...so those who think a bit of electoral punishment is in order are probably going to get their wish anyway. The two most likely possibilities are a fairly big Democratic win or a narrow Democratic win. A narrow Republican win is a distant third, even with improving numbers.

In 1994, a tsunami swept Republicans into power in Congress, and since then, the GOP has been losing those seats little by little (with the occasional small gain). It was the initial strength of that win -- having such a big cushion -- that's pretty much kept the GOP in power; bit by bit that cushion has been lost.

Anyone thinking of sitting on their hands this Nov. 7 should ask herself-- "How big of a cushion do I want to give the Democrats?" A very small Democrat win could result in the punishment-followed-by-rebuilding-followed-by-greater-conservative-fidelity scenario, with Republicans having a chance to win back Congress in two or four years.

But a large Democratic win might keep the Democrats in power for quite a while. Even if we win net seats for eight, ten, or twelve years, we might be in the position the Democrats are in now -- slowly taking back seats, but never taking quite enough to actually reestablish control.

Even if all conservatives turn out the way they did in 2002 or 2004, it's still likely Congress will be lost, because independents will be voting for Democrats, probably 60-40 or even 70-30.

So the loss is pretty likely, even with conservatives holding their noses. The question is whether it will be the sort of loss that can be recovered from in two years, or the sort of loss that will take twelve years to undo.

Good legislation gets passed in the House, where a narrow majority is enough to pass such legislation. It dies in the Senate, where there is a bare Republican majority, and of course not anything resembling a conservative majority. Our dissatisfaction with Congress stems chiefly, then, from the fact that there aren't enough Republicans in the Senate, not that there are too many. Punishing Coburn to get back at Chafee will hardly help matters. (And, again, Chafee would be just delighted to be a Big Important Swing Vote who gets interviewed on Chris Matthews every three days, to announce his decision on how much taxes should be raised or how many Gitmo prisoners should be immediately be freed.)

It's bad, but it could be worse. Those who say it couldn't be worse are forgetting about 1992, when many also said "Clinton couldn't be any worse."

Well, you know, for all of George H.W. Bush's flaws, Clinton was just a tad worse, wasn't he?

Posted by: Ace at 10:23 AM | Comments (107)
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I read the thread on Hastert last night, and I think I wind up agreeing with Megan and Hoke. Although their tone was not exactly helpful.

I've never "sucked on Hastert's bone" as charged, but allow me to stand up for him now. Apart from the gobsmackingly stupid stance on the William Jefferson search, he's done a fair job as Speaker of the House. Pretty much every decent bill comes out of the House, and without the House at least pushing towards the conservative side, the Senate would strike compromises every time between liberals and RINO's.

I give him a pass on the Mark Foley business, because even if he only cared about the politics of this, he would have forced Foley's resignation had he known about the salacious emails. It doesn't make sense to me he'd cover up something so huge when a winning alternative was available to him (force Foley out, get an untainted candidate to run in the safe seat). It's not as if Mark Foley was some politically important figure to justify such a cover up. He was a nobody.

As for Frist, let me guess what he was trying to say. As with Vietnamese support for Ho Chi Minh, there is a simple nationalistic element as well as an ideological element to the Pashtun's support of the Taliban. Some Pashtuns may mostly support the Taliban because it represents their own tribal political movement, and may not be terribly hardcore on the Medieval Mass Murder agenda of the group. He may have meant merely that it makes sense to appeal to such tribal-loyalty supporters of the Taliban in order to split them away from the committed true Taliban believers.

Either way, he's just one guy, and not even a very important guy anymore.

Some questioned whether Democratic bogeymen were enough reason to vote for a party so prone to missteps. Actually, I think now, the answer is yes-- these are pretty scary people with very scary ideas, most of which they refuse to share with the American public.

And as I've said before, while we can push our own guys towards the right policies, we'll have no such influence over the Democrats. Bill Frist's people tried to walk back the cat on his gaffe twenty two minutes after the IHT article posted, and the dextrosphere began reacting rather badly to it. I don't imagine Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi or Majority Leader Harry Reid will be so eager to respond to, and adapt to, conservative criticism.

