Right Wing Nut House

Why do the fabulously rich think they have insight into the problems of the world that the rest of us mere mortals lack?

Ross Perot, Donald Trump, Steve Forbes, the Rockefellers, the DuPonts - all have either run for President or have been mentioned prominently as a possible candidate for the office. The fact that none of them have come close isn’t the point (Nelson Rockefeller perhaps had the best chance but was destroyed by Barry Goldwater in ‘64). The problem is we have to sit and listen to their hectoring lectures about how if only we put a real business executive in charge of the government, our problems would be solved in a jiffy. After all, these are people who’ve made a gazillion dollars (or their fathers, grandfathers, or great grandfathers made the family fortune) and think that their no-nonsense, unflappable executive style leadership personae is just the thing to whip this country into shape.

The latest entry into this most exclusive club of American aristocrats to believe he has what it takes to govern well and wisely is former Democrat, now former Republican, declared “independent” (whatever that means), and still Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg. Back in 2001, Bloomberg didn’t think he had a shot at the Democratic party’s nomination for Mayor so he did what all rich people do when confronted with a roadblock; he altered the playing field by shamelessly switching parties and running as a Republican. Spreading $73 million around of his own money, Bloomberg was barely able to beat liberal gadfly Mark Green in the general election.

Re-elected in 2005, Bloomberg set his sights on the Presidency. His name has floated around as a possible candidate in Republican circles for years, although he was significantly overshadowed by two other Republicans in the state - Rudy Giuliani and Governor George Pataki.

What’s a poor little rich boy to do? Since the party was not going to come to him, Bloomberg decided the only way he could experience the thrill of having pundits and political insiders take him seriously as a national candidate would be to leave the party system behind and strike out as an independent:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced Tuesday that he was dropping his Republican affiliation, a step that could clear the way for him to make an independent bid for the presidency.

The announcement was released during a campaign-style swing through California, during which Mr. Bloomberg, 65, a billionaire businessman, used increasingly sharp language to criticize both parties in Washington as too timid to take on big problems and too locked into petty squabbling to work together.

“I believe this brings my affiliation into alignment with how I have led and will continue to lead my city,” Mr. Bloomberg’s statement read. “Any successful elected executive knows that real results are more important than partisan battles, and that good ideas should take precedence over rigid adherence to any particular political ideology.”

One assumes that if elected, Mr. Bloomberg would not be “too timid to take on big problems.” That very well might be the case. But he can be as bold as brass and still not get anything done. That’s because there’s a very good reason politicians are too timid to take on the “big problems.”

Trying to solve the nation’s problems always means getting some of the voters mad at you. Not everyone will be convinced that your brilliant solutions to Iraq, the deficit, entitlement programs, social security, Medicare, homeland security, and terrorism are the way to proceed. Many citizens (and perhaps even some lawmakers), in fact, may well wish to hang you in effigy and call you nasty names. And without some kind of party apparatus to whip House and Senate members into line, you have about as much chance of passing any of your heartfelt, carefully thought out solutions to our problems as Paris Hilton has of emerging from jail with her hair shorn, wearing sack cloth and ashes, and chanting the Confiteor - in Latin.

Politicians are not going to stick their neck out for a President Bloomberg just because he’s sincere and has solutions that make sense. He could be the greatest communicator since Reagan (he’s a bore as a speaker) and still fail miserably. Bloomberg can’t be unaware of this which makes his desire to run sheer vanity. As a mutli billionaire (he’s ranked 44th wealthiest man in the world), a hundred million of his own money spent on a Presidential run would give him instant credibility - at least in the eyes of the media. But if he got more than 5% in the general election, I would be shocked.

Having the golden touch at making money and governing the United States of America represent two different skill sets. Why we would think that someone successful in business would be able to translate that skill into being able to deal with al-Qaeda? Or reform entitlements? It won’t wash with the voters. It never has.

If Bloomberg were to give in to the temptation and run for President, who would he potentially hurt more? Conventional wisdom has him taking votes away from the Democratic presidential candidate due to his more liberal views on social issues like abortion and gay marriage. But what happens if Rudy Giuliani receives the Republican nomination? Then all bets are off and both parties would scramble like hell to keep Bloomberg off the ballot in as many states as possible. Why take the chance that Bloomberg will siphon votes away from your candidate?

Just how much would Bloomberg be willing to spend of his own fortune in this vanity run? His legal bills are going to be astronomical as he fights to get his name on as many state ballots as possible. Couple that with spending on paid media, staff, campaign travel, and the number he may be looking at will be approaching $150 million or more. If he goes ahead and takes the plunge, it could end up being the most expensive indulgence ever embraced by a vainglorious aristocrat yet.

J.P. Morgan or Andrew Carnegie would never have spent that much. They considered the Presidency a step down. What does that say about today’s robber barons?

As the race for the Republican presidential nomination heats up, it becomes more and more apparent that the GOP hopefuls are convinced that President George Bush suffers from some kind of highly contagious, debilitating disease. The way they seek to distance themselves from he and his policies would generally point to one of two things; either Bush has contracted some exotic malady or his poll numbers are so low that he has become the “Typhoid Larry” of electoral politics:

Recent polls have shown Bush’s popularity — which has long been in the tank with independents — suffering significant erosion even among GOP base voters, largely due to a backlash over the president’s stance on immigration.

The decline, according to some Republican strategists, has flashed a green light for lawmakers on Capitol Hill and presidential candidates to put distance between themselves and an unpopular president — a politically essential maneuver for the 2008 general election that remained risky as long as Bush retained the sympathies of Republican stalwarts.

Now that those sympathies have somewhat cooled, the effects are visible: Republican House members upset about immigration policy have spoken of Bush in disparaging terms. And presidential contenders like Rudy Giuliani are striking change-the-course themes in their rhetoric, even while continuing to back Bush over the Iraq war.

Much has changed since that first debate at the Reagan Library in California when each GOP candidate in his turn gave lip service to supporting the President. But lately, the Republican front runners especially have made it a point to make their differences with the President known to the voters. Even on Iraq, Senator Sam Brownback has broken with the Administration, calling for a partition of that bloody country into three separate federal entities; Shia, Sunni, and Kurd. And all the GOP frontrunners except John McCain have excoriated the President over his immigration proposal.

In fact, the debate over Bush’s “amnesty-that-really-isn’t-amnesty-because-I-say-so” bill is being blamed for this erosion of support. But I believe that to be much too simple an explanation. There are a large group of Republicans and GOP leaning voters who have had it up to here with Bush and have been waiting for a chance to stick it to this President for a variety of perceived failings including his out of control fiscal policies, his advocacy of big government programs like the Prescription Drug Bill, and even Iraq where some of the GOP faithful believe that Bush has been negligent in both defending our efforts there as well as prosecuting the war with sufficient competence and vigor.

Whatever the reason for this sudden movement away from Bush by the GOP field, all must take great care not to cut the cord completely. Bush still commands the support of more than 60% of the party and abandoning the President entirely carries the risk of sounding too much like a Democrat, much less giving offense to millions of conservatives who still view the President with affection and admiration. It remains to be seen whether or not Bush can even maintain that level of support given his nearly suicidal attacks on opponents of his pet amnesty project. No one likes to be called a bigot in so many words. And if he keeps that up, about the only supporters he’ll have will be the bedrock Republican faithful who would support anyone with an “R” after his name on the ballot.

But all of this slipping and sliding away from Bush by the GOP field will probably go for naught anyway. That’s because whoever emerges to claim the nomination will have to face the fact that just about every time a Democratic campaign commercial comes on TV next year, it will show the GOP nominee on one side of the screen and some unflattering picture of the President on the other. The Democrats are going to connect the Republican Presidential hopeful to Bush like superglue. And by the time they’re done, voters will think that Bush running for a third term.

