Nothing to Fear

Conservatives are scared to death by the potential that Barack's radical past will travel with him to the White House. I can't help thinking that that's exactly what Republicans need.

The American Civil Liberties Union launched a new campaign today calling on President-elect Barack Obama to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and end the military commissions on Day One of his presidency.

Obama, as a candidate, pledged to "close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act and adhere to the Geneva Conventions." In a full page ad in the New York Times today, the ACLU urges Obama, as president, to fulfill those promises and immediately restore America's moral leadership in the world.

As the GOP questions how its philosophy and mission should be refined looking toward mid-term elections, wouldn't the clearest vision develop with a practicing liberal in the White House?

Labor unions want President-elect Barack Obama to move quickly on universal health care and to make it easier for workers to organize. Latino advocacy groups want immigration reform. Even the National Trust for Historic Preservation is urging Obama to seek full federal funding "to protect our heritage."

Interest groups are furiously drawing up wish lists for the incoming Obama administration, many of them hoping to cash in on the investments they made - in volunteers, political support, and campaign contributions - in Obama's commanding win.

The odds are pretty good that Barack will seek to thrown bones to liberals - with enough meat so he can argue that he's followed through on his campaign commitments - keeping the lefties calmed, but not happy, as he leads from the center. This is what conservatives must fear - a powerful, centrist administration that picks its spots carefully to push a liberal agenda. Like by pushing to courts carefully left.

The webpage of MoveOn.org, the antiwar group that was one of Obama's earliest and most active backers, said it all after Tuesday's election: "Together we did it!" the group said, claiming to have channeled 933,808 volunteers and $888,572 to Obama's campaign.

Translation: We helped you win, and now we want to see you pursue a liberal agenda in the White House. For the membership of MoveOn.org, that begins with bringing a swift end to the war in Iraq.

For Barack, there's nothing to fear but liberalism itself. His goal should be to be a problem solver who happens to be an ideologue. If he does that, the reinvention of the GOP will be a slow process.

If he chases faultline policies like the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, something much feared by conservatives, we'll have clear and powerful around which to coalesce - making the job of rebuilding the party much easier.

What now?

This election was a shock, and a wake-up call, to a Republican Party that is in desperate need of... dare I say it? Change.

Yesterday, Rush was celebrating the loss as signaling a forced return to conservative values, and I think he's right. Freedom's just another word for 'nothin' left to lose,' and that's about where the GOP is right now. Which does represent opportunity. It's time to rebuild, and a party based on values rather than lust would be a big improvement.

The only folks with a bigger adjustment to face up to is the Democrats. What will they do now? The cry of 'racism' as a political hammer has been proven as obsolete as moderate Republicanism. Minorities who have been educated in the Democrats' schools and think the election of Barack represents an end to their troubles will not take kindly to the idea of having been misled, nor will they like a couple of years of deep recession and belt-tightening. The economic picture is not pretty, nor are the Dems prospects for the mid-term elections in LESS THAN TWO YEARS!

While the GOP knows what it needs to become - it needs to become what it always was - the Democratic path is not so clear. To win national elections, Democrats have needed miracles. Keep in mind, in an America with little interest in race, Barack Obama got more of the white vote than did John Kerry or Al Gore. White voters, who cast 74% of the votes on Tuesday, still didn't favor the Democrats. And despite long efforts by the Dems to minimize the political influence of white voters, they still made 74% of the votes on Tuesday - not a bad base for the GOP.

With the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton race baiting angle in decline, Democrats will seek to become the working man's party once more. Most of the votes they receive from the 74% are nostalgia votes - coming from voters who were raised Democrat like they were raised Catholic, they can't shake the identity, and they haven't realized how little connection there is between themselves and Barney Frank. They will need to embrace the needs of the real man more and the union bosses less, while the GOP will be given a big opportunity to embrace good old fashioned American values once again.

I'm looking forward to the fights to come.

The Alternative

While Democrats are trying to make it look like John McCain somehow killed the administration's Wall Street bailout proposal, it is House Republicans who are unhappy with the proposal.

