It was long past midnight on July 14, 1972 when George McGovern, a good and decent man, stepped to the podium in Miami Beach to give his speech accepting the nomination of the Democratic party for president. A genuine war hero who hated what the Viet Nam War was doing to the country, McGovern rode to the nomination on the scruffy coattails of the young, the disaffected, the grudge holders, the racialists – the entire victimhood society that now controls the Democratic party.

You knew this convention was going to be different when the Illinois delegation headed up by Richard J. Daley was summarily booted from the premises when challenged by a faction led by Jesse Jackson. Daley’s “elected” delegates did not contain enough women, minorities, or homosexuals according to the new party rules pushed through by McGovern and his revolutionaries. Humiliated, Daley vowed to show McGovern who ran the Democratic party in Illinois by barely lifting a finger for him in the general election campaign. Nixon gained nearly 60% of the vote to carry the state in November.

McGovern never knew what hit him. He thought that if he allowed the crazies who rioted in 1968 to take over the party, that he would expand the base and create an entirely new coalition of the young, the left, and minorities along with traditional Democratic allies like organized labor and the intelligentsia that would open a new era in government and politics.

What McGovern didn’t count on was backlash. He himself recognized this when he remarked “I opened the door to the Democratic party and 20 million people walked out.”

In Denver this year, graduates of that 1972 laboratory in identity politics are now firmly in control of the Democratic party. They have gone from revolutionaries to party insiders. They are in Congress, the Senate, the statehouse, and staff the numerous special pleader organizations and groups that form the backbone of the party. Barack Obama was all of 10 years old at the time. His running mate, Joe Biden, was part of that revolution, running his first campaign for the Senate on a McGovern platform and winning that fall – one of the few Democratic bright spots in an otherwise dismal political year.

The 1972 convention was an unmitigated disaster for the Democrats as every special interest group with a cause or a grudge got to debate their pet issue in full view of a national TV audience that dwindled as the convention droned on. The long windedness of the speakers, the confusion, the disorganization, the whole spectacle of long haired freaks wanting to legalize marijuana, lesbians wanting recognition, women’s rights advocates pressing for an equal rights amendment, and speaker after speaker trashing the United States for its involvement in Indochina went on long past midnight, even unto dawn on a few days.

This was the background as McGovern made his pitch to the country around 1:00 AM eastern time.

McGovern’s acceptance speech is a remarkable document. You can lift entire passages from the text and place them next to remarks made by Barack Obama and the only way you would be able to tell the difference was the more flowery rhetoric of the messiah.

This is from McGovern’s speech:

Yet I believe that every man and woman in this Convention Hall knows that for 30 years we have been so absorbed with fear and danger from abroad that we have permitted our own house to fall into disarray.

National security includes schools for our children as well as silos for our missiles.

It includes the health of our families as much as the size of our bombs, the safety of our streets, and the condition of our cities, and not just the engines of war.

If we some day choke on the pollution of our own air, there will be little consolation in leaving behind a dying continent ringed with steel.

So while protecting ourselves abroad, let us form a more perfect union here at home. And this is the time for that task.

From secrecy and deception in high places; come home, America

From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation; come home, America.

From the entrenchment of special privileges in tax favoritism; from the waste of idle lands to the joy of useful labor; from the prejudice based on race and sex; from the loneliness of the aging poor and the despair of the neglected sick—come home, America.

Come home to the affirmation that we have a dream. Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward.

Come home to the belief that we can seek a newer world, and let us be joyful in that homecoming, for this “is your land, this land is my land—from California to New York island, from the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters—this land was made for you and me.”

In a very real sense, those kids in tye died shirts and bell bottoms from 1972 have indeed “Come Home.” They’re all grown up now. They are not only teachers and lawyers for special interest groups but bankers, stockbrokers, financial planners – your neighbors and friends. To one degree or another, they have made peace with “the system” they so violently opposed in their youth. But there still burns a need to “reform” that system and make it “fair” – not as a goal but as a result. There is still resentment against “the rich” and pity for “the oppressed.”