And as I've also said before, the "punish them for two years" plan isn't necessarily a good one. How do we know it will only be two years? The economy is steady, the Dow is at an all-time high, and the media, of course, will be more willing to trumpet good economic news when they can give credit to Congressional Democratic stewardship. How do we not know the the "two years in exile" won't turn into six, eight, ten, or twelve years in exile? The Republicans took the House in 1994, and managed to stay on through the nineties partly due to a growing economy and in the 00's thanks largely to 9/11. We remained in power only partly because the country agreed with us on our domestic political agenda-- a large part of the GOP's congressional success was due to outside factors. There's hardly any guarantee that similar factors won't entrech the Democrats in power for their own twelve (or more) year run.

Politics is the art of the possible, and it's simply not possible, yet, to have a consistently conservative Congress pushing our agenda. What we have is what we have, and, given that we're about to lose the entire Congress to the liberals, it seems fanciful to imagine the possibility of a strongly conservative Congress as an alternative. The perfect is, as always, the enemy of the good, and the 109th Congress, while far from perfect, has managed to at least be somewhat good, especially this past month. And if they had to be prodded to, say, vote for a border fence, at least they were so prodded, eventually.

As they said about David Duke's opponent-- "Vote for the Crook; it's important." Well, this time around, vote for the political incompetents, jackasses, RINOs, cowards, and scoundrels; it's important. It really is.

It's Better To Win A Game You Deserve To Lose Than Lose It: Not even Mark Foley's seat is necessarily lost.

Given that we could, still, maybe win this thing, maybe we should all just remember that for every idiot Republican out there there's a good Republican, like Tom Coburn. Voting the GOP out of power doesn't really hurt the RINOs, now does it? They'll be powerful swing votes in the new Republican Congress.

A Democratic Congress may be Chris Shay's wet dream.

Posted by: Ace at 09:48 AM | Comments (69)
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Well! Talk about principle. He wrangles Democratic votes for the Republicans in exchange for earmarks for himself and those who sell their votes.

When's Allah going to have that Abscam tape up, anyhow? Good stuff.

Posted by: Ace at 09:03 AM | Comments (10)
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I guess we know now why she ponied up tens of thousands in "loans" to him for no clear reason and with no clear repayment schedule.

It was in some sense only fair, as the court file shows that Cantwell contributed to the failure of the marriage. Angela stated in an affidavit that "an affair that [Ron] had with another woman a week prior to our wedding" had "caused problems with my relationship with my husband". The deposition of marriage counselor Dr. Early recounted Dotzauer's admission of the affair. Early identified the other woman as "a former lady friend" of Dotzauer's named "Maria", who also had a professional relationship with Dotzauer's company. Early declined to mention Maria's last name, but sources familiar with the events confirmed to me that it was indeed Maria Cantwell.

A blog exclusive?

Dirt, dirt, dirt.

Thanks to Andrew's Dad.

Posted by: Ace at 08:58 AM | Comments (26)
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Breaks intraday trading record. So, one record down. Might break the closing record today too.

Oil fell by $2/bbl too.

Posted by: Ace at 08:45 AM | Comments (6)
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The link headline to this story reads "Hastert Won't Resign Over Sex Scandal."
(I suppose I could get a screen capture of the front page, but I don't feel like it).

That is an elegantly written headline. It crams so much salacious, misleading innuendo into a mere six words that they're probably cooking up a Pulitzer Prizer category for headlines even now.

First implication: Hastert was involved in a sex scandal. Anyone who clicks the link will almost instantly realize that's not the case, but a lot of people (myself included) never make it past the link. So now a lot of people think Haster's been having some illicit rumpy-bumpy. Hey, I'm not saying he hasn't, just that there's no scandal brewing about it if he has.

Second implication: this scandal somehow involves sex. For a media that can credulously draw a distinction between oral sex (which is apparently not sex) and vaginal sex (which is definitely sex), they seem interestingly unable to draw a distinction between anal sex with a minor (which is what Rep. Studds (D) did; not sex) and cybersex involving no physical contact with a minor (which is what Rep. Foley (R) did; sex).

No wonder the MSM is losing readers: who has the patience to keep up with the shifting definitions?

Clarification: If you follow the link, you get a different headline. My quote was from the link on the msn.com front page. I can't remember how to do a screen capture, or I would get it and post the relevant part. Just take my word for it.

Posted by: Ace at 06:47 AM | Comments (48)
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Make Che Che's daughter sigh. You're old enough to know better...

