Right Wing Nut House

Whatever small chance the Iraqi people had that the United States wouldn’t abandon them to the tender mercies of al-Qaeda and the sectarian thugs who are wandering the country drilling holes in their victim’s heads is disappearing as fast as you can say the word “bi-partisanship:”

The Bush administration and the new Democratic leadership in Congress are looking for the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to provide realistic recommendations and political protection against criticism if the U.S. military mission falls short of original expectations.

The commission’s discussions are said to be focused on an option presented by a panel of experts that the United States concede that the situation in Iraq cannot be stabilized and make plans for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops.

I wrote this all the way back in September about the Iraq Study Group:

In other words, no “cut and run” but rather the slow, inexorable drawdown of US forces whose exit will not so much reflect the ability of the Iraqi government to defend itself from internal enemies but rather how the pull out will be perceived by the rest of the world – including how it will play domestically.

Cut and run – even if it’s done slowly – is still cut and run.

The immorality of this strategy is shocking in its implications. The foreign policy elites have apparently decided that the war is unwinnable but that it would harm American interests if we simply up and left. Therefore, they are going to ask young American men and women to risk their lives not for victory, but…for what? To save face? To keep politicians from looking bad? To fool the American people?

In fact, any exit from Iraq that doesn’t leave a stable government capable of maintaining a modicum of peace on the streets would be seen by the entire world as a crushing defeat for the United States. How we get there by “extricating” ourselves is a fairy tale I’m dying to hear.

Hinderaker at Powerline has it just about right:

Iraq “cannot be stabilized”? That strikes me as a ridiculous statement. One can legitimately ask whether Iraq can be stabilized at acceptable political, military or financial cost. But that would require some hard analysis of what the stakes are and what those costs may be. Notwithstanding the results of Tuesday’s election, I think the American people are adult enough for such a discussion.

The key to the “Baker Plan” will be to engage Iran and Syria and coax them into stopping their support for al-Qaeda and the insurgents. The mullahs are having a good laugh at that one. I’m sure they’ll be impressed by our entreaties to halt their nuclear program given our demonstrated resolve to keep our word to the Iraqi people. And Baby Assad is rubbing his hands together in anticipation at what goodies he can extract from the American dupes who show up on his doorstep, hat in hand, begging him to pull our chestnuts out of the fire in Iraq.

I have been in favor of engaging both Iran and Syria in diplomacy - but with Iraq as an ancillary issue. I would have thought that the fate of the Iraqi people and government was not a matter open to negotiation.

Welcome to the new world of “real” politik.

Negotiating with Syria especially opens up intriguing possibilities. Driving a wedge between Assad and the Iranians (if it were possible without sacrificing Israeli security) would isolate Iran and perhaps even improve the prospects for an Israeli-Syrian dialogue. Hinderaker correctly points out that pressuring Israel to give up the Golan Heights in some kind of scheme to entice Assad to halt his support for Iraqi insurgents would be stupid. But John fails to note that the Golan has lost some of its strategic value to Israel. Those rockets from Hezbollah flew over the Golan Heights during the war. Occupation of the Golan is no longer a guarantee against Israel being attacked from that quarter and if other security guarantees could be given to Israel regarding the Heights, it may be possible for the US to act as an honest broker in negotiations that would lead to their return to Syria.

In that context, both Syria and Israel would benefit and we would have Assad’s help in tamping down violence in Iraq. And there wouldn’t be a thing the mullahs in Iran could do about it.

As for Ahmadinejad and his nukes, direct negotiations are inevitable. Get used to the idea. The diplomatic dance - fruitless as it almost assuredly will be - is a rite of foreign policy elites the world over. The fact that nothing will be accomplished isn’t the point. It is the dance itself for its own sake that will engage the interest of the self deluded peacemakers who will talk and talk until there’s nothing left to talk about. And then we’ll find ourselves in exactly the same place we are today - will it be war with Iran or do we acquiesce and resign ourselves to them having nuclear weapons?