So what’s the point of breaking with the President if the other party isn’t going to let voters forget George Bush? If the other candidate’s name is Clinton, the Democrats are going to have their own problems in breaking with the past. Looked upon with great affection by Democrats and left leaning independents, Bill Clinton is a lot less beloved in many parts of the electorate vital to the Democrat’s prospects for success. The idea of “The Bill and Hill Show” coming back to the White House does not sit well with about half of all independents. And Hillary’s negative rating - an astronomical 49% in the last Rassmussen poll - would seem to indicate that a GOP counter strategy of tying Hillary to her husband’s scandal plagued administration could end up making the entire issue of running away from Bush a wash.

The most marked retreat from support for the President among the frontrunners has been by Rudy Guiliani, who invoked the name of Reagan in an unflattering comparison to the current President:

But the willingness of leading Republicans to draw distinctions with Bush goes beyond immigration. “The thing that concerns me the most is that 74 percent that thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction,” Giuliani said last week at a Flag Day ceremony in Wilmington, Del., in a reference to recent polling. “What we’re lacking is strong, aggressive, bold leadership like we had with Ronald Reagan.” Later, he sought to downplay the apparent shot at the incumbent, underlining the awkward balance GOP candidates must strike in establishing independence from Bush without expressly repudiating him.

You can’t come much closer to a “repudiation” than that. Calling the ostensible leader of your party a weak and failed leader with 74% of the country believing we’re headed in the wrong direction cannot be construed in any fashion as a love note. By appealing to the memory of Saint Ronald, Guiliani softened the blow to those bedrock Republicans who like Bush but worship Reagan. And his backtracking later was hardly an apology for misspeaking. By referencing his statements to campaign strategy, Guiliani reinforces the belief that while he recognizes the balancing act he must perform, there is little doubt that he feels the need to get as far away from Bush as is practicable.

The closer we get to the primaries, the more we will probably see the GOP field edging away from the President. But there are going to be moments when the eventual nominee will be forced to stand with Bush, such as the Republican convention next summer. You can’t keep a sitting President from speaking no matter how unpopular he might be. But whoever ends up in the Republican’s winner’s circle, they may be wishing for a sudden power outage at the Xcel Center in St. Paul when it comes time for the President’s address if his poll numbers keep dropping the way they have these last few months.

The Republican race for the presidential nomination continues to surprise most inside the beltway observers who still have no idea how exactly to describe “The Fred Phenomena.” Recent polls only highlight the difficulty in analyzing what has now gone from a Thompson boomlet to a full blown prairie fire sweeping across the broad spectrum of Republican voting blocs and scrambling the race at the top

The Times-Bloomberg poll has Rudy in the lead with 27% and Thompson closing fast at 21%. McCain is sinking, down to 12% (amidst rumors that is having trouble raising money) with Mitt Romney treading water at 10%. If conservatives had any notion that McCain was a better choice than the more moderate Guiliani or Romney, the forthcoming entrance of Fred Thompson into the race has probably destroyed what little conservative support the Arizona Senator had left. Clearly, Fred is rising at the expense of McCain - at the moment.

The Rasmussen poll released yesterday is even more shocking. It shows the undeclared, barely started campaign of the former Tennessee Senator locked in a dead heat with Rudy Guiliani who has been running for President since last November. Each candidate receives 24% in the latest survey with McCain, losing half his support since January, at just 11% and tied with Romney.

Some of the internals of that Rasmussen poll are interesting. Thompson’s favorable/unfavorable rating is a stellar 59-14. Contrasted with McCain’s own tumbling approval ratings in his own state (just 47% view him favorably), this spells real trouble for not only McCain but the rest of the field as well.

The real question is will those numbers hold up once Thompson gets it in gear and begins to campaign in earnest. Right now, the Tennessean is something of a cipher. He has promised a different kind of campaign, one that uses the Internet more with less emphasis on personal appearances and other traditional campaign tactics. Judging by how it has worked so far, one could only call his strategy a success.

But not so fast. Limiting his speeches out on the hustings may leave Fred wide open to charges that he is ducking the voters in favor of an electronic campaign where he can carefully script his “appearances” on websites and op-ed pages. By limiting his exposure, he continues to be all things to all Republicans. While he has not done or said anything really controversial yet, once he is forced to come out with specifics on Iraq, the budget, taxes, immigration, and the War on Terror, people are going to start disagreeing with him.

And this is where getting up close and personal with primary voters is vitally necessary. Very few people are going to agree with everything you say and stand for. The test of Thompson’s strength as a candidate will come when we can determine how many people will still vote for him despite their disagreements with him on individual issues. And while there are many ways voters make that determination, it is very important that they see the candidate in the flesh so that they can judge for themselves how trustworthy he is or how he handles adversity.

It’s clear voters won’t find that information out via the internet. But Fred is smart in not rushing out on to the campaign trail just yet. There’s plenty of time for him to flesh out his on-line personae and fill in some of the blanks by writing and occasionally venturing out to address friendly audiences. It has worked so far. Why change it?

Will there be a drop off in support once he begins to campaign in earnest and people get to know him better? I would guess that his negatives will no doubt rise slightly. There isn’t an American politician alive today with negative ratings that are so low. But Fred’s challenge will be to move beyond the 24% support he currently enjoys and start building a majority coalition that can bring him the nomination.

For that, he will have to reach out to Guiliani and Romney supporters and give them a reason to support him beyond the fact that he is a conservative. He must broaden his appeal beyond the south and west and begin to compete in the Midwest and northeast. Romney is still far ahead in Iowa and New Hampshire. Victories in those two early contests will give the former Massachusetts governor some real momentum going into the pivotal contest in South Carolina and the National Primary Day a week later.

In fact, Fred may be eschewing competing in some of those early primaries and caucuses in order to concentrate on the January 29th contest in Florida. He already has begun a fundraising operation in the Sunshine State and there has been speculation that Jeb Bush may give him a hand - perhaps not publicly but urging some of his moneymen and supporters to help Thompson out. Winning Florida would give Fred some momentum going into South Carolina 4 days later (where he hopes to finish off McCain if he’s still in the race) and would set him up beautifully for some serious delegate harvesting on National Primary Day on February 5 where 20 states with half the US population will go to the polls.

With such a front loaded primary schedule, Thompson still has some ground to make up despite his unorthodox campaign. I suspect the money issue will begin to surface in the fall as the candidates get serious about paid media in the early primary states. Viral internet ads will help Thompson, I’m sure. But he will still need to try and compete over the airwaves if he hopes to do well.

If nothing else, Thompson’s “Front Porch” campaign and his subsequent meteoric rise in the polls may change the way candidates run for President in the future.

But only if he wins.

UPDATE

Ken Vogel in Politico has news of a whispering campaign against Thompson by other candidates seeking to undermine his claim to being a conservative lion.

It sounds to me like they’re reaching when trying to tar Fred with the “trial lawyer” moniker as well as digging into his client list when he was a lobbyist. Thompson’s experience in government as a staff lawyer on the Watergate Committee and in the Department of Justice more than outweighs any attempts to portray him as some kind of shady Washington insider.

Where his opponents may have more success is in pointing to Thompson’s support for McCain-Feingold, a position he regrets now but at the time, he was one of the bill’s biggest boosters. I don’t know how much traction that charge will have but it bears watching.

In the early days of American politics, no man would dare openly run for President of the United States, zig zagging across the country trying to drum up support. It was considered unseemly and self-aggrandizing for a politician to be seen grasping for power in such a naked way.

So the putative candidate would run what was commonly known as a “Front Porch Campaign” where party leaders and supporters from across the country would show up at the candidate’s home and appear to plead with him to accept their support. The candidate, humble and diffident, would gratefully acknowledge their activities on his behalf and usually mouth some platitudes about some issue or give a stem winding, patriotic oration about America . Of course, the more important the party leader (or his representative), the bigger what passed for a 19th century feeding frenzy by the press. It was in this way that the American people became acquainted with the major candidates.

It was all a political Kabuki dance. Everyone knew that the candidate was dying to be President. The 1896 race between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan was a case in point.

While Bryan was on the hustings, making more than 600 speeches (If there was a man in American political history more in love with his own voice, I am unaware of him.), McKinley, after locking up the nomination appeared dormant, sitting at home entertaining Republican party luminaries looking for all the world as if he couldn’t really care if he became President. Meanwhile, a shady operator by the name of Mark Hanna was generously spreading money around he raised from his big business friends who were absolutely terrified of Bryan’s populist campaign and most especially his advocacy of basing the dollar on both a gold and silver standard (”You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”).