And there is still the overweening sense in their own superior ability to tell the rest of us how we should spend our money, how we should save, what we should buy, what we must eat, what we should be watching on TV or listening to on the radio – in short, an almost messianic faith in the ability of government working through their will, to make all of our lives better. We see some of this on the far right as well – busybodies who want to peak into our bedrooms or stick their nose in decisions that are none of their business. Using government for the purposes of forcing us to behave or think a certain way regardless of whether it is the right or left is just plain wrong and has no place in a free society.

But it is on the left where this impulse is the strongest. Today they seek the same top down solutions to problems – or see a government solution to something that either isn’t a problem or would curtail our freedom of choice – advocated by George McGovern in 1972. The difference is that those 1972 Democrats were outriders, amateurs trying to play a professionals game. The result was a slaughter at the polls.

But today, those kids have grown up and become professionals. They know how to run national campaigns. They have learned not to be so forthcoming in how they intend to give us “hope and change.” The more nebulous their rhetoric the better. In this, they have found the perfect vessel – Barack Obama; a man who says absolutely nothing and says it with great feeling and emotion better than anyone in American history.

If they win, we will enter an era where the majority will attempt to remake America into something more like a European social democracy. In fact, they brag about where many of their ideas come from – the failed economic models in France and Germany. Regulation of business and industry will be reintroduced. Social programs like national health insurance, top down mandated education reform, and the alphabet soup of programs for the poor will be expanded to include “the middle class” thus making more Americans more dependent on government than ever before.

I don’t mind losing if the Democrats proudly run on that kind of platform with full disclosure of how they intend to turn America into a semi-socialist state. But they don’t have the guts to do it because they know they would lose. Hence, they will continue to hide behind Obama’s soaring rhetoric that promises such a bright future but is a little hazy on the details.

George McGovern and his revolutionaries sincerely wanted to remake America because they believed what they were advocating was consistent with our democratic heritage and values. I was one of those who supported McGovern in 1972 and believed he and the rest of us would remake America into a paradise where all shared in her bounty and peace on earth would replace the endless wars and tension with the Soviet Union. Today’s left isn’t quite as idealistic. For them, it is about power and control – a far cry from the belief that we could change their world by believing in the sheer goodness of our motives.

A scant 5 years later, I realized what utter nonsense I believed when I was 18, having had my eyes opened by reading such conservatives as Hayek, Kirk, and Buckley; that government was a utility, not an engine of change; that real change occurred in men’s hearts and minds and could not be mandated by bureaucrats and pompous legislators; that the government could mitigate the effects of inequality but not cure the underlying diseases that caused it; and that there were nations that meant to do the United States harm and accommodating them only encouraged their aggressiveness.

In a fair contest between my ideology and that espoused by the McGovernites who now control the Democratic party, I would bet the farm that the American people would choose the liberty of the individual over the crushing statism offered by the other side.

Let’s hope they make the right choice in November.

Time for the left to get their annual tin foil hat adjustment. And judging by the news coming out of Florida’s 13th Congressional District, they may wish to start saving up their Crackerjack boxtops to buy a new model:

An audit of touch-screen voting machines at the center of a dispute in a congressional election found no evidence of malfunction, Florida’s secretary of state said Friday.

Florida election officials announced yesterday that an examination of voting software did not find any malfunctions that could have caused up to 18,000 votes to be lost in a disputed Congressional race in Sarasota County, and they suggested that voter confusion over a poor ballot design was mainly to blame.

The finding, reached unanimously by a team of computer experts from several universities, could finally settle last fall’s closest federal election. The Republican candidate, Vern Buchanan, was declared the winner by 369 votes, but the Democrat, Christine Jennings, formally contested the results, claiming that the touch-screen voting machines must have malfunctioned.

So if the code was good, what might have been the problem?

While some voters in Sarasota bristled yesterday at the idea that they had done anything wrong in casting their votes, or that nearly 13 percent of all voters could have failed to spot the race on the ballot, members of the investigative team said that those remained the only plausible theories.

The report acknowledged that the huge undervote — in which voters cast a ballot in other races but not for the Congressional seat — was both “abnormal and unexpected.” But it said that all eight members of the investigative team, including some experts who have long been skeptical about the paperless machines, agreed that the basic programming “did not cause or contribute to” the loss of votes.

The study suggested instead that the confusion over the ballot design, which had also drawn complaints from voters, probably accounted for the bulk of the problem, much as the infamous “butterfly ballot” distorted the vote in Palm Beach County, Fla., during the 2000 presidential election.