A group of conservative Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives offered a mortgage insurance plan on Thursday as an alternative to the Bush administration Wall Street bailout.

As Congress struggled to find agreement on modifying the massive Bush proposal to attack the housing market crisis, three members of the Republican Study Committee criticized the administration's proposal and presented their own ideas.

"We think this insurance model works... This is an alternative," Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan said at a press briefing where he distributed a one-page proposal.

He said dozens of House Republicans are involved in the group developing the alternative insurance approach.

Texas Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the study committee, said its more than 100 members "remain skeptical, fearful and unconvinced" about the administration's plan.

"The insurance model is one that appeals to us," he said.

Where's the Party?

The question has been asked many times - "Why isn't Barack doing better against John McCain." I prefer to ask, "Why is Barack doing so well against John McCain." After all, Barack is unelectable.

The answer, of course, is that being a Republican candidate today is a bit like being a car salesmen. For General Motors. Just ask Dino Rossi, the Republican who is trying again to become Governor of Washington State.

The state Democratic Party filed suit Tuesday in an attempt to force Dino Rossi to list his party preference as "Republican" on the November ballot instead of "GOP Party."

Yup. The brand is so bad that Dino decided he'd be better off keeping his party affiliation as quiet as possible.

Polls by Stuart Elway have suggested many people don't know that GOP and Republican mean the same thing. One recent Elway poll indicated Rossi did better among voters if he used the "GOP" label instead of "Republican."

"There's no question we were shocked by the Elway poll," state Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz said, adding that an internal poll by the party had a similar finding.

It's legal in Washington to list your party affiliation anyway you like. Democrats could just call themselves the Anti-Surge Party if they wanted something more pithy.

Democrats say the Iraq War and low approval ratings for President Bush have left the Republican Party a damaged brand and that Rossi is trying to distance himself by using GOP as his affiliation.

Rossi is running against Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire. He lost to Gregoire by 133 votes in the 2004 election, and polls show this race to be close as well.

GOP stands for Grand Old Party, a nickname the Republicans picked up in the 1870s. The phrase is often used by the news media when referring to Republicans, but it hasn't served as an official party designation on an election ballot, until now.

Explosives

Do you remember 15 years ago the Dateline NBC scandal, when the TV news program put an ignition device on a pickup truck in order to make it explode for a feature on faulty truck design?

NBC had acknowledged that in the demonstration it used "sparking devices," or
tiny rockets, strapped to the bottom of one of the trucks, to insure that it
would ignite if its gas tank leaked. But the network did not reveal the presence
of the sparking devices.

This case provides an insight into television works, which, in turn, offers insight into the way politics works in America today.

Take it from an expert. Karl Rove, known as the architect of President George W.
Bush’s electoral victories, believes White House candidates John McCain and Barack
Obama have gone too far in their attacks on each other.

Everything on TV is fake. The most mundane news creation, like a reporter sitting doing an interview, involves shooting the interview over the shoulder of the interviewer toward the guest, and then after the interview, the reporter restates his questions as the camera aims at his face - the guest having moved on with his life. It is a medium that, in order to create images of reality, depends on illusions - using special lighting and makeup, at a minimum.

“In case anyone was still wondering whether John McCain is running the
sleaziest, most dishonest campaign in history, today Karl Rove — the man who
held the previous record — said McCain’s ads have gone too far,” Obama spokesman
Tommy Vietor said in a statement.

Campaigns today are fought on the platform of TV, where falsehoods are used as tools to portray reality. Deliberately, they misrepresent the facts - lying, it's called in the real world. As Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor was doing when he made the above statement. Because, at the same time that Rove said McCain had gone to far, he said:

...an ad by the Democratic presidential nominee and Illinois senator criticizing
McCain for not being e-mail savvy was unfair. “His war injuries keep him from being able to use a keyboard. He can’t type. You know, it’s like saying he can’t do jumping jacks,” Rove said of the Arizona senator and former U.S. prisoner of war in Vietnam.

This is how the campaigns do business. And they use the sniping over whose ads are deceptive as cover, it seems, to keep people from noticing the big lies - like Obama's lies on ending the war in Iraq. The truth about what Rove said?