McKinley ended up winning the election by allowing Bryan an open field to scare the beejeebees out of just about everyone except his farm/labor base. And that points up one of the oddities in politics; a sitting target is harder to hit than a moving one.

Senator Fred Thompson has developed a strategy so at odds with that of his rivals in the Republican race for President that it may be studied very carefully by future campaigns for lessons in how to win a nomination. At the moment, Thompson is third in national polls trailing Mayor Rudy Guiliani and Senator McCain and leading former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. But the former Tennessee Senator isn’t even an official candidate yet. Just this past Friday, he formed a finance committee to raise money for his campaign. But he has yet to spend any money on advertising. He has precious few paid staff members. And his organization is light years behind those of his main rivals.

While the front runners and also-rans have been criss crossing the country and frantically working the phones trying to raise money, Thompson has set himself down on his ole’ front porch, relaxing on the settee writing a bit, blogging some, and occasionally venturing out to give a speech to the faithful. He has used the internet to generate a “buzz” about his campaign - much like sophisticated marketers today use the net to spread the word about a new product. He has no official website. But articles like this one, talking about the Senator and his campaign serve the purpose of circulating his name and getting people to think about him.

Of course, it helps that Thompson has been appearing on television for years as the no nonsense DA in NBC’s Law and Order. But in establishing a presence on the web and fleshing out his ideas through some very well placed op-eds designed to give him maximum exposure to conservative audiences, Thompson has emerged as bona fide conservative alternative to the front runners.

Thompson will not participate in this Tuesday’s Republican debate in New Hampshire. A pity, that. But no matter how you look at it, Thompson is now ready to take his campaign from his front porch into the living rooms of the American people. How he handles that transition will say much about his abilities as well as how far he might go in the race for the nomination.

C: I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.

THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

Pardon the lengthy introduction, but The Dead Parrot Sketch is one of Monty Python’s most important contributions to the humor of western civilization. Or not. I suppose it depends on whether you like Monty Python.

Be that as it may, the sketch is also instructive regarding the imminent demise of what we used to call “The Grand Old Party” which became the nickname of Republicans back in the day when “The Grand Army of the Republic” - Union veterans of the Civil War - pretty much ran the party. Those 400,000 or so veterans elected every Republican president from Grant to McKinley. Their endorsement carried huge weight with a grateful electorate who recognized the veteran’s sacrifices and honored them even beyond the effective life of the GAR.

Now the party is run by cynical hacks and jackanapes who, despite all evidence to the contrary, insist that the parrot isn’t dead, it’s just resting. The plumage may still be pretty. But maggots have already begun to eat away at the insides.

What political conservatives and on-the-ground Republicans must understand at this point is that they are not breaking with the White House on immigration. They are not resisting, fighting and thereby setting down a historical marker–”At this point the break became final.” That’s not what’s happening. What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition. This is sad, and it holds implications not only for one political party but for the American future.

The White House doesn’t need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don’t even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.

Peggy Noonan is not some turncoat, traitorous, weak kneed Republican pantywaist. She helped put Ronald Reagan’s ideas and thoughts to some of the most beautiful rhetorical music of 20th century politics. But she, along with many of us, are tired and dispirited. We have seen the Republican party run into the ground and then stepped on by an Administration and a President who have gone beyond taking most of us for granted and instead have declared war upon those who have sustained his presidency in the face of the most vicious and determined opposition to his policies. We have been slapped in the face, kicked in the teeth, stabbed in the back. And the smug, self-righteous mountebanks who are taking the party with them to oblivion could care less.

In fact, given all that has transpired since the 2004 election (which coincided with the last time the Bushies even paid lip service to the base) one could say that this President has seemed most determined to destroy the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Reagan leaving behind only a charred husk for the rest of us to live with. They have decided that Götterdämmerung is in order; if they can’t prevail, then they will destroy what is left of the grand coalition that changed the face of America and the world in the 1980’s and in a fit of either pique or ignorance, leave it for the next crew to cobble together something else.

I will say that it didn’t take much to destroy what was left of that coalition. Since the end of the cold war - the single uniting expedient of the Republican party for more than 30 years - the GOP has been adrift. Uniting against Clinton was fairly easy although that unity was a mile wide and an inch deep. It was based on the absolute worst of political bargains; the cold, calculus of how to get power and keep it. So for ten years Republicans played the special interest game, feeding the lobbyists a steady diet of earmarks and favors, reaping huge amounts of campaign contributions in return, while selling out their basic principles of smaller, less intrusive government and fiscal discipline.

And now, there’s precious little left. No ideology. Little loyalty. Less desire to help this gang of cynical galoots maintain what power and position they have remaining. Witness the news from the Republican National Committee:

The Republican National Committee, hit by a grass-roots donors’ rebellion over President Bush’s immigration policy, has fired all 65 of its telephone solicitors, Ralph Z. Hallow will report Friday in The Washington Times.

Faced with an estimated 40 percent fall-off in small-donor contributions and aging phone-bank equipment that the RNC said would cost too much to update, Anne Hathaway, the committee’s chief of staff, summoned the solicitations staff last week and told them they were out of work, effective immediately, the fired staffers told The Times.

The national committee yesterday confirmed the firings that took place more than a week ago, but denied that the move was motivated by declining donor response to phone solicitations.

“The phone-bank employees were terminated,” RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt wrote by e-mail in response to questions sent by The Times. “This was not an easy decision. The first and primary motivating factor was the state of the phone bank technology, which was outdated and difficult to maintain. The RNC was advised that we would soon need an entire new system to remain viable.”

Fired employees acknowledged that the committee’s phone equipment was outdated, but said a sharp drop-off in donations “probably” hastened the end of the RNC’s in-house phone-bank operation.

“Last year, my solicitations totaled $164,000, and this year the way they were running for the first four months, they would total $100,000 by the end of 2007,” said one fired phone bank solicitor who asked not to be identified.

Not dead. Just resting.

The real danger, of course, is that come November next year GOP candidates simply won’t be able to compete in the 70 or so seats in the House that the Democrats are licking their chops to see change hands. With little available help from the national party and a base that will not only sit on their wallets but probably sit on their hands come election day, the chances are growing that a truly remarkable collapse will occur, an historic implosion that, like a tidal wave, will change the political contours of the country once it recedes. The stars are not quite aligned yet for such a disaster. But the tumblers are beginning to click into place and it remains to be seen whether anyone or any group in the GOP can alter history’s course.

Meanwhile, the Bushies continue to employ their scorched earth policy toward critics:

I suspect the White House and its allies have turned to name calling because they’re defensive, and they’re defensive because they know they have produced a big and indecipherable mess of a bill–one that is literally bigger than the Bible, though as someone noted last week, at least we actually had a few years to read the Bible. The White House and its supporters seem to be marshalling not facts but only sentiments, and self-aggrandizing ones at that. They make a call to emotions–this is, always and on every issue, the administration’s default position–but not, I think, to seriously influence the debate.

They are trying to lay down markers for history. Having lost the support of most of the country, they are looking to another horizon. The story they would like written in the future is this: Faced with the gathering forces of ethnocentric darkness, a hardy and heroic crew stood firm and held high a candle in the wind. It will make a good chapter. Would that it were true!

Indeed. The President’s famous stubbornness - a quality that held him in good stead early in his Administration - has now morphed into a pathological, ego-centric belief that since he is always right, his critics are not only wrong but evil to boot. I guess six years of enduring the unhinged, BDS paranoia and conspiracy theories of the lickspittle left can do that to a man.

The fact that this self righteousness has permeated his entire Administration as well as most supporters of his Let’s-Not-Call-It-Amnesty-Even-Though-It-Is bill only makes many of his erstwhile supporters wonder is there anything left to expend the time and energy defending. Some would say the Administration’s policies in Iraq are worth going to bat for. But given recent news that the President is about to undercut even his Iraq War supporters by withdrawing a substantial number of troops for no more reason than the Democrats have given, it would appear the betrayal of even these, his most loyal and true acolytes, will eventually be complete.