But to leave the nuclear issue to the side and beg the Iranians for help with Iraq will elicit a few giggles from the humorless fanatics in Tehran. They are bleeding their mortal enemy of blood and treasure. Why in God’s name should they stop? They have sworn to destroy us dozens of times since the revolution of 1979. Are we to suddenly believe that we can engage them in dialogue on Iraq toward the ends we desire when the whole ball of wax will probably fall into their lap anyway?

The Iranians don’t only want us defeated. They want the US humiliated. Any negotiations with the mullahs will be long, drawn out, and designed to show the world how powerless we are to affect events in the region. In the meantime, our soldiers will continue to die, the Iraqi government will continue to dither, and the body count of civilians will spiral upwards.

Phased withdrawal my ass. If we have decided to bug out, let’s leave as quickly as possible. If victory is not to be had at any price then it is immoral to keep our men and women in harms way simply to appease domestic sensibilities. Yes Iraq will devolve into madness and chaos. We can deal with that situation in the context of the War on Terror. Asking someone to put their life on the line for no reason save assuaging the consciences of politicians is stupid.

If we’re not going to stay until the situation is stabilized leave now. Leave as quickly as we went in. The Saudis, the Iranians and the Syrians all helped sow the wind. Now let them reap the whirlwind.

Tired of politics? Me too. Let’s take a break shall we?

Watching ordinary people on television has always been fascinating to the TV viewing public. Whether it’s watching people make fools of themselves as they frequently did on Monty Hall’s Let’s Make a Deal when they got dressed up in the most outrageously stupid costumes in order to get on the show or sharing the excitement of someone who has just been called to “Come on down” on The Price is Right, the “hook” of the game show has always been “that could be me up there” as the TV viewer lives vicariously through the contestants on the screen.

The genre has been hugely successful as well as being enormously popular with the networks in the early days of TV. That’s because it’s ridiculously cheap to produce a game show compared to an hour long drama or even a 30 minute sitcom. The profits can be enormous. When daytime programming on the big three networks was a major profit center, game shows ruled the tube.

These days, game shows are owned by private production companies and syndicated. Shows like Wheel of Fortune are worth a half billion dollars or more. But I prefer the traditional, network owned shows from the past. Watching many of them on The Game Show Network is not only fun, it’s like going on an antropological expidition into the past. The clothes, the pop culture references, even the way people talked was different back then.

At any rate, here are my choices for the top five TV game shows of all time.

5. The Match Game

Gene Rayburn was in his element, bantering with celebrities and generally being goofy. The questions - especially later in the series history - always seemed to encourage double entendres. Has the distinction of being broadcast on both CBS and NBC daytime.

4. Let’s Make A Deal

From prince to pauper in a moment as the contestant would trade the $10,000 car for what was behind the curtain - a milkcow. Nowhere was greed punished more satisfyingly than on this show. And Monty Hall was perfect as the huckstering host.

3. Password

Classy Alan Ludden in a cerebral, staid, but nevertheless surprisingly challenging game. The old games featured more literate celebrities and harder words.

2. You Bet Your Life

Groucho Marx. ‘Nuff said.

1. Jeopardy

Alex Trebek and a legion of Mensas. I tried out for the show once. Got through two rounds before being eliminated. Great host. Great questions. Big money.

UPDATE 11/12

Thanks to Kim at Wizbang who linked this piece, the emails are coming hot and heavy. I bow to the superior wisdom of the group and present some honorable mentions:

THE $25,000 PYRAMID

Instant wealth on a game show that everyone can play. The look on people’s faces when they suddenly won the $25 grand is what game shows are all about. Some very smart celebrity contestants (and some dumb ones) also made the show exciting. Soupy Sales and Lily Tomlin were brilliant.

NAME THAT TUNE

This one goes all the way back to the 1950’s and was a victim of the “Quiz Show” scandals that rocked TV. All game shows back then became suspect and people stopped watching for a while. Bill Cullen hosted one of the original shows. Later, Tom Kennedy emceed.

CONCENTRATION

Next to Wheel of Fortune, the longest running game show in history. Brilliant “rebus” puzzles and the presence of Hugh Downs made this one a gem. One of the harder shows to be good at. Great prizes too.

WHAT”S MY LINE

In the beginning, when New York was still the center of the universe, the show featured a brilliant panel of literati and theater personalities. Random House publisher and humorist Bennet Cerf, columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, poet Louis Untermeyer, and comedy writer Hal Block were more or less permanent fixtures of the show in the 50’s.

