of Vietnam that suddenly haunt him. As the Washington Post reported on its front page recently:
"I regret that I was not more outspoken" during the Vietnam War, the former Navy secretary said in an interview in his Capitol Hill office. "The Army generals would come in, 'Just send in another five or ten thousand.' You know, month after month. Another ten or fifteen thousand. They thought they could win it. We kept surging in those years. It didn't work."
In fact, John Warner was Richard Nixon's undersecretary of the Navy from 1969 to 1972, then Navy secretary until 1974. No admiral (or Army general) showed up in either his undersecretarial or secretarial office in those years to urge more troops for Vietnam--because we were then drawing down as part of Vietnamization. So Warner would seem to be making up these conversations with foolishly optimistic Army generals--unless they visited him before 1969 in his office at the law firm of Hogan and Hartson, where he was ensconced during the period of the Vietnam buildup.
Check the numbers; it's true that the peak year for troops in Vietnam was 1968. By the time Warner became Secretary of the Navy in 1972, the troops were pretty much all gone.
I'm sure it's true, as Kristol suggests, that Warner is concerned about re-election. But that doesn't seem to fully explain his rather weird bout of Recovered Memory Syndrome. For reasons that I don't pretend to understand, the nation's perception of Vietnam has always been more myth than history. It's as though there are two parallel worlds; the actual Vietnam, where real but mostly-forgotten events actually happened, and "Vietnam," the myth-country where reality has long been optional. Unfortunately, it is the mythical "Vietnam" that policymakers seem to have in mind when they think about Iraq.
February 03, 2007
Warner Opposing His Own Resolution?
John Warner has declared that he will filibuster his own non-binding resolution on the surge to protest the conduct of Harry Reid in limiting votes on alternatives, such as John McCain's proposed language that supports the President's new stratey for Baghdad and Anbar. The GOP says they can organize all 49 Senators in their caucus, which would keep any resolution from proceeding to a vote:
Sen. John W. Warner will join his fellow Republicans in voting Monday to block the resolution he wrote rebuking President Bush's Iraq war policy.
"Senator Warner supports the Senate Republican leadership's effort to establish a free and open debate on Iraq on the Senate floor, including possible amendments," a spokesman for the Virginia Republican said yesterday afternoon.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Warner told colleagues during a closed-door strategy meeting at the Library of Congress that he opposes the manner in which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, is conducting debate on his resolution, which condemns Mr. Bush's plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.
Senate Republicans are opposed to a vote on the Warner resolution unless they also get votes on two other resolutions. One of those alternatives supports Mr. Bush's plan, and the other would prohibit cutting funds for the war. Republicans also want each resolution to require 60 votes to pass.
Mitch McConnell seems to have aroused more opposition to the resolutions than first thought. He appeared on Hugh Hewitt's radio show this week, and McConnell told Hugh that he was aware of the NRSC pledge effort to deny the Senate Republican election committee any funding if they lost their nerve on the war. That message seems to have been heard by the caucus, and the sudden reversal by Warner makes it clear that we have made them nervous about the outcome...
A Terrible Ignominy
How many Republicans will desert the troops?
by William Kristol
02/12/2007, Volume 012, Issue 21
Perhaps the shade of the great Yeats will forgive me:
I write it out in a verse--
Warner and Smith
And Collins and Snowe
Now and in time to be,
Wherever Reagan is remembered,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible ignominy is born.
John Warner of Virginia, Gordon Smith of Oregon, and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine are the four Republican senators (in addition to Nebraska's Chuck Hagel) currently signed on to the Democrats' anti-surge, anti-Petraeus, anti-troops, and anti-victory resolution. (I give Hagel a pass--perhaps undeserved--in my roster of ignominy, since he has been a harsh critic of the war for quite some time.) Three of the four are up for reelection in 2008--Warner, Collins, and Smith. Collins and Smith will be running in states Bush lost in 2004. Warner will be standing in a state where an antiwar Democrat won in 2006.