Meanwhile, world events rush forward. Iran continues to thumb its nose at everyone. Pakistan becomes more unstable by the day - with its 60 nuclear weapons poised to possibly fall into the hands of Taliban lovers. Afghanistan still bleeds despite small successes. Lebanon is in danger from a desperate Syria who seeks to undermine its government to prevent an International Tribunal from declaring President Assad a common, murderous gangster. Chavez is taking Venezuela to hell. And the terrorists continue to plan murder on a cosmic scale.

A lame duck President without much of a base, a rabid dog opposition, and a party coming apart at the seams means a time of maximum danger for the United States. I wish it weren’t so. But the palpable feeling of impending disaster that I feel to the marrow of my bones requires me to cry out in anger and despair at those who have taken us down this road and who will now reap the whirlwind for what they have sown these past few years.

UPDATE

Allah channels the parrot:

The RNC spokesman denied that there has been a falloff at all. Yup, there’s nothing wrong in the GOP family these days. Nothing at all. Nothing to see here, move along.

UPDATE II: FROM THE “HOLY CHRIST!” FILES

Michelle links to a Mary Katherine Ham post on a verbatim transcript with an RNC solicitor:

Caller: “Well, that’s not Republicans. Just the President loves that immigration bill.”

Caller: “That’s ridiculous.”

Indeed. You lost me at “hello”…

When I survey the disaster that is the current Republican party - a leaderless, rudderless, dispirited mob without a clue of how to begin fixing what’s broke - the obvious question that leaps to mind is can anything be salvaged from the current situation? Or is the GOP condemned to walk the earth like Zombies for the foreseeable future with no direction, no heart, and little in the way of motivation to animate its followers?

You think I’m being too hard on Republicans, huh? Quick, name the leader of the Republican party. Time’s up. If you said Bush, I’ll give you points for loyalty but then take away your Haliburton Club card. The President of the United States is busy doing what every second term president has done since the beginning of the republic; fashioning a legacy for the history books. If you think he cares much for the Republican party - especially this president - I would just as soon you remain on the sidelines while those of us who have to deal with the reality of the situation take over.

Who else as leader of the GOP? Mr. Boehner? Mr. McConnell? Fine gentlemen, adequate legislators both. But as leaders of a national party, they both leave much to be desired as far as personality, temperament, and the ability to move large numbers of people toward a common goal. Herding lawmakers is a lot different than inspiring voters. And frankly, neither one of those gentleman has got “it” - that ineffable quality that draws the legions to your standard and inspires personal loyalty above and beyond attachment to party.

Leadership certainly can’t be found in the gaggle of presidential candidates fielded so far by the Republicans. While some of those qualities I mentioned are present in a few of the candidates, they have no standing to grab the reins of leadership and begin the process of bringing the party back from the dead. Perhaps when a clear winner emerges early next winter (and it will be early), the Chosen One can work on re-energizing and re-tooling the party. This will be in addition to trying to organize a national campaign in order to effectively challenge the eventual Democratic nominee. Somehow, I think that party building will take a back seat to the more important task of getting elected in the first place.

And that brings us to Fred Thompson and his slow, steady (some would say stodgy) progress toward entering the race for the Republican nomination. It used to be true back in the day that a candidate waited until after Labor Day the year before the election to formally announce his candidacy. This was because no one in their right mind would eschew FEC “matching funds” available to all candidates in favor of abandoning those limits in order to raise obscene amounts of cash (Hillary and Obama are expected to raise close to $120 million each). It was considered bad politics and bad strategy back then. But times change as does the way candidates run for president. An early announcement is almost a necessity now so that a candidate can compete in the upcoming heavily front loaded primary season.

But Fred Thompson has done things a little differently and as a result, has made an effective splash in the race. Running a “Front Porch” campaign from Tennessee, Thompson has cautiously ventured out to speak at a couple of friendly forums while using the internet to great effect. His presence on the web is not measured in hits at a website but rather the buzz created by his web activities. A You Tube video of a response to Michael Moore swept the net like wildfire. He has also blogged a bit as well as written some widely disseminated Op-Eds, garnering a much larger readership on the net for those pieces than in the publication they originally appeared.

Thompson has accomplished much in a short period of time. He has moved up the ladder into the first tier of serious candidates given a realistic shot at the nomination. And he has done it without much of an organization, virtually no paid staff, and no paid media. This is remarkable feat when one thinks of the way modern campaigns are conducted and speaks well of the Senator’s abilities.

In short, Thompson gets it. And when a Republican leader emerges from the current crop of presidential candidates, it should be someone who can use the net as a major means to rebuild the party. In one fell swoop, someone like Thompson could close the gap that most everyone agrees has opened up between the liberal netroots and the conservatives on the internet. By bringing the right “home” to the party (without venturing too far from the center) as well as being a focal point for organizational activities - fund raising, volunteers, and other party building efforts - a candidate could make huge strides in bringing the GOP back from the dead.

But much depends on Thompson himself and what kind of a candidate he might be. We’ve only gotten glimpses of Thompson the Campaigner; a rather disappointing appearance in California (Bob Novak writes that he threw away prepared remarks and winged it), and a more recent and more successful appearance in Stamford, Connecticut.

That Stamford appearance is much more instructive as to what we can expect from Thompson:

Thompson implied at Stamford that Republicans, along with Democrats, are responsible for making Americans cynical. While so far not spelling this out publicly, he deplores ethical abuses, profligate spending and incompetent management of the Iraq war. He becomes incandescent when considering abysmal CIA and Justice Department performance under the Bush administration. He is enraged by Justice’s actions in decisions leading to Scooter Libby’s prison sentence.

In his Senate voting record and his public utterances, Thompson is more conservative than Giuliani, McCain or Romney. He takes a hard line on the war against terror (referring in Connecticut to the danger of “suicidal maniacs” crossing open borders) and worries about immigration policy creating a permanent American underclass. His one deviation from the conservative line has been support for the McCain-Feingold campaign reform, much of which he now considers overtaken by current fundraising practices and perhaps irrelevant. Overall, his tone, in a soft Tennessee drawl, is less harsh than that of other Republican candidates — a real-life version of the avuncular fictional D.A. he plays on TV.

Beyond ideology, Thompson envisions a 21st-century campaign, utilizing the Internet more and spending less money than his opponents. When speaking to a friendly audience or ruminating off the record, the 6-foot-7 actor-politician does not look or sound like the GOP’s announced candidates for president. His challenge will be to convey that impression when he appears with opponents on the same stage in the immediate future.

If true, this makes Thompson an even more impressive candidate in my mind. The untapped potential - and not just for fundraising - in organizing a net based campaign means that Thompson has a real chance to blow the rest of the GOP field out of the water. The danger is that expectations will creep so high that when he finally emerges from his front porch, the Savior of the Party will instead be seen as something a little more ordinary.

The same thing happened to Wesley Clark in 2004:

Fred Thompson is to the Republicans in ‘08 as Wes Clark was to the Democrats in ‘04. In other words, the highpoint of his campaign will be the day he gets in the race, because once he’s a serious candidate–and not just the fevered daydream of a dissatisfied base–voters will realize he’s not all that. Remember, you heard it here first. And if Thompson doesn’t flame out and actually goes on to win the GOP nomination and (gulp) the White House, well, forget I ever wrote this.

Update: Ana Marie Cox writes in to point out that you only heard it here first if you don’t read Swampland. And, in comments, MrCookie1 lays claim to the same thought. That’s three people who think Thompson=Clark. It’s a bona fide trend!

Wishful thinking by the left or prescient analysis? Clark’s problem was that the left was looking for a war hero to blunt the GOP’s huge advantage on national security issues. The fact that Clark proved to be an empty suit on domestic policies as well as a stiff-as-a-board campaigner didn’t help. And the charges that he was a “Democrat of convenience” - fed by his stated admiration for Colin Powell and Condi Rice - hurt him badly right out of the box.