The entertaining part of the show was the cross banter between some very witty people - almost like a televised Algonquin Round Table with Dorothy Parker and George S. Kaufmann trading barbs. Still on the Game Show network late, late night.

UPDATE II

I emailed my brother Jim who appeared on two different games shows in the 1970’s. I had forgotten the names of them and he was kind enough to reply:

The show was called Split Second, and the year was 1974. I also was also on Tic Tac Dough in 1978, both times winning a considerable amount of money in the much smaller stakes of game shows in those days.

I mention this because 21 was hosted by Jack Barry, and the show was a Barry-Enright production. So was Split Second - and I met Jack Barry, immediately remembered who he was, and had a slightly uncomfortable interview with him because he knew that I knew. Split Second (similar in many ways to Jeopardy) was network TV’s first (or one of the first) attempts to get back into Q&A shows. It spawned the re-makes of both Name That Tune and Tic Tac Dough, both of which had had earlier pre-scandal incarnations.

I’m sure you’re aware of the gloating around the world by America’s enemies over the defeat of the Republicans and the firing of Donald Rumsfeld.

There are some - most notably the guys at Powerline - who think that this development reflects badly on the Democrats, that it proves the terrorists would prefer Democrats in power in the United States because they wouldn’t fight them as fiercely or that it would be easier to hit American targets.

Democrats, of course, are sputtering in anger at these charges. They should be. It calls into question their basic loyalty to America. And while it may be true that al-Qaeda thugs and the head of state of Iran both see the Democratic victory as a victory for their cause, all their crowing does is reveal their ignorance of America and Americans.

The fact is that many of our allies in Europe are also celebrating the GOP’s downfall. When friend and foe are celebrating the same thing (for different reasons) one can hardly ascribe any particular relevance to it. European ignorance of domestic American politics is almost as profound as Iran’s. What any other group or nation thinks is irrelevant to what we as Americans have to do to protect the homeland and take the war against terrorism directly to our enemies. This is a job for both Republicans and Democrats working together in a spirit of cooperation and bi-partisanship.

Ed Morrissey, in one of the most profoundly impactful post-election thoughts I’ve seen to date, gives voice to this idea. Please read the post in its entirety. A sample:

Radical Islamists want to divide Americans in order to defeat us. They will play on our differences, stoking the fires of resentment and generating more hatred between us than we have against our enemies. AQ understands that the only way they can possibly beat the US is to get us to grind to a halt with partisan warfare at home, paralyzing our ability to fight them on the battlefield and sapping our will to put them out of business. This video is transparently calculated to give enough ammunition to both sides of the political divide to do that job. Besides, if we take Abu Hamza at his word about the Democrats, then we have to take him at his word about Bush as well, and about our troops.

The partisan sniping has ceased to be germane. We’ve already had the election, and the Democrats are in charge — and they will be for two years no matter what. Obviously, we will watch closely to ensure that they do not surrender to terrorism, but I’m not going to take Abu Hamza’s word that they will before their majority session even starts. They are Americans, and Americans put them in charge, and they have earned the right to show us how they will face the enemy now that they control the agenda. If they fail, I’ll be the first to castigate them for losing ground to the terrorists. However, I’m going to base that on their actions, and not on the word of a murderous thug who couldn’t care less whether their American victims are Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, or LaRouchists.

Does this mean I will stop criticizing Democrats for their stance on national security issues or the war? Absolutely not. And the politics of the war will still engage both sides in the dance of attack and parry. But let’s leave al-Qaeda out of our domestic politics. Things are hairy enough without inviting those gents to have a seat at the table.

“If their personal belief is that they don’t want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, the district certainly isn’t going to dictate what they do.”
(Martha Parham, a spokeswoman for the Coast Community College District)

This story has a little bit of everything. Moonbats on parade. Kids playing dress-up-like-a-commie. Joe McCarthy. Conservatives standing up for America.

And a lesson in the nature of freedom:

Student leaders at a California college have touched off a furor by banning the Pledge of Allegiance at their meetings, saying they see no reason to publicly swear loyalty to God and the U.S. government.