Evidently, the paper ballots were able to highlight the race for Congressman (or at least set it apart) while the ballot that appeared on the touchscreen was extremely difficult to read. Also, if a voter touched his choice more than once, the vote was negated – obviously to guard against someone being able to stand at the machine and vote numerous times.

It is probable that this was not explained to voters very well which means that around 18,000 people either missed the Congressional choice on the ballot due to the confused layout on the screen or hit their choice twice – about 13% of the total vote.

Because the netnuts triumphed in November, we haven’t heard very much about evil Diebold stealing elections. This begs the question: Did Diebold screw up or is the left full of crap when it comes to election conspiracies?

Just as soon as I get my marching orders from Evil Karl via thought waves, I’ll let you know.

Years of living in Chicago with a baseball team like the Chicago Cubs has given me the gift of eternal hope. When spring rolls around, the entire city with one voice breathes the words “This could be the year.” And even when it isn’t, we know that there will always be another spring, another chance to make good the promise that springtime brings.

Two years is not that long to wait for renewal. It should start now with some hard and brutal introspection by GOP leaders and an acknowledgement of their total and complete failure – failure as public servants and as honorable men and women. And that introspection should extend to us, the rank and file. What are we asking of the party? More importantly, what are we asking of government?

Tough days ahead. But we’ll be all the better for it if we learn the right lessons and apply the right prescriptions for change. That’s what adults do about defeat. Not whine about “stolen elections” or “rigged machines.” Let’s take our medicine and participate in the birth of a better, more responsible, more responsive Republican party.

And that new party will not look much like the old one – or at least it shouldn’t. If we try to refashion the old majority, we will continue to lose or, in a best case scenario, win enough seats to be in a majority but not enough to enact the kinds of legislation (and start repealing others) that would bring true conservative governance to Washington.

If there is one thing exit polls are good for, it is breaking down the vote by age, income, religion, ideology, and other important indices. Here’s the bad news from exit polls taken for House races nationwide:

• Republicans saw their advantage with white men diminish from 62-37 in 2004 to 53-45 Their advantage with white women dropped from 55-44 in 2004 to a 49-49 tie. For the first time in memory, Republicans lost American males to the Democrats 51-47 compared to 55-44 advantage in 2004.

• In 2004, Bush lost the 18-29 age group but won in the 30-44, 45-59, and 60 and older. No age group voted in the majority for the GOP in 2006.

• The GOP has lost the middle class. In 2004, all income brackets above $50,000 voted in the majority for the GOP (those making $30-50,000 split their vote evenly). In 2006, only those making more than $100,000 and above voted Republican.

• In 2004, Republicans garnered majorities in all education groups except high school graduates and Post Doc grads. In 2006, the GOP failed to win any education group.

• Bush barely lost Independents to Kerry 49-48 in 2004. In 2006, indies went Dem 57-39.

• For the first time since 1976, the Republicans lost the Catholic vote 55-44. GOP won the Catholic vote 52-47 in 2004.

• The GOP lost 2/3 of the unmarried vote. Given that this demographic is growing and is now bigger than married couples, that is a huge stumbling block to majority status.

(Here’s a link to the 2004 exit polls and the 2006 exit polls.)

I could go on and on. The fact of the matter is that the GOP majority, cobbled together after the Reagan majority fell apart, was never really a true ideological coalition. That Reagan coalition had anti-communism as a powerful glue that held northeastern urban ethnics, blue collar rust belters, “Boll Weevil” Democrats, and Main Street Republicans together through good times and bad. The ex-Republican majority, made up of evangelical Christians and other social conservatives as well as a pastiche of libertarians, hawks, anti-immigration advocates, and fiscal conservatives had no ideological coherence. It was bound to crack when things went south.

In a large way, what was holding this coalition together was support for the President. But once Bush proved himself a weak sister on fiscal restraint, immigration, and even the war, there was nothing to keep the majority together except blind loyalty to Bush and the Presidency. And enough conservatives (20%) actually got so disgusted with the President and the GOP that they crossed over and voted Democratic.