No, Fred Thompson is no Wesley Clark. But there is still a danger that expectations won’t be met immediately as the Senator goes through the inevitable shake down problems all campaigns have at the beginning. Overcoming those problems will be a test of his leadership and communication skills. And his debate appearances will also give voters the opportunity to see how well he thinks on his feet. All in all, a Thompson candidacy will certainly alter the dynamics of the race as the other frontrunners attempt to sharpen their differences with the Senator.

The GOP race for president is about to get very interesting.

I’ll say this much for the Democratic candidates for President: At least they’re trying to address the health care issue.

And to give you an idea of why the Republicans will probably lose the presidency in 2008, I perused the sites of the top 3 contenders for the nomination to ascertain what their thoughts about the health care crisis might be.

Rudy doesn’t mention it. Not. One. Word.

Neither does McCain.

Only Mitt Romney has a blurb on his issues page about health care:

The health of our nation can be improved by extending health insurance to all Americans, not through a government program or new taxes, but through market reforms.

Governor Romney: “We can’t have as a nation 40 million people — or, in my state, half a million — saying, ‘I don’t have insurance, and if I get sick, I want someone else to pay.”
(USA Today, July 5, 2005)

Governor Romney: “It’s a conservative idea,” says Romney, “insisting that individuals have responsibility for their own health care. I think it appeals to people on both sides of the aisle: insurance for everyone without a tax increase.”
(USA Today, July 5, 2005)

As for the others, Fred Thompson has no official campaign site yet and doesn’t mention his position on any issues.

Duncan Hunter apparently has no position on the health care problem.

Jim Gilmore is for “preserving traditional values” but evidently doesn’t give much thought to health care.

Those Republicans who have given the issue some thought include Senator Brownback:

Our healthcare system will thrive with increased consumer choice, consumer control and real competition. I believe it is important that we have price transparency within our health care system. This offers consumers, who are either enrolled in high deductible health plans or who pay out-of-pocket, the ability to shop around for the best prices and plan for health care expenditures. Also, the existing health insurance market forces consumers to pay for extra benefits in their premiums, such as aromatherapy and acupuncture, which tends to increase the cost of coverage. Instead, consumers should be able to choose the from health care coverage plans that are tailored to fit their families’ needs and values. Accordingly, individuals should be allowed to purchase health insurance across state lines. Finally, I believe that consumers should have control over the use of their personal health records. I have a proposal that would offer consumers a means to create a lifetime electronic medical record, while, at the same time, ensuring that the privacy of their personal health information is secured and protected.

Over time, the socialized medicine model has shown to deprive consumers of access to life-saving treatments and is downright inconsistent with the spirit of the American people to be free from unwanted government intervention. I will continue to work at the forefront to create a consumer-centered, not government-centered, healthcare model that offer both affordable coverage choices and put the consumer in the driver’s seat.

There are some sensible elements to Brownback’s position, most notably in consumers being able to choose specifics of their coverage - choice is always better than having something rammed down your throat by the state. But sadly, from what I can see, Brownback barely scratches the surface of the systemic problems in the health care industry - insurance companies and their resistance to meaningful reform.

Tommy Thompson actually has some good market solutions to the health care crisis and has given the issue a lot of thought:

Governor Thompson believes America must strengthen its health care system if it is to remain the best in the world. He would accomplish this by 1. moving the focus to preventive from curative care; 2. accelerating the adoption of health information technology to save money and lives; 3. placing the uninsured in state-by-state insurable pools, allowing private insurers to bid on their coverage; 4. strengthening the nation’s long-term care system that robs too many Americans of their life savings; and 5. strengthening the Medicare and Medicaid programs to ensure the programs are there in the future for the millions of Americans who depend on them. Details on his proposal can be found here.

And Mike Huckabee should probably have left any mention of health care off of his site. His bullet point talking points are worse than useless.

In summary, most of the Republican candidates either have no announced position yet on healthcare reform or have offered a pastiche of options that include a heavy reliance on so-called “preventive” health care.

Ezra Klein shows why that’s a chimerical idea:

First, the impacts of preventive medicine are often overstated. It’s not that cleaning up the air or putting everyone on a gym regimen would greatly improve health — but people don’t follow gym regimens, and business doesn’t let you clean air. Furthermore, not all interventions are created equal. Better parenting might be beneficial, but it’s unlikely to be more effective — either on economic or biological grounds — than the use of statins, or hypertensive drugs, or daily tablets of aspirin. There are a lot of highly effective medical interventions which are very, very cheap. But our system is very poor at incentivizing their use.

Meanwhile, the reason doctors are constantly prescribing statins along with admonitions to exercise and eat better is because using public policy to change diet and exercise habits is really, really, hard, unless you’re prepared to be very heavy-handed (i.e, outlawing trans fats in restaurants, setting portion limits, etc). Indeed, part of the problem with preventive health measures is that, rather often, they don’t work very well. Like with traditional health care, some things really succeed (stripping lead out of gasoline, giving people antibiotics), and lots of things…don’t. And that’s to sidestep the weird reality that what drives health care politics is concern over money which, in fact, is quite rational: Folks don’t want to go bankrupt, and smart politicians don’t want the government to lose all space for spending on other priorities.

To my Republican friends, let me just say that the quickest way to warm the cockles of the American voter is to address the health care crisis. Not so much coming up with ever more expensive schemes to cover the estimated 40 million Americans who don’t have coverage. People are rightly concerned that so many are uninsured. But the problem is one of under insurance or poor insurance coverage. This is what worries most Americans and addressing this problem - along with supplying coverage to those who need it - would go a long way toward improving the quality of life for ordinary Americans.

The Democrats insist on getting in a bidding war, coming up with ever more expensive schemes to address both the uninsured and under insured while trying not to bust the bank. The latest entry in the health care sweepstakes is Barak Obama:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) on Tuesday offered a sweeping health care plan that would provide every citizen a means for coverage and calls on government, businesses and consumers to share the costs of the program.

Obama said his plan could save the average consumer $2,500 a year and bring health care to all. Campaign aides estimated the cost of the program at $50 billion to $65 billion a year, financed largely by eliminating tax cuts for the wealthy that are scheduled to expire. President Bush wants to make those cuts permanent.

“The time has come for universal, affordable health care in America,” Obama said in a speech in Iowa City, at the University of Iowa’s medical school.

So $50-65 billion a year, financed by soaking “the rich,” would make coverage more affordable and insure those who currently have none? Good news indeed - if it were possible. The Devil, dear reader, as always, is in the details:

Obama’s plan retains the private insurance system but injects additional money to pay for expanding coverage. It would also create a National Health Insurance Exchange to monitor insurance companies in offering the coverage.

Those who can’t afford coverage would get a subsidy on a sliding scale depending on their income, and virtually all businesses would have to share in the cost of coverage for their workers. The plan is similar to the one covering members of Congress.

Obama’s package would prohibit insurance companies from refusing coverage because of pre-existing conditions…

My plan begins by covering every American. If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change for you under this plan is that the amount of money you will spend on premiums will be less,” Obama said. “If you are one of 45 million Americans who don’t have health insurance, you will after this plan becomes law.”

Obama also called for a series of steps to overhaul the current health care system. He would spend more money boosting technology in the health industry such as electronic record-keeping, put in place better management for chronic diseases and create a reinsurance pool for catastrophic illnesses to take the burden of their costs off of other premium payers.

His plan also envisions savings from ending the expensive care for the uninsured when they get sick. That care now is often provided at emergency rooms. The plan also would put a heavy focus on preventing disease through lifestyle changes.

Obama conceded that the overall cost of the program would be high.

“To help pay for this, we will ask all but the smallest businesses who don’t make a meaningful contribution to the health coverage of their workers to do so to support this plan,” said Obama. “And we also will repeal the temporary Bush tax cut for the wealthiest taxpayers.”

There are some good ideas in this plan. I don’t know how a “National Health Insurance Exchange” would work but in theory, any expansion of coverage via private companies is a good thing - even if they would be “monitored” closely. And “subsidized” health insurance makes sense to me. We subsidize housing and families. Why not health insurance?