The move by Orange Coast College student trustees, the latest clash over patriotism and religion in American schools, has infuriated some of their classmates — prompting one young woman to loudly recite the pledge in front of the board on Wednesday night in defiance of the rule.

“America is the one thing I’m passionate about and I can’t let them take that away from me,” 18-year-old political science major Christine Zoldos told Reuters.

The move was led by three recently elected student trustees, who ran for office wearing revolutionary-style berets and said they do not believe in publicly swearing an oath to the American flag and government at their school. One student trustee voted against the measure, which does not apply to other student groups or campus meetings.

I understand the students anger at the moonbats. And I think it’s great that the incident has galvanized people to demonstrate their loyalty to America. I hope they continue to say the pledge loudly every time that little group of proto-commies meets.

But demanding that the pledge be reinstated? Just where is it you think you live?

If 19 year old kids want to play dress up and pretend they’re revolutionaries while rejecting the pledge, and God, and America, they are perfectly free to do so. Others are free to disagree with them. The Che-wannabes should realize that their protest comes with a price - disapprobation of their peers and the community. The counter demonstrators should realize that the pseudo-socialists are exercising the cherished constitutional right of free speech and not try to force them to conform to any behavior to which they object.

And about that objection; one mini-Mao obviously hasn’t said the pledge in a while:

Ball said the ban largely came about because the trustees didn’t want to publicly vow loyalty to the American government before their meetings. “Loyalty ought to be something the government earns through performance, not through reciting a pledge,” he said.

The pledge says absolutely nothing about “government.” It talks about “the republic” and “the nation” not any specific government. In fact, the pledge is to “the flag.” If one believes (as I and most Americans do) that the flag represents the very best American ideals of liberty and equality for all, by refusing to pledge their allegiance to the flag, the fake radicals only prove that their towering ignorance is matched by a desire for authoritarian government - with them in charge, of course.

It is the nature of freedom that it be abused by the shallow, the ignorant, the callous, the fakers, and those who hate simply because hate is their natural state. And it is the genius of the United States that they suffer little more than name calling and the shunning of decent people everywhere. By gritting our teeth and tolerating wayward children like the Orange Coast College ignoramuses, we keep faith with our founders and all the men and women who have given their lives so that the flag these smug, self-righteous lickspittles refuse to swear allegiance to has meaning for the rest of us.

Join me today from Noon - 2:00PM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

More on the broken Republican coalition today with my special guest AJ Strata of the blog Stratasphere. AJ and I will also talk about the new power structure in Congress.

More fallout from the elections and the coming schism in the Republican party.

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The actual battle lines have been drawn for years. And there have been flare-ups along the periphery several times, most recently last year’s dust up over the life and death of Terri Schiavo. Perhaps only the uniting factor of the War in Iraq has kept the two sides from each other’s throats.

But make no mistake. With Tuesday’s election debacle and the ever growing realization that we are probably leaving Iraq sooner rather than later, the long delayed war between social conservatives and Republican libertarians is about ready to explode into a series of recriminations, name calling, and eventually, a parting of the ways.

The ideological incompatibility of the two groups makes one wonder how they ever ended up on the same side in the first place. It was to be sure, a marriage of convenience and, on the part of the libertarians, the fact that there was no place to hang their hat in the Democratic party.

Social conservatives have a long history of activism in the Republican party going back to the abolitionists right on through the fight to ban abortion. Libertarians are relative newcomers, having abandoned the Democratic party in disgust thanks to their fiscal policies and social engineering schemes. But the built in friction between libertarians and social conservatives never erupted into open warfare in the GOP because both factions were not considered important cogs in the Republican machine. That is, until 2000.

While social conservatives (and their close allies in the evangelical movement) had been gaining strength throughout the 1990’s by taking over several state parties, they also began to realize that they held the whip hand in Republican presidential primaries. How the social conservative/Christian right came to prominence in the GOP during the 90’s is a subject for another day, perhaps some rainy afternoon when I’m depressed and am drinking enough Glenlivit so that I can figure out how the party of Lincoln, TR, and Ronald Reagan - confirmed deists all - could have morphed into an organization where religion was allowed to play such a prominent role.