I don't think I've ever seen such a look of misery and dejection on the face of my daughter as I just did a moment ago. She just couldn't understand why Republican voters would be willing to surrender the 2006 election to the Democrats. "Even my precinct captain sounds like a Kos kid?" she asked pitifully.

I sat down with her on the sofa and (as calmly as I could) tried to explain to her why many conservatives had become so disenchanted with their own that they saw no difference between a Senate Majority Leader McConnell or a Senate Majority Leader Reid.

I tried to keep my voice steady, but it became increasingly difficult - the rage and feelings of helplessness were just too much. I think my daughter could tell something was wrong. I found myself at such a loss for words - nothing made any sense; nothing makes sense anymore. I finally had to admit, "Honey, I just don't know - I don't know what's going on with Republican voters anymore. Even Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment seems to have been cast adrift."

When I finished her lower lip started to tremble and her eyes began to fill with tears, "Daddy" she said, "why are they risking empowering Democrats in this country? Don't they realize there is an existential war on? Don't they know there may be a Supreme Court opening to fill?" Well, that was it for me: I finally fell apart. She just fell into my arms and we both began sobbing for several minutes.

For once she had to comfort me and get me back on my feet. Sometimes I just think it's too much, but seeing the strength in my young daughter's voice as she reminded me of Margaret Thatcher's famous quote "If you want to cut your throat, don't come to me for a bandage" helped me to get through.

Posted by: Ace at 12:49 AM | Comments (178)
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Via Drudge:

WASHINGTON TIMES ON TUESDAY WILL CALL FOR SPEAKER HASTERT'S RESIGNATION, NEWSROOM SOURCES TELL DRUDGE... DEVELOPING... Editorial titled: 'Resign, Mr. Speaker': 'House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once... 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'... -- Washington Times, October 3, 2006...

Eh. Why not? Can't say he covered himself in glory, can't say we especially need the continuing dubious benefit of his services, can't say I was impressed by his defense of Congressmen's prerogatives to be free of legal, warrant-derived police searches.

So can him. Guilty or not, we need a change. It's as good a time as any.

Posted by: Ace at 06:06 PM | Comments (345)
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Likens Gay Man Around Boys To Notorious Bank Robber Willie Sutton Hanging Around Banks

On Hannity & Colmes two minutes ago.

Hm. How quickly they change their tacks.

Now the reality is that I would tend to be suspicious of any gay man interested in being "friends" with a sixteen year old boy. (Or, for that matter, any straight man interested in being "friends" with a sixteen year old girl.)

But it seems to me the Democratic Party stands as a whole for the proposition we must have no suspicions about gay men who want to hang out with boys in the woods.

So, true enough-- we ought to suspect any man interested in hanging out with kids. Men ought to be bored by children, even their own. If they seek children out as social companions, something is wrong.

But I doubt the Democratic Party will embrace that common-sense premise any time soon.

And even given the basic truth of that, how much suspicion is warranted? I agree with Beckel to a degree: suspicions should have been raised. And they were. How much further do you go after confronting Foley and getting his denial?

The emails in question, remember, showed nothing definitively inappropriate. Even asking for a picture is not really all that sinister.

So were we to call out the dragnet because a fag wrote an email to a kid?

Sounds kind of homophobic to me, but hey, I'm awaiting clarification from the liberals.

Posted by: Ace at 05:10 PM | Comments (68)
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Ah, that was fun.

I suppose this is just one guy talking, and an irrelevant one at that. I also suppose that what Bill Frist floats as a trial balloon is Nancy Pelosi's concrete plan.

I guess I'm still on the team. But it's pretty clear to me that it's not just the Democrats that don't get it; it's a good number of the Republicans too.

It's also clear to me the GOP is pretty determined to lose this election, and there's little that pundits, bloggers, or voters can do sway their minds.

They've been admirably upfront, I guess, about their intention to give power back to the Democrats for at least a year now, if not more; I suppose they can at least be credited with being more or less honest about wanting to return to minority status.

George H.W. Bush seemed to not be terribly interested in winning in 1992. Governing is, I guess, exhausting. The GOP is exhausted, and it shows. Elections turn on a number of things, but high among them is a party's determination and energy and will to win, and the GOP just has none at all of that.

We deserve better, but it is what it is.

I'd thought the GOP had panicked that they might lose over the summer. Rather, they seem to be panicking now at the thought they might actually win, and are determined to avoid that.

Posted by: Ace at 03:03 PM | Comments (163)
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