We can’t just abandon Bush – not when the Democrats are sharpening their knives to come after him, the Presidency, the war, tax cuts, and the entire conservative agenda. The opposition to the President will be relentless as will the investigations into Iraq, war reconstruction, internal security, Katrina, energy policy, and anything else that strikes the fancy of a Democratic Committee or Sub-Committee chairman. Some of those investigations will no doubt reveal shocking waste, fraud, and abuse. Criminal charges will be forthcoming. Impeachment, demanded by the netnuts from day one, will almost certainly be on the table. And there will be much witch hunting as well as fishing expeditions into White House activities.

But Bush himself is going to have to change his way of governance if he is going to survive the next two years. I hold out little hope that he will do so. Already he is talking about reviving his flawed “guest worker” initiative, thinking he can pass it now that he has a Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate. And I believe that he will take the “out” offered by the Iraq Study Group (Baker Commission) to leave Iraq before the job is done. If he does these things and if he continues to preside over the fiscal mess we find ourselves in, he will score no points with Democrats and lose the rest of his base, leaving him dangling, twisting slowly, slowly in the wind as the Democrats flay what’s left of his presidency to shreds.

There is much serious thought to be given to where the party is today and where it should be headed in the future. I anticipate that conservative blogs will play a role in redefining the party and refashioning a viable, coherent coalition that will bring the GOP back from the depths we are in today. There will be clashes of ideas. There will probably be a certain amount of fingerpointing. But blogs will be able to cull and synthesize the blizzard of ideas that will bubble up from the grass roots and present them for discussion to those who lead the party. And with any number of candidates for President waiting in the wings, many of these ideas have a real shot at being incorporated into a winning strategy that would bring the GOP victory in 2008.

We are standing on the crest of a bluff overlooking a vast undiscovered country of ideas and solutions. Let’s hope that we have the courage and the will to seize the opportunity and conquer that country for our party, ourselves, and our country.

I feel an overwhelming urge to apologize this morning.

That’s because I harbored fears that if the Democrats took control of one or both Houses of Congress that the left would erupt with a string of bloodcurdling threats and juvenile “I told you so’s” which would sour the post-election atmosphere and contribute to partisan warfare.

I am so glad my fears were unfounded…mostly:

Suck it, Reich Wingers!! Cos now that means we’ll have some real honest-to-god oversight in Washington. Subpoena powers! Go, John Conyers!! Give em hell!!

In case you missed the significance of John Conyers being cheered on, the ultra liberal conspiracy mongering Congressman from Michigan will begin hearings leading the impeachment of President Bush in January.

Oh he won’t call them “impeachment” hearings. That would be breaking his promise to Republicans and the American people not to hold those kind of hearings. He will call them something like “Hearings to Determine How Much Money Was Made By Bush And Cheney When They Started The War In Iraq To Enrich Their Friends At Haliburton.”

Or perhaps he will call them “Hearings on the President’s Role In The 9/11 Attacks.” That one sounds sexier.

Nancy Pelosi sure sounded all sweet and grandmotherly, didn’t she?

“Tonight is a great victory for the American people,” said House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is poised to become the first female speaker of the House. “The American people voted for a new direction.”

She vowed “civility and bipartisanship” but confronted the president over his Iraq policy: “Mr. President, we need a new direction in Iraq.”

That kind of “bi-partisan” feeling was on display here:

YOU LOSE, JERKS!! YOU LIGGITY, LIGGITY, LIGGITY LOOOOOOOOOSE!! L-O-S-E, LOSE, LOSE, LOSE! L-O-S-E, LOSE, LOSE, LOSE!!

And here:

Our Depression-era grandparents could have told us this was coming. After all, the GOP has driven us into precisely the same ditch it ran them into in 1929, fueled by the same ignorance and graft, flaunting the same blatant disregard for any sense of the common good, pillaging our vast accumulated social capital for its members’ own private enrichment. Now that the devastating results are coming clear to all but that last deluded 30%, we need to make the words “conservative” and “Republican” forever synonymous with this mess.

We need to teach it in our history classes, and tell the tales to our own grandchildren. This, children, is what happens when you abandon liberalism. This is what’s happened every damned time we’ve ever handed conservatives the keys and let them drive. Don’t let them kid you. It’s not about two different views of democracy; it’s about whether your democracy lives or dies.