Now, politicians are entitled to be concerned about their political survival. They're even entitled to make foolish and shortsighted political judgments--for example, that voting for this resolution in February 2007 will help their electoral prospects if the Bush administration's foreign policy is in shambles in November 2008. Indeed, they're entitled to ignore the fact that voting for this resolution somewhat increases the chances of a shambolic outcome to Bush's foreign policy, and therefore may not be in their own interest...
more interested in protecting their jobs than protecting the people they served
Warner is concerned about re-election.
deny the Senate Republican election committee any funding if they lost their nerve on the war. That message seems to have been heard by the caucus, and the sudden reversal by Warner makes it clear that we have made them nervous about the outcome...
Three of the four are up for reelection in 2008--Warner, Collins, and Smith
Now, politicians are entitled to be concerned about their political survival.
Guess I'm not alone, huh?"The greatest scandal in Washington, D.C., is runaway federal spending." Luntz agrees...
Thar's a theme in them thar hills... I mean, posts!
Remember, any elected official has one primary job, no matter what his/her official title is. If your local city elects the dog catcher, his primary job isn't to catch dogs.
It's to get re-elected.
The first post had a bit about the 1994 Republican Revolution. That Revolution was built on the "Contract with America."
The first of the ten acts in the contract was the "fiscal responsibility act." Their record on fiscal responsibility, imo, is largely why they're no longer in power. The fact that it was first on the list when it came to the much publicized contract & clearly last on their list of obligations screams of either outright lies, hypocrisy, or insane delusions of grandeur.
Fiscally, I agree with Republican theory. It's their actions I take issue with.
Guess I'm not alone, huh?
I've said it before, if the GOP thinks they can win anything without their core, go for it
At the rate they're going, they'll not only shed themselves of their core, but also voters like me who occassionally vote for them. Johnny Isakson is my local example. Hell will be nice & frosty cold before I vote for that spendthrift, again.
Tis a shame... outside of third parties that lose with every election, the only alternative are democrats who might not spend more on pork, but promise to expand government programs - thereby spending more in the long run.
Bush builds bonds with House Democrats at retreat
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published February 4, 2007
WILLIAMSBURG -- President Bush and House Democrats got off to a good start in finding common ground yesterday at the Democrats' annual retreat -- with Mr. Bush saying they even share a bond in having been shot in the back by Republicans on immigration.
"You are not the only one with arrows in your back," the president said during a closed-door question-and-answer session with the House Democratic Caucus, according to two individuals who were in the room.
He was responding to Rep. Luis Gutierrez, Illinois Democrat, who said Republicans had been merciless during last year's elections in attacking Democrats on border security. He asked Mr. Bush to win more Republican support for the Democrats' preferred bill...
At the rate they're going, they'll not only shed themselves of their core, but also voters like me who occassionally vote for them. Johnny Isakson is my local example. Hell will be nice & frosty cold before I vote for that spendthrift, again.
Tis a shame... outside of third parties that lose with every election, the only alternative are democrats who might not spend more on pork, but promise to expand government programs - thereby spending more in the long run.
The Dishonorable Harry Reid
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 2/2/2007
Congress: Harry Reid's skill at making money in real estate makes Donald Trump look like an apprentice. If he ever writes his autobiography, it should be called "The Art of the Shady Deal."
If you accept Harry Reid's explanation that his most recent land deal is on the square, then he has a bridge to sell you. No, not that bridge. Another bridge built over the Colorado River a few miles from property in northern Arizona he bought at about $167 an acre. He doesn't own that bridge, either.
But he has sold land he did not own at the time he sold it before.
In 2002, Reid paid $10,000 to a pension controlled by longtime friend and Las Vegas lubricants dealer Clair Haycock. In return, Reid got full control over the fund's portion of a 160-acre parcel in Bullhead City, Ariz., a 37.5% share. Reid and Haycock jointly owned the entire parcel for more than20 years.
As the Los Angeles Times reports, "Reid's price for the equivalent of 60 acres of undeveloped desert was less than one-tenth the value the assessor placed on it at the time." According to the Times, "If Reid were to sell the property for any of the various estimates of its value, his gain on the $10,000 investment could range from $50,000 to $290,000." ...
To a round of applause, the president said he will fight for a bill that does not deport illegal aliens. Mr. Bush said it would be a mistake to miss the opportunity for reform this year and let the issue enter the 2008 election campaign, when he worried it would become too political.