To be sure, this is the rub between libertarians and social conservatives. The prominence with which George Bush has featured Christian conservatives in his nominations to fill important posts (too many to list but Paul Bocelli to head USAID is one I wrote about here) as well as virtually turning over parts of the State Department to ideologically driven religious conservatives who have changed American policy as it relates to family planning, AIDS education, and even some aspects of women’s rights has grated with libertarians. And the prominence of social conservative issues (some have called them “wedge” issues) has also worried the libertarians who seek a broader agenda in order to attract more independents and moderates.

I suppose I should note that while an atheist, I share many of the concerns expressed by social conservatives relating to the toxicity of our culture and the decline of western values. The fact that libertarians have chosen (for the most part) to sit on their hands as our culture goes to hell in a handbasket not to mention their silence in the face of the left’s attack on western values makes me a reluctant ally of many social and religious conservatives. I am uncomfortable with a host of positions taken by the social right on abortion, gay rights, prayer in schools (although I agree with them regarding the pernicious attempt by the left to kick religion into the gutter), flag burning, and other less visible issues. But I believe for the most part, they are on the side of the angels. The left is not.

Fair or not, the perception has been fostered by libertarians that these social conservatives, now prominent and in the ascendancy in the Republican party, have in fact become big government advocates themselves. They wish to use the government, so the argument goes, to affect social change every bit as unacceptable as the left’s desire to reshape society into some kind of multicultural paradise, eschewing the “melting pot” model of American assimilation for a nightmarish riot of cultural conceits.

Conversely, social conservatives believe libertarians to be hedonistic libertines, not far removed from their enemies on the left who practice what Richard Baehr at The American Thinker has called “aggressive secularism.” And no issue revealed this deep divide more than the Terri Schiavo matter.

I wrote at the time of Schiavo that both sides surprised themselves with the virulence of their opposition to one another, drawing a parallel with the pre-civil war insurrectionist John Brown:

The gulf that has opened up today between Americans who believe that starving Terri Schiavo to death is wrong and those who believe it to be a tragic but necessary act has some parallels with the aftermath of the John Brown raid on Harper’s Ferry. Both sides believe they are in the right. Both are astonished at the other side’s lack of a moral compass. “Hypocrisy” cry those who wish Terri dead. “Callousness”scream the pro-Terri forces.

And more than that, it is the recognition that this huge divide exists not as some fancy political expression but as a living, breathing thing that has fueled the debate and turned it into into an “us versus them” cultural Armageddon. Both sides see the forces of darkness at work; people in favor of life seeing the “culture of death” in the ascendancy while the supporters who believe it was Terri’s wish to end her life see their opposition as “The American Taliban.”

The two sides couldn’t be farther apart. And looking across the divide at one another, each see strangers where they should see brothers and sisters.

The wounds from that battle have yet to heal completely. The incident radicalized the Christian right and drove many libertarians out of the party thus setting the stage for the coming bloodletting.

The problem for both factions is that there really is no place else for them to go. Libertarian hawks avoid the dovish Libertarian Party like the plague while a 3rd party effort involving social conservatives has been tried several times in the past and failed miserably (although the Temperance party managed to scare enough politicians to have them vote for prohibition).

Where the libertarians may finally bolt the GOP is over the fiscal mess made by big government social conservatives who seem to have taken over the party’s Congressional wing. With the President’s acquiescence, this group has done more to mortgage the future of America than any 2 Democratic Congresses. And, as a possible harbinger of the future, the Libertarian party in Montana and Missouri probably helped elect the Democratic Senator from those states:

GLUM Republicans might turn their attention to the Libertarian Party to vent their anger. Libertarians are a generally Republican-leaning constituency, but over the last few years, their discontent has grown plain. It isn’t just the war, which some libertarians supported, but the corruption and insider dealing, and particularly the massive expansion of spending. Mr Bush’s much-vaunted prescription drug benefit for seniors, they fume, has opened up another gaping hole in America’s fiscal situation, while the only issue that really seemed to energise congress was passing special laws to keep a brain-damaged woman on life support.