The biggest question I have are the uninsured and their responsibility to the rest of us. Since many of the uninsured appear to be younger, employed Americans who simply don’t want to pay for coverage, how do we include them in the insurance pool? Edwards plan would mandate that everyone have health insurance. Obama is silent on the issue and I would be interested to see how the millions of uninsured Americans who fall into that category would be forced into the system.

Unfortunately, I think the bad outweighs the good in this proposal. McQ at Q & O takes a stab at critiquing what we know of the plan so far:

So instead of really doing something which would actually make insurance more affordable and easier to get - like removing it from being provided by business and letting a real insurance market (a private insurance market) develop, Obama plans on keeping these plans under employers and making all of them share the cost. Additionally, not a word about all the mandates by various state governments on minimum coverage. And all of this will somehow make insurance cheaper.

Secondly, why not, if the purpose is simply to ensure that all uninsured have access to insurance, why not fix that problem and leave everyone else alone? Instead he wants to mess with the insurance 300 million vs. the 40 or so million purported not to have insurance. Taking care of the 40 million actually might make insurance for the remaining 260 million cheaper.

Mac has a good point, although the quality of coverage among the 260 million remaining Americans varies wildly. Simply leaving that market alone won’t fix much of anything.

But Mac hits a home run here:

Again, having government “overhaul” anything is fraught with problems, the primary being cost and efficiency. It doesn’t have a good track record with either. And someone is going to pay for this overhaul. Additionally you’re looking at a mandate when you see things like “better management for chronic illnesses” and a cost increase (despite the promise of a cost decrease) when talking about government managing a “reinsurance pool for catastrophic illness”, because again, someone has to pay for that pool.

Rather than the $50-65 billion mentioned in the article it appears that the cost would be considerably higher. But most Americans would be willing to foot the bill if they thought it would actually do some good. Health care in America is a gigantic brute of a system, a trillion dollar monster that affects every man, woman, and child in America. To confidently say that even the federal government is going to “control” it in any but the grossest sense seems to me to be a flight of fancy. The only forces to my mind that would be powerful enough to affect it in any significant way would be market forces - bringing the cost down while competition improves the choices for consumers.

Now clearly, market forces alone won’t work to insure the uninsured or bring better health care options to those whose current plans are inadequate. In this case, government can act as a combination guide, referee, and burr under the saddle. Subsidizing some people will probably be inevitable as will mandating some kind of minimum coverage by large and small business. The very nature of the problems in health care means that government will have some kind of role to play. But the challenge will be to reform the system while keeping the best of the current regime in place.

And that’s a challenge that so far, not many Republicans have risen to address.

Andrew Sullivan went and saw Obama yesterday and reports that this “agent of change” may be the liberal’s answer to Ronald Reagan:

I’m still absorbing the many impressions I got. But one thing stays in my head. This guy is a liberal. Make no mistake about that. He may, in fact, be the most effective liberal advocate I’ve heard in my lifetime. As a conservative, I think he could be absolutely lethal to what’s left of the tradition of individualism, self-reliance, and small government that I find myself quixotically attached to. And as a simple observer, I really don’t see what’s stopping him from becoming the next president. The overwhelming first impression that you get - from the exhausted but vibrant stump speech, the diverse nature of the crowd, the swell of the various applause lines - is that this is the candidate for real change. He has what Reagan had in 1980 and Clinton had in 1992: the wind at his back. Sometimes, elections really do come down to a simple choice: change or more of the same?

Look at the polls and forget ideology for a moment. What do Americans really want right now? Change. Who best offers them a chance to turn the page cleanly on an era most want to forget? It isn’t Clinton, God help us. Edwards is so 2004. McCain is a throwback. Romney makes plastic look real. Rudy does offer something new for Republicans - the abortion-friendly, cross-dressing Jack Bauer. But no one captures the sheer, pent-up desire for a new start more effectively than Obama.

Sully may be on to something here. Last Saturday, in one of my more depressing posts, I said that “It smelled like 1979″ all over again and that all the political stars seemed to be positioning themselves for an historic re-alignment. This isn’t news to people who follow politics, of course. But in the course of explaining why I thought the prognosticators may be right about the possibility of overturning the established order, I said this:

Of course, the big difference is that the Democrats don’t have a Ronald Reagan to take advantage of the situation. Nobody will ever confuse Hilliary’s shrill denunciations with the twinkle in the Gipper’s eye when he zinged an opponent. Nor will anyone fail to see the difference between the inspirational yet empty platitudes of Obama with Reagan’s soaring rhetoric that touched something so American in people’s souls.

Sullivan thinks that Obama may be the most effective liberal advocate in his lifetime. I’m not sure how old Andrew is but those of us of a certain age clearly remember Hubert Humphrey, who could orate rings around the Senator from Illinois. And Ted Kennedy can still wow a Democratic audience with more liberal red meat than Obama tosses to his audiences.

Having said that, I see where Sully is going with this. In fact, he comes very close to what is surely going to be the biggest issue for Republicans going into the general election; how far and how fast can you run away from George Bush?

I fear he could do to conservatism what Reagan did to liberalism. And just as liberals deserved a shellacking in 1980, so do “conservatives” today. In the Bush era, they have shown their own contempt for their own tradition. Who can blame Obama for exploiting the big government arguments Bush has already conceded?

And just as Carter branded liberalism in a bad way for a generation, so Bush and his acolytes have poisoned the brand of conservatism for the foreseeable future. When you take a few steps back and look closely, you realize that Bush has managed both to betray conservatism and stigmatize it all at once. That’s some achievement.

The Democrats of 1980 were stuck with Carter, an incumbent running for re-election. Not so Republicans in 2008 with Bush. Unfortunately, there is precious little a Republican nominee can do to separate himself from this tar baby. He’s going to be a presence in the campaign - the Democrats will see to that little detail. And the party is going to have to give him one of the prime time slots during convention week. (Not doing so would make more news than anything Bush will say.) But other than that, Bush will be forced into the background as Republicans will desperately try and talk about the future, trying to ignore the last 8 years of just plain bad government - bad ideas, bad management, and bad execution.

But is Obama in the best position to take advantage of this desire for change? I have seen his basic stump speech 3 times and after each presentation, I am left with the impression that there really isn’t much there. “Liberal pablum” understates what Obama substitutes for any serious fleshing out of ideas or themes. It is feel good rhetoric taken to its extreme and logical conclusion; everybody wins if you vote for me.

Forget the silly gaffes of recent weeks - although Andrew points out something that I also have noticed and is extremely troubling. That is, the “fatigue factor.” A younger man such as Obama cannot be on a schedule this far out from the primaries where he is being asked to campaign 20 hours a day. His “fatigue” must be attributed to the atrocious mismanagement of his time by his staff. And when he uses fatigue as an excuse to explain his misstatement of the number of deaths that occurred in the tornadoes in Kansas, something is definitely amiss and needs to be rectified quickly.

As far as other similarities with Reagan, there is no denying the soaring notes of optimism present in his speeches. Sully noticed too:

At a couple of points in his speech, he used the phrase: “This is not who we are.” I was struck by the power of those words. He was reasserting that America is much more than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and Katrina and fear and obstinacy and isolation. And so he makes an argument for change in the language of restoration. The temperamental conservatives in America hear a form of patriotism; and the ideological liberals hear a note of radicalism. It’s a powerful, unifying theme. He’d be smart to deepen and broaden it.

This is no “blame America first” liberal. Conservatives should note that this line of attack will fall flat as Obama clearly sees America as a force for good in the world. But Andrew points up the most dramatic difference between Obama and Reagan; “restoration” vs. redemption.

The Reagan campaign of 1980 had elements of both a political campaign and crusade. It was a quasi-religious movement with its overarching theme being redeeming America from 50 years of liberalism. The idea that America had sinned and needed to recant its apostasy was a powerful force in bringing Reagan the political re-alignment he sought.