Uh…don’t worry Davey. When the time comes, all of us conservatives will march meekly and in a nice, neat line to the re-education camps and gas chambers. Just don’t tell us they’re “showers.” That’s been done before.

Or if you’re lucky, maybe some real attractive authoritarian figure (you know how much we conservatives adore authoritarian figures) will come along and fill our glasses with Kool Aid (the real stuff) and conservatives will happily drink so that we can all go to heaven, sing songs, and play with Jesus.

All defeats have silver linings. But I think this moonbat (or “Moonchild”) might be a wee bit too relieved for her own good:

That’s right. Something extraordinary happened tonight. A nation voted and decisively halted the Fascist juggernaut in tracks.

But stopping an authoritarian machine in its tracks is just one battle in the long struggle we face ahead.

Sieg Heil, baby. Just don’t mess with my Hitler doll or I’ll brain ya.

And let’s make sure we promote unity across the nation this election night. Sectionalism has no place in America, right? RIGHT?

What we talked about earlier this week is holding up: the Old Confederacy is the big loser tonight, relegated to the minority in the House. There is no reason, none, nada, zilch, to allow legislation in the House to be held hostage to Southern authoritarian Theocrats and racists anymore. Buh-bye.

Does this mean I can’t fly “The Stars and Bars” on Jefferson Davis’ birthday?

To my fellow conservatives, I say fear not. First of all, most of these brand spanking new Democratic Congressmen are not wine and Brie cheese liberals. Most of them – the overwhelming majority of them – are actual moderates who espouse some conservative positions. Many hold conservative values. They are the future of the Democratic party – not the idiots, the drunkards, the insufferable louts who populate the liberal blogosphere and much of Congress.

Secondly, many of the seats the GOP lost tonight are still in very red territory. If the Republicans can go out and do what the Democrats did this time – recruit outstanding, 1st tier candidates to challenge these extremely vulnerable newcomers, a switch of 20 seats in 2008 would be very doable.

Two years will pass before you know it. Let’s make the best of the time to reform the party and renew our commitment to core conservative principles.

If, as seems more and more likely, the Democrats take control of the House, we will hear much crowing on the left about the part that the War in Iraq played in the GOP’s downfall. They will demand that the President now come up with a plan that would bring the troops home in a specified period of time.

Democrats will tell you that they will tie that timetable to real progress by the Iraqi government and military in getting a handle on the security situation and other benchmarks. The problem is a simple one:

DOES ANYONE REALLY BELIEVE THAT IF ONE OF THOSE BENCHMARKS HASN’T BEEN ACHIEVED THAT THE DEMOCRATS WILL ALLOW THE TIMETABLE TO SLIP?

They will argue that the timetable is more important than any “artificial” measurement of progress and agitate for the withdrawal anyway. In fact, I would fully expect the Democrats to use the published timetable as a political club, constantly beating the Republicans over the head with the fact that the war is not going according to the schedule they so carefully set down. At the very least, they’ll have one more thing about which to Blame Bush and, because wars tend not to cooperate when politicians set down arbitrary conditions for its ending, the Dems will have a field day until November of 2008 at the Republican’s expense.

The problem with this “anti-war mandate” that we will be hearing so much about over the next few days and weeks is that it only seems to exist in the minds of of war opponents. That’s because, from where I sit, there is no talk from the candidates here in Illinois about leaving Iraq at all or any kind of “anti-war” sentiment whatsoever.

Melissa Bean (Ill eight), a freshman Democrat running in a marginally red district and considered extremely vulnerable hasn’t even mentioned the war in her ads which effectively skewer her opponent as a right wing extremist. (That’s okay because, well, he is.) And perhaps most surprisingly, Democratic candidate Tammie Duckworth, an Iraq War vet and double amputee running in the hotly contested sixth district of Illinois, is running an ad that, if I were in her district, would make me comfortable with voting for her. Nowhere does she express an iota of anti-war sentiment in the ads. Instead, she concentrates on trying to get the President to “change course” as well as make sure our troops have everything they need.

I have a theory about what’s going on in the country with people’s ambivalent feelings toward the war. And to illustrate it, allow me to pose a counterfactual for you.