In two of the seats where control looks likely to switch, Missouri and Montana, the Libertarian party pulled more votes than the Democratic margin of victory. Considerably more, in Montana. If the Libertarian party hadn’t been on the ballot, and the three percent of voters who pulled the “Libertarian” lever had broken only moderately Republican, Mr Burns would now be in office.

Meanwhile, most of the social conservatives seem not to have learned anything from Tuesday. They are insisting that conservative social issues won the day and that this is the path back to the top the GOP should take. They point to all of the anti-gay marriage amendments that passed. They point to the victory against affirmative action in Michigan.

What they don’t seem to realize is that voters passed those ballot initiatives and then turned around and voted for Democrats. Moderate Democrats. Many of whom do not espouse those issues that they voted for on the ballot initiatives.

They also failed to see one of the biggest switches on election night; the Democrats got nearly 30% of people who identify themselves as “evangelical” Christians. If espousing conservative social issues is going to be the battle cry of Republicans in 2008, they will lose and lose big. Voters want fiscal responsibility and traditional marriage. But if they have to choose, they’ll take the party that can demonstrate responsibility with their tax money over a candidate who might support a gay person’s right to marry.

The social conservatives are not going to retreat back into the wings of the party any time soon. This is why I believe that unless a leader emerges who can unite these two factions, we are more than likely to see the libertarians bolt the party for greener pastures, especially if the Democrats demonstrate that they can be fiscally responsible. This could well happen before the 2008 election which would mean that contest could become a true re-alignment in American politics.

We saw something similar in the 1978-80 elections. Then the issue was the strength of the United States in the world in the face of Soviet expansionism. Conservative Democrats left their party in droves and ended up electing Ronald Reagan and a Republican Senate in 1980.

Don’t be surprised if a similar re-alignment takes place in 2008 with libertarians and many secular conservatives finally getting tired of the social conservative’s agenda. One thing is certain; the status quo is unacceptable and something is going to have to give.

GOP Bloggers has a 2008 Presidential straw poll going (I cast my ballot at Captains Quarters) that so far, shows some surprising results:

First Choice:

Gingrich 1188 24.6%
Giuliani 1086 22.4%
Romney 908 18.8%
513 10.6%
McCain 315 6.5%
Tancredo 311 6.4%
Hagel 133 2.7%
Brownback 116 2.4%
Hunter 95 2%
Huckabee 90 1.9%
Frist 58 1.2%
Pataki 26 0.5%

Candidate Acceptability:
Net Votes + Votes - Votes

Brownback -646 -13.3% 1470 30.4 2116 43.7
Frist -2517 -52% 746 15.4 3263 67.4
Gingrich 1590 +32.9% 2823 58.3 1233 25.5
Giuliani 1762 +36.4% 2911 60.2 1149 23.7
Hagel -2273 -47% 737 15.2 3010 62.2
Huckabee -504 -10.4% 1523 31.5 2027 41.9
Hunter -669 -13.8% 1441 29.8 2110 43.6
McCain -1520 -31.4% 1327 27.4 2847 58.8
Pataki -2327 -48.1% 786 16.2 3113 64.3
Romney 1895 +39.2% 2946 60.9 1051 21.7
Tancredo -340 -7% 1708 35.3 2048 42.3

Who looks good after Tuesday:

Gingrich 1484 30.7%
Giuliani 1322 27.3%
Romney 1084 22.4%
McCain 633 13.1%
316 6.5%

The elevation of Gingrich from second tier candidate to frontrunner is not unexpected, to me anyway. And although it’s very early going in this straw poll, I have a sneaking suspicion that old Newt’s stock has soared as a result of the election. Gingrich made himself extremely visible the last few weeks of the campaign with well written, passionate articles calling on the GOP to unite for the election. He reminded Republicans that despite his personal and political baggage, he is still one of the most articulate and thoughtful men in public life.

Has he successfully “re-invented” himself so that he can appeal to independents who then might forget his hyper partisan stint as Speaker? One thing for sure, if he’s nominated, the left will be sharpening the long knives and would relish cutting him to pieces over his messy personal and financial life as well as some of his more problematic utterances. Lot of history for Newt to overcome and frankly, while I will sit and listen to anything he has to say, I wouldn’t vote for him in a Republican primary.

