Not exactly unexpected.

So, Pence is running.

He could have had a leadership position earlier, after DeLay resigned, but the Republicans went with the business-as-usual that was workin' like gangbusters for them.

Posted by: Ace at 12:21 PM | Comments (10)
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Via Drudge:

'I FEEL LIBERATED... I NO LONGER HAVE TO CARRY THE WATER FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T DESERVE IT'...

Ain't that the truth.

The Great Slublog Tips... to this post by Dean Barnett:

It is a distinctly liberal trait to blame “the people” when they don’t vote as one would dictate. I’ll brook none of that from our side. The fact is, we thought our country would be better off with a Republican congress. We made a case to the American people. They didn’t buy it because they thought it was a weak case.

And you know what? They were right. In the closing weeks of the campaign season, I felt like I was a lawyer who had a bad client while writing this blog. That client was the Republican Party which had broken its Contract with America from 1994 and had become unmoored from its conservative principles. As its advocate, I couldn’t make a more compelling case for Republicans staying in power than the fact that the Democrats would be worse. I believed in that case, but when that’s all the party gave its advocates to work with, you can honestly conclude that Republicans got this drubbing the old fashioned way – we earned it.

True.

I think I disagree with him on the Administration's failure to make a compelling case on Iraq. Bush has tried and tried and tried and tried to "make a case."

Ultimately, rhetoric and "making a case" are pretty meaningless. That's why I never give a fig about speeches. Or, say, never cared for Andrew Sullivan's emotional, impassioned bullying on the Iraq War.

What matters are facts. Facts on the ground. Real facts, not rhetoric.

Is there any doubt that if we were clearly winning in Iraq, we'd have won this election?

No, there's not.

I'm torn between imagining Americans have just given up on war-fighting generally -- and proven exactly what we'd hoped to disprove, that we cut and run, as we did in so many places, at the first sign of stiff resistance -- and that they just want the war won, one way or another, and imagined the Dem's plan to begin planning to have a plan to have a plan was better than the Bush plan, which was in fact a plan, but wasn't clearly working.

Bush could have risked some serious political capital and announced he was sending another 30,000 troops to Iraq, temporarily, to quell and hopefully crush the terrorists. To not just clear areas of terrorists -- which our troops are able to do -- but leave enough Americans behind to prevent the terrorists from immediately taking over again when we leave.

Which our troops can't do. Not because they're not the greatest soldiers in the history of the earth-- but simply because we don't have the numbers.

Simple fact: We increased our presence in Baghdad by withdrawing troops from Al Anbar. Al Anbar of course flared back up, and we didn't even manage to stabilize Iraq's capital.

Why? Not because our troops aren't giving it their all. There's just simply not enough of them.

That could have done something to convince the public we weren't playing for a stalemate and hoping for the best -- we were trying something new. But Bush never took this step, never gave people reason to hope, nor indicated he'd do anything different.

Had he risked political fall-out, he actually may have held Congress. But he didn't-- because he's passive and basically reactive.

And now, of course, this option is more or less foreclosed to us. It's possible some kind of deal can be worked out with the Democrats -- more troops in exchange for a timetable -- but I doubt it.

Passivity. A lack of energy. Too much time playing prevent defense, too much reaction to events after they occur, letting events dictate the agenda rather than even attempting to impose one's agenda on events.

Hopefully the public still understands we need to fight these bastards, and merely intended to send Bush a signal that they wanted to make a real stab at winning.

If not -- if the public now wants to appease terrorists -- we're in for a long forty years.

Posted by: Ace at 11:50 AM | Comments (62)
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That headline's from the Bizarro Daily Planet.

In the real world, the jihad continues -- despite their party being voted into office! -- and Democrats are, as of yet, not annoucning that "Plan" they plan to eventually plan to have.

Posted by: Ace at 11:47 AM | Comments (5)
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ALF runs them down.

Here are some of mine:

LOSER: The polls
BIGGER LOSER: The exit polls
BIGGEST LOSER: Conservative bloggers
THE ULTIMATE LOSER: "Republican turnout"

The telephone polls were, at the end, ballpark accurate, but seem to have been wildly inaccurate previously. The exit polls were off by four, five, or six points in just about every election, always in favor of the Democrats.

Still, a persistent gap in the polls is never good. Even losing by 5% is still, you know, losing.

I'll call conservative bloggers losers on this for fighting the polls. Although I do so half-heartedly. Not to, you know, out myself as a liar, but while I thought we'd hold the Senate, I was pretty damn sure we'd lose the House. Readers like "someone" thought I shouldn't be doing that; a chat with another blogger about this convinced me it was time for "game faces, man. Game faces."

I guess I did sort of say that holding the House was a longshot, but I tried to keep hope alive. Going into a game thinking you're going to lose means you will, definitely, lose.

But I'll say that many conservative bloggers were losers on this.

I didn't really buy that Republican turnout would save us, if we were truly behind by any nontrivial amount. For one thing, anything that works will be copied; we surprised the Democrats with our turnout operation in 2004, but by now, they certainly know how we did it and certainly emulated the strategy.

LOSER: Bush
WINNER: Rahm Emmanuel
BIGGER WINNERS: John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney

I hope not all conservatives turn too nastily on Bush, which was, quite frankly, my instinct last night. Much of the reason conservatives have liked him these past two years is the same reason Democrats loved Clinton -- because he was a winner. Well, he's not a winner anymore, but that wasn't the only reason we initially supported him. He's managed a few good things along the way.