Suppose D-Day had failed and the allies had been thrown back into the sea. Most of our airborne troops dead or captured. The assault waves decimated. Instead of the more than 2,000 men who sacrificed their lives on the beaches of Normandy, the number of dead could have approached ten times that.

Even worse, Hitler would have been able to transfer the bulk of his western armies to the east and possibly defeat Stalin’s Russia given that another invasion was out of the question for at least a year. And an extended war in Europe would have meant a possible delay in throwing our best at Japan.

What would the American people have done when they went to the polls in November of 1944?

If Wendell Wilkie and the Republicans could have framed the election around the idea that they could do a better job in running the war and bringing victory, I daresay FDR and the Democrats would have been in enormous trouble.

But we don’t have that situation today because the Democrats refuse to acknowledge anything but defeat in Iraq. They have set parameters that don’t even define victory, only withdrawal and, given what is happening in Iraq at the moment, a humiliating defeat as we retreat and leave the battlefield to al-Qaeda.

Bush/Rummy/Cheney have made every mistake that was possible to make in Iraq and then blundered some more. But this is not Viet Nam. The American people are not resigned to stalemate and defeat. If you were to ask 100 Americans “If there were a way to win the War in Iraq, would you support our staying there until the job was done?”... my guess would be a very healthy percentage would answer in the affirmative.

This is why Democrats are not running “anti-war” ads – except true blue liberals like Ned Lamont. And look what’s happening to him.

All of this brings up the point that there is not going to be an “anti-war mandate” despite what you may hear from the left after the election. The American people want victory. And at this point, given the alternatives, even a timetable sounds like it could be spun as a win.

Try another counterfactual, this one more recent: Suppose the Democrats had run on a platform that they had a plan that could bring us victory in Iraq. Suppose they were willing to raise troop levels, get serious about training the Iraqi military, tell Maliki to shove it and take off after Mookie and his militia and finish the job that should have been done 2 years ago – kill the bastard and destroy his ability to make trouble.

I don’t think the Republicans would have had a prayer. They would have been steamrolled.

At bottom, when given the choice between victory and defeat, the American people choose to win. And if, by some miracle, the Republicans hold onto the House tomorrow, it won’t be because they deserve it or because they’ve managed the legislative branch so expertly. It will be because in the end, the American people made this election a referendum on who best would pursue victory in Iraq. And that just might be the most shocking surprise of all.

In what has to be considered something of a shocker, the Washington Times is calling on House Speaker Dennis Hastert to resign for his inaction and dissembling over the Foley matter:

Now the scandal must unfold on the front pages of the newspapers and on the television screens, as transcripts of lewd messages emerge and doubts are rightly raised about the forthrightness of the Republican stewards of the 109th Congress. Some Democrats are attempting to make this “a Republican scandal,” and they shouldn’t; Democrats have contributed more than their share of characters in the tawdry history of congressional sexual scandals. Sexual predators come in all shapes, sizes and partisan hues, in institutions within and without government. When predators are found they must be dealt with, forcefully and swiftly. This time the offender is a Republican, and Republicans can’t simply “get ahead” of the scandal by competing to make the most noise in calls for a full investigation. The time for that is long past.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once. Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week’s revelations—or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away. He gave phony answers Friday to the old and ever-relevant questions of what did he know and when did he know it? Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance.

Hastert has presided over what will probably go down in history as the most inept, corrupt, cynical, and arrogant Congress since perhaps near the turn of the 20th century when the robber barons held sway in Washington and openly bought and sold votes on the floor.

Hastert himself – a genial, if clueless sort – is probably one of the least blameless members in this camper’s stew of corruption and irresponsible lawmaking. His leadership style has been one of staying above the fray while allowing his whips full reign to twist arms and necks to get Republican majorities on major legislation. This allowed stronger personalities like Tom DeLay and Roy Blunt to dominate at times, making Hastert appear to be an appendage, especially to the publicity hungry DeLay. In short, Hastert never really seemed to be in charge – something that was exposed during the Foley matter as it still isn’t clear whether anyone ever bothered to inform the Speaker personally about Foley’s emails to the former page, telling his staff instead who may or may not have informed him.