The drop off by John McCain was also to be expected. He will now be closely identified with Tuesday’s debacle and will find conservative support even harder to come by. Like Guiliani, McCain would probably be a better general election candidate than a favorite for the nomination. But don’t count either of those gents out. They are both battlers and if they declare their candidacy, it’s because they are in it to win.

I’ll be interested to see as the totals for this poll climb just where Mitt Romney ends up. I have yet to form a strong opinion about the man - only a general feeling of competence and integrity. Given the past, that might be a winning combination in 2008.

Bill Frist is toast. I doubt he’ll even run. If he does, he will be embarrassed. And Duncan Hunter is running for Vice President - he can’t be taken seriously as a Presidential candidate.

Don’t count out Pataki (or even Mayor Bloomberg). Both men could raise a ton of money and could emerge as viable alternatives if a bloodbath occurs between social conservatives and libertarians. But given the primary system as it is today, both would have to be considered extreme longshots.

The rest - Hagel, Brownback, Tancredo, and Huckabee would all have to start now and breakout early for a shot at either the top slot or Veep. Single issue candidates like Tancredo don’t have a chance (although a Veep nomination is not out of the question). Nobody likes Chuck Hagel and no one has ever heard of Sam Brownback outside of us political junkies. Huckabee? I might move to Australia if we elect a man named Huckabee President of the United States (just kidding).

Don’t you just love politics? Here we are, less than 72 hours after one election and we’re already talking about the next one. I know there are some who would wish this is not so. But all of this is so far under most people’s radar that I don’t see the harm. And it is a fun intellectual exercise.

Let the games begin!

It’s official. The Republican party is now as ideologically monochromatic as a political party can get. With the defeat of a dozen northeastern and Midwestern moderates, the GOP is now truly a conservative party, the kind envisioned by Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater many years ago.

The problem - and this will become readily apparent in 2008 - is that the party has also shrunk geographically. At the moment, the GOP is now a largely southern party with strong points in the mountain west. And most disturbing is that in the 10 battleground states that determine the winner of every presidential election, the GOP is a ghost of its former self (save Texas and Florida). In New York (3 seats lost) and Pennsylvania (4 seats lost), the party has virtually disappeared. Also worrying is the massacre of the GOP in Indiana (3 seats), North Carolina (2 seats), Arizona (2 seats), New Hampshire (2 seats), and Iowa (2 seats).

It is hard to overstate the threat to the Republican stranglehold on the electoral college these losses represent. In 5 of the last 7 presidential elections, the GOP began the race with a huge tactical advantage. They were virtually guaranteed more than 170 electoral votes before the ballots were cast thanks to their death grip on a solid south, the mountain west, and several Midwestern/border states that had become as reliably red in national elections as is historically possible.

No more. Now the GOP must fight to hold states like Indiana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Arizona, and probably even Colorado if they wish to win in 2008. That’s because of the big state advantage of the Democrats who have won 7 of the 10 largest states that last two presidential elections. Only Ohio and Florida - two states now considered toss ups in any national election - saved the GOP in 2004 and 2008. And given the election results on Tuesday, Ohio especially would appear to be an uphill battle for Republicans.

Another bad omen for Republican chances in 2008 is the fact that the Democrats now hold 29 of the 50 governorships - a significant tactical advantage on the ground in any statewide race. Governors have their own political organizations and connections that can give a Presidential candidate for their party a significant boost on election day.

The most significant result from Tuesday’s election may be the stake driven through the heart of the old Rockefeller wing of the GOP. While this faction had been declining in influence and members since 1964, (and as the definition of “moderate” moved further right in the intervening years), the loss of long time members like Sue Kelly ( NY-6 terms), Nancy Johnson (CT-12 terms), Jim Leach (IA-15 terms), and Charles Bass (NH-6 terms) knocked the chocks out from underneath the moderate wing of the GOP, making the party more conservative than at any time in its history.

Charles Krauthammer sees the same thing:

The result is that both parties have moved to the right. The Republicans have shed the last vestiges of their centrist past, the Rockefeller Republicans. And the Democrats have widened their tent to bring in a new crop of blue-dog conservatives.