Can Obama capture some of that magic? Right track/wrong track poll numbers over the last few years have been historically high as far as America being on “the wrong track” under Bush. But those numbers were high in 2004 also and Kerry failed to break through. There must be something else afoot among the electorate that would act as a catalyst to propel someone as liberal as Obama all the way to the White House. A loss of faith in America itself would fill the bill, but I don’t see that anywhere at the moment. People have simply lost faith in Bush and the Republicans - a not inconsequential development but something the Republicans could rectify relatively quickly. A Guiliani or Romney candidacy would alter the face of the party at least temporarily and give hope to some of the more moderate elements in the GOP.

Andrew is no doubt in thrall of Obama’s delivery and magnetism. I was too when I first heard him. But rather than grow on you, the more you listen to what the Senator has to say, the more you realize how little there is to recommend him as far as concrete ideas and even definitive themes attached to his candidacy. Not quite an empty suit but certainly a lot more style than substance.

It is still an uphill battle for Obama to capture the Democratic nomination. Comparisons to Reagan notwithstanding, it appears that even with “the wind at his back,” as Sully says, he will have to sharpen his message and flesh out his programs and themes if he is to overtake Hillary Clinton and have a shot at the White House.

Weekends are mostly quiet around The House. Visitors are few and far between and nobody bothers to read what I write.

Come to think of it - that pretty much sounds like what happens on weekdays too. In truth, blogging lately has been a depressing pastime. Events here and around the world are careening toward some kind of climax - perhaps not an explosion but certainly some sort of denouement that will alter the landscape and make the world a different place. Political re-alignment here at home is in the offing - something the Republicans in Congress seemed bound and determined to speed along. It smells like 1979 to me. All the signs that pointed to an overturning of the established order back then - deep discontent among our fellow citizens, a sense of events spinning out of our control, a world situation made dicey by our own missteps, and the nagging feeling that a change would probably do us some good - are eerily present in 2007.

Of course, the big difference is that the Democrats don’t have a Ronald Reagan to take advantage of the situation. Nobody will ever confuse Hilliary’s shrill denunciations with the twinkle in the Gipper’s eye when he zinged an opponent. Nor will anyone fail to see the difference between the inspirational yet empty platitudes of Obama with Reagan’s soaring rhetoric that touched something so American in people’s souls.

The Republicans don’t have a Reagan to save them either. Just as well. I think even The Great Communicator would find it hard to get through to the blockheads who control the party. From the national headquarters on down through my local Republican organization, the GOP is demonstrating all the symptoms of a sick puppy; lethargy, sleepiness, a pathetic and forlorn look on its face, and the disgusting habit of soiling its own house.

What the Democrats have is plenty of ammunition to use against the Republicans and the fact that voters are in a punishing mood. That and a curious death wish exhibited by the GOP means that chances are very good that even if a Republican is elected President, the House and Senate gains made by the Democrats will be augmented considerably in 2008. And given the enormous power of incumbency today, that will mean a virtual GOP lockout from regaining power on the Hill for the foreseeable future.

Those of you inclined to be more optimistic and wish to take me to task for being a gloomy gus, I have some news for you - it’s only going to get worse.

The Democrats have yet to really get busy investigating stuff that even if you are a dyed in the wool Bushie will make your hair stand on end. I’m talking about billions and billions of dollars that have disappeared in Iraq. Just up and went missing. No one knows where it is, whether it was spent on legitimate projects or whether someone just walked into the Coalition Provisional Authority offices and stuffed gobs of $100 bills down their pants. Estimates range from $4 billion to $7 billion dollars of taxpayers money down the rabbit hole.

Then there was the actual letting of contracts and that whole mess which will show not only favoritism toward Republican contractors but also a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse. There have already been at least two trials where contractors have been found guilty and the investigations continue.

Similar accusations (and proof that there is fire where that smoke is coming from) will be forthcoming when Democrats investigate the letting of Katrina rebuilding and clean up contracts. Some of that information has been out in the open for a while but we can trust the Democrats to tie it all up and present it to the voters with a nice, neat, bow.

Then there’s Iraq. I want to say that by November, 2008 Iraq will be well on its way to becoming a viable state, relatively violence free with a government who respects the political rights of all of its citizens. I want to say it but I won’t. Iraq then will probably look a lot like Iraq today. Less violence, perhaps. But the very same problems that have to be solved before the bleeding will stop are still not going to be addressed by the Iraqi government. They are incapable of dealing with reality. And I might add that no timetable or benchmark is going to get them off square one either. So much for the Democrat’s “plan” to end the war in anything but what they’ve desired all along; a humiliating retreat in the face of the enemy.

So there’s that to look forward to. And the almost certain collapse of the Musharraf government in Pakistan - or at least his less than graceful exit from power. Who replaces him will be one of the more interesting questions facing the United States over the next 18 months.

And Iran. Let’s not forget our friends, the mad mullahs. I’d like to say that by November, 2008 the threat of a nuclear Iran will have diminished and their dreams of becoming a regional powerhouse tossed on the dustbin of history. I’d like to say it but I won’t. I will boldly go out on a limb and predict that the Administration will not bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities nor will Israel. That’s because the mullahs are still having problems with the technical aspects of enriching uranium. (Note: The New York Times story last week about Iranian progress at Nantanz was incorrect. See here for a full accounting of what ElBaradei actually said. They are still 3-5 years away from having the bomb.)

Iran will still be making trouble in Iraq on election day - even if we have begun to pull out. This story in today’s Guardian - a situation with the militias I’ve alluded to many times in the South - shows what the mullah’s game is in Iraq. I have little confidence that we can do a damn thing about it.

North Korea will continue to drag its heels, trying to extort more and more from us as we pay them to abandon their nuclear program. Africa will continue to bleed in places like Darfur, Nigeria, the Congo, and points in between. Asia will continue to be roiled by Islamic fundamentalism. Europe will continue its slide into a stuporous defeatism with regards to the War on Terror and their ability to work with the United States in any meaningful way to defeat Islamism.

Yoikes! But my black dog’s got a hold of me today! I hasten to add that most of this is not the fault of the United States but rather historical forces that have been simmering since before the Cold War ended. Nor is it possible for the United States to “manage” or even “guide” events in most of these places to mitigate the worst of what is going on. No nation has that kind of power. This is simply the world as it is circa 2007. And we have to live in it.

It would be comforting to think that a change in parties controlling Washington will have much of an effect on what is occurring on this planet. It won’t. It can’t. The liberal Democrats are as bereft of ideas on how to confront most of these problems as the clueless policy makers and stubborn, turf conscious bureaucrats who currently run things. It’s hard for us Americans to admit it but some problems are just not solvable. Change comes whether we like it or not. Sometimes that change is accompanied by rivers of blood. Sometimes not. Our ability to determine one outcome or the other is extremely limited. Military power, “soft power,” economic power, cultural dominance - all pale in comparison to the tidal forces that are moving various peoples toward a far distant and unknowing shore.

This is the ebb and flow of history. All we can do is sit in the boat and ride out the storm as best we can.

In this, the longest, the strangest, the most expensive, perhaps the most important Presidential campaign season in history, Republican candidates from Rudy to Ronnie seem to be spinning their wheels, trying to find an issue where they can successfully get off the defensive and attack their opponents.

So far, they aren’t doing too well.

The tried and true liberal attack lines of the past sound old and strangely out of place. Pointing out that Hillary is anti-capitalist as one candidate did at last night’s debate is silly. Of course she’s anti-capitalist. She’s a liberal Democrat. And the problem is that the right has done an excellent job over the years of defining liberals in such a way as to make their stupidity on economic issues plain as day. Weak foreign policy, ditto. The American people don’t need to be reminded of these things because two decades of conservatives have successfully tagged the Democrats for what they are; a statist party in love with big government, tax raising, and the idea that everything in the world that can be blamed on America, should be blamed on America.

If this is the best a Republican nominee can do in what is sure to be a battle royale over the future of this country then Republicans will almost surely lose. For in the end, the American people will not only want a candidate to offer concrete solutions to our problems but also verbalize the spirit and optimism that denotes a “can do” attitude toward the future. This, after all, is what Presidential campaigns in this country have always been about. Coupling political attacks with a vision for where the nominee wants to take the country - a powerful, positive, optimistic vision - usually spells the difference between victory and defeat.