I’m not sure the resignation of Hastert is either necessary or desirable. The voters will almost surely take care of Mr. Hastert and the Republicans come November. In fact, it seems pretty much of a lead pipe cinch at this point as the universal disgust over Foley and the leadership’s tone deaf response to the emails and their potential import becomes widely known. The only question now is how big a majority the Democrats are likely to be handed as the new Congress sits next January.

It should go without saying that if the Democrats presented anything like a positive agenda for the country, their victory would be of historic proportions, almost certainly surpassing the Republican gains of 1994 and approaching their own electoral tidal wave of 1974. But a combination of Republican advantages in redistricting and voter doubts about their national security bona fides will probably hold Democratic gains to a narrow majority in the House and a possible one seat advantage in the Senate, the latter by no means a certainty but the polls breaking that way of late.

None of the blame for this should necessarily fall entirely on the shoulders of the Speaker. But as a symbol of Republican malfeasance in the Foley matter, it may be hard for him to escape walking the plank. Most conservatives have expressed disgust with the leadership over everything from earmarks to their curious incuriosity when it comes to oversight – my own beef being the horrific waste already revealed in war reconstruction spending. New leadership will hardly have time to get settled before their almost certain replacement by Democrats. So I suppose my point is – what’s the point?

If it is to make a statement that we won’t tolerate this kind of malfeasance then we are all a little late to that party. These people have been playing patty cakes with the truth, with parliamentary procedure, with House rules, and with the faith and trust of the American people for going on 6 years. It is a little late for resignations and mea culpas.

What is needed is a reckoning – a settling of accounts by the voters for all the broken promises, the wasteful spending, the arrogant mismanagement, and the irresponsible lawmaking which have combined to bring the Republican party to its sorriest state I’ve seen in my 30 years of membership.

Let the voters change the leadership in Congress. And then let the chips fall where they may.

Despite the recent uptick in both the President’s approval rating and the GOP’s performance against the Democrats on a “generic” ballot of party choice, things are not looking good for Republicans in November.

The most recent Evans-Novak report has 39 Republican seats at risk. Of course, only in an absolute electoral meltdown would the GOP lose that many House members. But since the Democrats only have to net 15 seats to make Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House (if she’s not successfully challenged), Republicans by any measure have an uphill climb to keep control of the lower chamber.

Things look a little better in the Senate but it is almost certain that the Republican advantage will decrease by as many as 2 and possibly 4 members. Such an outcome could set off the Jefford’s scenario; the Democrats courting two or perhaps even three Republican Senators to switch parties, an admittedly remote possibility but not out of the realm of the possible.

The most obvious candidate for such a switch, Lincoln Chaffee, is up for re-election this year and would find it hard if not impossible to switch parties after running and winning as a Republican. However, if the Democrats fall one Senator short of a majority, they’d be stupid not make the attempt. Jeffords was bought off rather cheaply. He was given the chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee which he lost when the GOP reestablished control of the Senate in 2002. Chafee already has a seat on that backwater Committee as well as seats on the much more important Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committees. Since Joe Biden will use the high profile media access that the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee gets as part of his Presidential nominating strategy, it is unlikely he would step down.

But how about the Homeland Security Committee? The current ranking member for the Democrats is Joe Lieberman, who has been promised by Harry Reid that he will not lose his Chairmanship if he wins as an independent. So unless they offer Chafee a backwater Committee chairmanship (or perhaps a chance to keep his Foreign Affairs seat), it would be highly unlikely that despite the Senator’s discomfort at being around a bunch of goober chewing, red neck yahoos from Red State America, that he would be eager to leave a party in which he has built up so much seniority.

The House however is a different story. Evans-Novak:

The overall House picture for Republicans is bleak, although not hopeless. The British apprehension of the sky-bombing plotters has at least briefly helped Republicans catch up with Democrats in the generic ballot survey. But aside from that spike, if the election were held today, the GOP would probably lose 26 seats and their congressional majority.

There is still time left, but the buzz on the Hill is that many Republican staffers—including those working for safe members—are seeking employment elsewhere, dreading the miserable possibility of life in the congressional minority.

