Politics, Government & Public Policy: November 2007 Archives
I'm no political genius, but I've been predicting for a long time that Hillary isn't the inevitable 44th president of the United States, or even the inevitable Democrat nominee. Now the wheels are coming off in Iowa and nationally I expect the race to get a lot more interesting.
Too bad the Republicans don't have an awesome candidate and are becoming increasingly demoralized.
Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott's resignation announcement on Monday was the latest in a wave of retirements to hit congressional Republicans, making an already difficult 2008 electoral landscape even more complicated for the minority party.Party officials insist that the retirements -- 17 members of the House and six senators -- are simply the result of individual decisions and not indicative of a broader negative sentiment within the party.
Frankly I don't mind all these retirements... it's not like many members of Congress of either party are that impressive. We can only hope that the generation that replaces these retirees will be a little more tech savvy and a little less corrupt and self-interested.
I for one am glad that the "rich" are spreading out their political affiliation among both parties. Perhaps this realignment will continue the Democrats' movement towards capitalism and sensible economic principles.
Democrats like to define themselves as the party of poor and middle-income Americans, but a new study says they now represent the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional districts.In a state-by-state, district-by-district comparison of wealth concentrations based on Internal Revenue Service income data, Michael Franc, vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation, found that the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional jurisdictions were represented by Democrats.
He also found that more than half of the wealthiest households were concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats hold both Senate seats.
"If you take the wealthiest one-third of the 435 congressional districts, we found that the Democrats represent about 58 percent of those jurisdictions," Mr. Franc said.
It would be great to have two parties who were supporters of free markets and individual responsibility. (Ok, or even one.)
Camille Paglia -- who says she will definitely vote for Hillary if the latter is nominated -- describes exactly why Mrs. Clinton is the wrong woman for the presidency.
Hillary's stonewalling evasions and mercurial, soulless self-positionings have been going on since her first run for the U.S. Senate from New York, a state she had never lived in and knew virtually nothing about. The liberal Northeastern media were criminally complicit in enabling her queenlike, content-free "listening tour," where she took no hard questions and where her staff and security people (including her government-supplied Secret Service detail) staged events stocked with vetted sympathizers, and where they ensured that no protesters would ever come within camera range.That compulsive micromanagement, ultimately emanating from Hillary herself, has come back to haunt her in her dismaying inability to field complex unscripted questions in a public forum. The presidential sweepstakes are too harsh an arena for tenderfoot novices. Hillary's much-vaunted "experience" has evidently not extended to the dynamic give-and-take of authentic debate. The mild challenges she has faced would be pitiful indeed by British standards, which favor a caustic style of witty put-downs that draw applause and gales of laughter in the House of Commons. Women had better toughen up if they aspire to be commander in chief.
She goes on to write that Senator Dianne Feinstein of California would have been a far superior first-female Democrat presidential nominee, and I have to agree. Feinstein, as a Democrat, isn't exactly my cup of tea, but she's unflappable, strong on defense, smart, well-spoken, and dedicated. The Democrats are certain to do far worse with whomever they end up nominating.
At the end of this Karl Rove article about the failure of the Democrat-controlled Congress to tackle any meaningful issues over the past year is a paragraph that reminds us how narrow their margin of victory was:
The Democratic victory in 2006 was narrow. They won the House by 85,961 votes out of over 80 million cast and the Senate by a mere 3,562 out of over 62 million cast. A party that wins control by that narrow margin can quickly see its fortunes reversed when it fails to act responsibly, fails to fulfill its promises, and fails to lead.
Unfortunately the Republicans haven't exactly shined recently either.