The Democrats, God bless ‘em, will spend the next year and a half telling the people how badly the Republicans have screwed up. In this, they will have plenty of evidence and ammunition. In fact, the real danger for the Democrats is that they get so caught up in their GOP/Bush bashing that they forget about that “vision thing” as George Bush #41 put it and fail to articulate a positive message that will give the people an idea of what kind of country they want the United States to be.

But that may still be enough for victory given the paucity of ideas coming from Republican candidates in these debates. Of course, part of the problem is the way the debates are structured. But outside of Duncan Hunter’s “Zero Tax” on American manufacturing and a few scattered initiatives from Romney, McCain, and Guiliani, no candidate as yet has been able to break out of the pack with a clear conceptualization of what kind of nation they want to lead.

This time out, it is not going to be enough to simply point at the Democratic nominee and scream “LIBERAL! LIBERAL! LIBERAL!” The last eight years will have given the American people a sour taste about the Republican party and any GOP nominee will have to remove that unsavory memory by making people look to the future and think about our security, our economy, and our culture in ways that are optimistic and positive.

A very tall order, that. There’s always the danger of overdoing it and leaving oneself open to counter charges of being too Pollyanish about the future. But there is little doubt that a bit of cockeyed optimism can blunt some of the more outrageous criticisms that will come the GOP’s way via the Democrats who can then be portrayed as being too grouchy, too negative about the future to deserve the reins of government. A delicate balance to be sure but one that the Republicans must seek out if they are to have any chance at all of recapturing the Congress.

As for the debate last night, Romney may have come closest to articulating a positive vision of the future. But there’s a reason he’s mired in 3rd place behind Guiliani and McCain; there’s just something too set, too perfect about his delivery and his personae. Not that he should seek to be some kind of rough hewn good ole boy, backslapping and “aw shucksing” his way to the nomination. But he exudes little warmth and less humanity. He comes off as a competent technocrat and not much else. Mitt could’ve used that “Rudy Moment” last night in going after Ron Paul for his obscene statements about 9/11. It would given him some personality.

Rudy did much better than he did last week in California. He needed to. He may have benefited most from the fact that the adults at Fox News were asking terrific questions designed to flesh out a candidates position on a particular issue rather than trying to create a “gotchya” moment as Chrissy Matthews constantly strove for on MSNBC the week previously. His answers were smoother and more intelligently formulated than the sputtering responses he gave the week before. And of course, his flash of temper at Ron Paul was the viral video highlight of the evening. I think Allah nails it here:

A more thoughtful response would have been to ask him what his studiously noninterventionist “constitutional” option would have been when Saddam invaded Kuwait. But that’s all gravy; Rudy’s answer suffices as an expression of the palpable disgust most Americans (or at least most conservatives) felt at that moment for that Bircheresque crank, which is why he got the reaction he did. You can hear Mitt at the end over the din demanding that Rudy not be given the extra 30 seconds he requested, and with good reason — he might have walked away with the nomination right there.

I mentioned last night while liveblogging the debate at Heading Right that Rudy’s Moment was reminiscent of Reagan’s loss of temper in Nashua, New Hampshire when the Publisher of the Nashua Telegraph, Jon Breen, sought to cancel a debate between he and George Bush because Reagan had invited other candidates to the event - an event he ended up paying for when the Telegraph bowed out of sponsoring it. When Breen ordered the microphones turned off, Reagan, in a flash of temper, grabbed one of the mikes and said “I’m paying for this microphone, Mr. Green (sic).” With those words, Reagan’s campaign destroyed George Bush’s “Big Mo” and he went on to victory. So Allah’s thought that Romney’s demanding Rudy be denied his extra 30 seconds lest he grab the nomination then and there is probably true.

Did Rudy “win” the debate? For that moment alone, he stood out and therefore probably did himself the most good. Better yet, he matches a similar viral video bit with Fred Thompson absolutely skewering Michael Moore over an open pit. Thompson’s piece has taken the righty blogosphere by storm and from what I can tell, Rudy’s bit has equally electrified conservatives.

And what about The Absent One? Despite Thompson’s response to Moore, the longer he stays away from debates and delays formally declaring for office, the more he risks appearing wishy washy about the whole idea of being president. It may be time for Fred to jump in with both feet and begin the race in earnest. Right now, he’s not damaging himself by staying away and may even be doing himself some good by not suffering by comparison with the other candidates. But that glow around him won’t last much longer. Eventually, he’ll have to commit. And the sooner the better.

McCain also did much better, again largely as a result of the kinds of questions that were being asked by the Fox journalists. I thought his response to the hypothetical “ticking bomb” scenario was especially good. As a man who himself experienced torture, I thought his answer regarding whether a president should order torture for captured terrorists with knowledge of an impending attack especially poignant and morally defensible. It may not have sat well with some conservatives but I know quite a few who aren’t holding his position on the issue against him.

As for the rest - forget them. With the possible exception of Duncan Hunter who I believe would make an excellent conservative Vice Presidential candidate for either Mitt or Rudy, Tommy Thompson, Tom Tancredo, Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee (who gave the most spirited anti abortion defense among the lot), and Sam Brownback failed to distinguish themselves in any way and a couple - Tancredo and Thompson - should look at a tape of that debate and then withdraw quietly. Not that anyone would notice anyway.

Ron Paul should not be invited to any more Republican debates. His truther position on 9/11 is so far beyond the pale of rationality and logic that including him does a disservice to the entire presidential selection process - and not just for Republicans. We have to find a way to place people like Paul so far out on the fringes of American politics that they fall off of a cliff and disappear. And not inviting him to another debate would be a good start.

This time out, a little better, sharper focus by all the top candidates which made them look slightly more “presidential” but failed to excite too many of us. I’m anxious to see a smaller field so that some of the candidates answers can be fleshed out more and we get a better idea of the quality of their minds. Right now, they barely have enough time to relay their talking points on the issues. A little more depth, please.

And a note to Fred!: C’mon in. The water’s fine.

UPDATE

Hugh Hewitt has some interesting thoughts about the debate last night, specifically John McCain’s trouble with responding to Mitt Romney’s criticism of McCain-Feingold:

Few analysts have focused on Senator McCain’s nearly incoherent response which asserted that there was too much money in politics and that money had corrupted the GOP. Both assertions are simply false, and though the MSM nods along, GOP voters absolutely reject both assertions. There isn’t too much money in political campaigning, they think, there’s too much money from the hard left represented by Soros. Further, the party faithful don’t think of themselves as corrupt, or even of the party generally. They believe that the GOP’s corrupt Congressmen weren’t corrupted by soft money or campaign donations but by cold cash and perks in exchange for favors.

That much is true - as far as it goes. McCain will get no praise from me for his ideas on how campaigns should be regulated. His ideas, as Hugh makes clear, are anti-Democratic and fly in the face of conservative thought.

But most Americans recognize that something must be done about the way that money is raised. In my review of the new book on the Duke Cunningham scandal, I point out that earmarks are not just being used for pork barrel politics but rather as a way to fill the campaign coffers of Republicans (and soon, Democrats) with hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions. That “cold cash” Hugh speaks of makes its way into campaigns via lobbyists in exchange for favors (earmarks) - as close to bribery as you can get without actually being frog marched out of the Capitol Building and straight to prison.

McCain’s presecriptions are draconian, restrictive, and Professor Hewitt says unconstitutional. I defer to his knowledge and experience in that regard but find his defense of the GOP ringing hollow. It has been Republican strategy since 1994 to use the Appropriations process to wring contributions from lobbyists by selling earmarks. This is not a secret nor is it illegal. But it stinks to high heaven and has corrupted the budget process. And as Duke Cunningham proved, it can corrupt individual congressmen as well.

Is there a “conservative” reform program for campaign finance? Unlimited contributions with immediate and full disclosure is about the only idea I’ve heard regarding FEC reform. To say that this is a prescription for permanent incumbency is a given unless the earmark process is reformed as well. And there are too few lawmakers - McCain is one of them - who sees the need to reform both parts of the whole.

So yes, skewer McCain for his folly. But recognize the problem and figure out a way to do something about it before what little integrity our political process and government have left disappear.