The Democrats’ chances at the House are very real right now. Republicans are hobbled by the fact that they have so many shaky seats to defend and so few that they can legitimately target. If they are to tighten the gap—and a USA Today poll released Tuesday indicates that they may now be doing so on the generic ballot—they must give voters a reason to come to the polls for them. They will probably lose any election that merely pits them as the status quo against Democrats who could be even worse—who could, for example, impeach President Bush. Republicans must also offer something positive to voters, but their lack of legislative accomplishments in this Congress makes it difficult.

The big X-factor is the Republicans’ vaunted micro-targeting turnout program, which is light-years ahead of anything the almost non-existent Democratic National Committee will be able to put together this year. The GOP turnout program produced a minor miracle in 2004, as new Republican voters showed up in droves. How many of those new voters will show up again this year? Republicans are honing the 2004 model and will experiment with new methods, as they typically do in off-year elections. Given the historically low turnout in mid-terms, how much this could soften the blow of 2006 is unknown.

I might mention that it is SOP for staffers to retool their resumes prior to any election for the simple reason that you never know when opportunity will come a’knocking. Elections always scramble things on the Hill with some people leaving for Committee work, others move on to think tanks, with many others taking lucrative lobbying jobs. This kind of churning before an election is not unusual.

As for turnout, there are pundits like Michael Barone who say that the outcome of midterms can be predicted based on turnout from previous election cycles. Barone points out that the Rovian magic formula could turn the predictions of all the prognosticators on their heads:

The slight uptick in Republican percentages in 2002 and 2004 can be explained by higher Republican turnout. Looking ahead to next November, there is reason to believe that the Republican base is turned off—by high spending, by immigration—and may not turn out as heavily. But if so, how much difference will that make?

Polls are not good predictors of turnout—only elections are. Last week, we had a special election in the 50th district of California, whose Republican congressman resigned in disgrace and went to prison. In 2004, the 50th district voted 55 percent for George W. Bush and 44 percent for John Kerry. Last week, the district voted 53 percent for Republicans (there were 14 candidates, the winner among whom goes on to a June 6 runoff) and 45 percent for Democrats. There were only two of them, and the leader, Francine Busby, got 44 percent of the vote—the same percentage as Kerry. That may be 1 percent higher when the last absentees are counted.

Republican turnout was down more than Democratic turnout, but only very slightly. Of course, things may change by November. But it looks like Hypothesis Two is still in force, and if so, Democrats will have a hard time winning control of the House.

One might note that the Evil One has almost dropped out of sight in recent weeks. This is not exactly true as Rove is criss crossing the country speaking before small groups of GOP activists, bucking up morale as well as laying the groundwork for the most sophisticated “Get out of the Vote” operation in the history of American politics. Can he do it again? Is there one more miracle up his sleeve, one more rabbit in the hat?

Alas, no matter how sophisticated Rove’s GOTV operation may be, you still have to have a base that’s motivated to go to the polls in the first place. It is not at all clear that in many of these “in play” races, that GOP voters could find a reason to support more of the same from incumbents who spend like drunken sailors, pork out with earmarks, and appear to be beholden to a bunch of fat cat lobbyists. A drop off in turnout of even 5% could doom most of the vulnerable Republican candidates.

Democrats on the other hand, energized for the first time in a decade and mad as hornets will almost certainly match and probably exceed their turnout numbers from 2002. And even though they haven’t advanced a single concrete idea on any national issue and continue to shoot themselves in the foot on national security matters, there is a clear sense in the country born out in poll after poll that the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Already, several high profile incumbents have been defeated in primaries, a sure sign of voter discontent. Whether that translates into a Democratic victory in November will not be up to either party because as it stands now, both Republicans and Democrats are hostage to events.

Gas prices, Iraq, inflation, terror plots, the Middle East, and most especially Iran could push and shove the electorate this way and that between now and election day. Since neither party is running on any grand ideas, these events will shape voter perceptions right up until the individual voter walks into the booth.

Most of those issues mentioned above are trending against the GOP which makes their problems even more difficult. On some level, the competence of the President is involved in each of those issues. The Democrats may not succeed in “nationalizing” the election by making Bush a major issue. But you can’t completely eliminate him from the mx either. Bad news on any of those fronts means bad news for Republicans.

With 10 weeks to go, the Democrats are confident and appear to be taking nothing for granted. The electorate seems to be moving their way. And perhaps not even the magic of Karl Rove can save the Republicans this time.