Rockefeller Republicans have a long and honorable history in the party. Civil Rights legislation in the 1960’s would have been doomed without them. Many programs having to do with workers’ protections like OSHA and MSHA (mine safety) couldn’t have been passed without their support. In many ways, this group of northeastern and Midwestern Republicans was the social conscience of the Republican party, always applying common sense arguments on social legislation that swayed some of their more conservative brethren while reining in some of the excesses of the liberals across the aisle.

I realize many modern conservatives viewed these “RINO’s” with contempt. But the moderates shared many mainstream Republican values with conservatives like fiscal responsibility, support for a strong national defense, and a love of individual liberty which, in my mind, tended to offset their apostasy on other issues. And celebrating their defeat is akin to cheering as the friend you made a suicide pact with offs himself first. Political parties that cede vast swaths of territory to their opponents tend to disappear rather quickly. Just ask the Whigs.

Does this mean the GOP should field more moderate candidates in 2008? That probably depends on what your definition of a “moderate” might be. Can one be a conservative but be pro-choice? No one has drummed me out of the conservative movement yet despite my stance on abortion. Nor has anyone accused me of being “moderate” about anything.

I think what we are about to see is a definitional change in what being a conservative means. This will come about as a result of the coming schism between GOP social conservatives and its libertarian wing - a subject I address in a post I’ll have out later today.

UPDATE

The Barrister at Maggies Farm has a slightly different take on this issue.

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category is “Female Genital Mutilation in Georgia: Who is the Perp?” by Gates of Vienna. Finishing second was “You Would Weep” by Done with Mirrors.

Coming in first in the non Council category was “Isis’ Guide to Sensible Islam Posting” from Smart and Final Isis.

If you’d like to participate in the weekly Watchers vote, go here and follow instructions.

It was almost as if the clock had been turned back to a different time, a more civil time in our political life.

There stood George Allen, soon to be ex-Senator from Virginia, his Presidential hopes in tatters, his political career probably ended. With measured tones and quiet voice, he showed everyone, in what almost certainly was the most disappointing moment of his life, the right way to lose:

Allen said the “owners of government have spoken and I respect their decision.”

“The Bible teaches us there is a time and place for everything, and today I called and congratulated Jim Webb,” he said.

Webb, a former Republican and Navy secretary under President Reagan, claimed victory early Wednesday after election returns showed him with a narrow lead of about 7,200 votes out of 2.37 million ballots cast.

Allen chose not to demand a recount after initial canvassing of the results failed to significantly alter Webb’s lead.

“I do not wish to cause more litigation that would not alter the results,” Allen said, adding that he saw “no good purpose being served by continuously and needlessly expending money and causing any more personal animosity.”

Not a word about rigged voting machines or Diebold. No conspiracy mongering. Simple, elegant, and heartfelt.

I remember when politics was like this. Even the worst negative campaigns would end with the loser, the microphones, the tears, but the acknowledgement that the people had spoken and their decision was final.

Sure he had little or no hope that a recount was going to alter the result. But under Virginia law, he was entitled to one. And given the chicanery that lawyers are capable of, challenge after challenge could have kept Virginia without a Senator for months next year.

Contrast Allen’s words and spirit with those of Speaker Pelosi and other Democrats before the election where they all but said a Republican victory would mean that the GOP cheated, that they hacked the voting machines or barred people from voting. Funny that there isn’t much concern about hackers now that the Democrats have won. Our democracy has been “restored”. The “people have spoken.”

And given how close the dozens of House races and several Senate races were (most of them lost by Republicans), I hope this finally gives the lie and buries forever the notion that the Republicans stole any election by hacking voting machines. Not one shred of evidence was ever presented anywhere that even hinted at GOP operatives changing vote totals in electronic machines. Not. One. Shred. Of evidence. All the Democrats accomplished by their whining, their caterwauling, the cavalier way in which they announced to the world that elections were stolen was to denigrate American democracy abroad and cause people to lose faith in it at home.

I hope they’re satisfied. Because Allen showed them all what grace under fire is all about. Let the difference between Allen and the Democrats be the glory of American democracy.

UPDATE

Allah has the video. He says the football was a “bit much” and I agree. But a fine speech, nonetheless.