Rove said both campaigns were making a mistake by pushing the envelope with
their assaults. “They don’t need to attack each other in this way,” he said.
“They have legitimate points to make about each other.”

Poll Update

All polls from the last couple of days show McCain leading a bit, but the numbers are small enough so you should think about this as a tied race.

Rasmussen Tracking	09/09 - 09/11	3000 LV	48	45	McCain +3
Gallup Tracking	09/08 - 09/10	2718 RV	48	44	McCain +4
Hotline/FD Tracking	09/08 - 09/10	902 RV	46	44	McCain +2
FOX News	09/08 - 09/09	900 RV	45	42	McCain +3

The Sarah Palin effect has been enormous. It has 1) tied the race, 2) swung the cameras off of Barack and onto the McCain/Palin ticket, 3) energized Republicans, and 4) made affiliating with the GOP seem more desirable.

In recent months, polls have shown that voters prefer Democrats over Republicans this election year by 10 to 15%. That has changed.

A potential shift in fortunes for the Republicans in Congress is seen in the latest USA Today/Gallup survey, with the Democrats now leading the Republicans by just 3 percentage points, 48% to 45%, in voters' "generic ballot" preferences for Congress. This is down from consistent double-digit Democratic leads seen on this measure over the past year.

We have all been expecting that Democrats will assume strong control of Congress even if Barack loses the presidential election, as I expect he will. What if the anti-GOP feeling has run its course already?

Democratic voters are nearly uniform in their support for the Democratic candidate in their congressional districts (92%), Republican voters are nearly uniform in their support for the Republican candidate (94%), and independents are closely split, with 44% backing the Democrat and 40% the Republican.

One caveat to keep in mind - it is too soon after the conventions for reality to have set back into the numbers. Take these indications with a larger grain of salt than usual.

Republicans, who are now much more enthused about the 2008 election than they were prior to the convention, show heightened interest in voting, and thus outscore Democrats in apparent likelihood to vote in November. As a result, Republican candidates now lead Democratic candidates among likely voters by 5 percentage points, 50% to 45%.

That, my friend, is an incredible turn of events.

The sustainability of all of these findings is an open question that polling will answer over the next few weeks.

It's Palin

Barack's rock concert last night apparently had some impact, as John McCain has chosen Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Although ABC says she's not with McCain:

ABC News' Kate McCarthy Reports: As vice presidential speculation swirls, Gov. Sarah Palin is watching the fireworks from her home in Wasilla, Alaska.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is in Dayton, Ohio, awaiting a high noon event at which the campaign has said the Republican contender will announce his running mate.

Reports indicated that both Romney and Palin have told friends that they are not McCain's choice.

This is a game-changer, coat-tailing on the excitement of the first black presidential nominee to offer the chance for the first female VP.

Sarah Heath Palin (born February 11, 1964) is the current Governor of Alaska, and a member of the Republican Party. She is the first female governor of Alaska, its youngest, and is the first governor born after Alaska achieved statehood. Brought to statewide attention because of her whistleblowing on ethical violations by state Republican Party leaders,^[1] she won election in 2006 by first defeating the incumbent governor in the Republican primary, then a former Democratic Alaskan governor in the general election.

The risk of the choice is that Palin is almost as inexperienced as is Barack, and McCain needs a VP who is perceived as having the gravitas to step into the presidency, as his advanced years raise expectations that he won't still be serving at he approaches 80.

Palin's a smart, edgy pol who is exceptionally popular in Alaska. She's a conservative with a reputation as a reformer -- which has been somewhat tainted by scandals associated with her office.

Palin's married to an Eskimo, she's got a kid in the Army, she likes to hunt and fish, eats moose burgers, and has taken on establishment Republicans to elbow her way onto the political stage.

If she's the pick, Palin's a smart if risky choice for McCain.

Because of the experience factor, I didn't think McCain would make such a bold choice. I'm happy that he did, but concerned.

Either way, we have to hand it to McCain - he's woven a very complex tapestry of deception, making it very hard to guess the choice.