But still, the "Trust Bush, He's Got The Magic" thing is dead, isn't it?

Rahm Emmanuel was brilliant in recruiting attractive outsider candidates for the House who could pose plausibly as moderates.

We're now in the position, I think, that the left was. The left was willing to accept someone posing as a moderate as candidate for president in 1992 because they were hungry for a win. The nutroots embraced candidates who expressed (fake) support for programs they hated -- military tribunals, coerced interrogations, etc. -- because they were so hungry to win. They didn't care what the new Democratic majority might look like, they just wanted one.

At this moment I'm seriously reevaluating McCain. Look, I just don't want to lose. But overnight he's gone from someone I would only support extremely reluctantly to someone I will oppose in the primaries but support much less reluctantly should he win.

My first choices are Giuliani and Romney, of course.

McCain has played the politics of this beautifully, one has to admit. On Iraq, he's criticized Bush just enough to say he's not part of the stalemate strategy but supported the basics of it enough to credibly say he's part of the Victory Bloc. It's kind of cocksuckerish, but it's smart politics.

LOSER: Ned Lamont
WINNER: Joe Lieberman
BIGGER WINNER: Kos

Harry Reid kissed his ring last night. Everyone may know Kos is an idiot, but for now, he's an idiot that can channel insane anger into electoral triumph.

I wonder if at some point the GOP will take this blogger/interactive politics thing more seriously. I don't think Kos was really terribly critical to the Democrats' win, but surely it didn't hurt.

LOSER: The non-terrorist people of Iraq
WINNER: The terrorists
ULTIMATE WINNER: The Iranian nuclear forces

Pretty self-explanatory.

The country has voted for isolationism and retreat, as they've done before, at the precise moment they cannot afford to do so.

I hope the penalty for this mistake will not be as enormous as it was in the 1930's and then, of course, on 7 December 1941.

Another loser...

This is going to be controversial, but it's what I think. The Republican-evangelical partnership took a big hit last night. Evangelicals are much more in play than we'd thought.

It's just politics, but one doesn't take unpopular positions on behalf of a group that, in the end, choses not to support you. I'm not talking right and wrong (though of course I am a "libertarian" according to some), I'm talking simple math.

In previous cycles, the evangelicals produced enough votes to justify taking some unpopular policy stances -- like on stem cells. Those positions were net electoral winners, or, at worst, net electoral losers by just a smidgen.

But the exit polls, and raw votes from red, religious areas, indicate that a lot of evangelicals voted Democrat. That's their right, but simple political math dictates that if support from a group is half-hearted, a party is going to be much more half-hearted about pursuing their support.

If a policy alienates a certain number of social moderates who otherwise might vote GOP, and yet only attracts the smaller value Y of social conservatives who champion it, it's hard to justify such a policy in terms of pure political math.

The partnership is hardly destroyed, but I think it has been dented up pretty nicely.

Posted by: Ace at 11:17 AM | Comments (195)
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A press release as some gather themselves up from the floor and prepare for the coming fights. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:55 AM | Comments (31)
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"Fresh perspective" on Iraq. Will work with Democrats just like he did in Congress. (This presumes they want to work with him, which they haven't thusfar.)

One highlight is is his refutation of Terry Moran's (I think) claim that the election said that America wants a withdrawal from Iraq. "I want the troops to come home too," Bush responded. "But I want them to come home to victory. Did the American people say they didn't want victory? I don't think they said that."

Odd Moment: Bush, making some joke I don't really get, asks "You think I'm nuts? You think all sensibilities have left me thanks to workin' hard on the campaign?" and then chuckles.

The press corps titters nervously -- it's quite clear they do think he's nuts.

This will be the most played video clip of the next month on the left, and soon we will hear calls for Bush's impeachment due to mental illness.

Pelosi's Speech: Parts here at the Political Pit Bull.

Apparently she called once again to get out of Iraq.

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (49)
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Passivity. Personally I don't know that Rumsfeld was the problem. He had a boss, after all.

Confirmed: Rumsfeld will step down, effective immediately.

Anyway, passivity. If people had lost confidence in the prosecution of the Iraq War, Bush could have created a new postion -- Iraq Czar or whatever -- reporting directly to him who would take over for Iraq policy from Rumsfeld. A half-step, and probably a bullshitty one, but hey, sometimes you just fire or demote a coach to give the players (troops) and fans (voters) a feeling that a fresh beginning is being made.

PS... In case anyone's given up on the math, Burns' loss means the Democrats now have 50 Senators, and will at the very least have that power-sharing bullshit we saw when Jeffords flipped.

And even that assumes Allen will win the recount, which I doubt he will. Republicans don't win recounts.

So, 51-49. Minority party, baby.

Posted by: Ace at 09:52 AM | Comments (109)
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Dammit.

After 6 weeks, the warts of 8 children (16 percent) in the duct tape group and the warts of 3 children (6 percent) in the placebo group had disappeared," the researchers wrote in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

They said this difference was not statistically significant.

On the bright side, as I found out after reading this article, duct tape is still a fantastic depilatory.

Posted by: LauraW. at 08:31 AM | Comments (35)
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I'm too tired to post much right now, but the watchword is "back to work." We've lost a battle, and a big one, but it's only a setback in the general war of ideas which we're generally winning.

Why didn't we win this time? We didn't show up with the ammo for the war of ideas. Namely, ideas.

Conservatives preach that government is dysfunctional and inefficient, and yet we've done little to change that while in custody of the whole of the government. No streamlining efforts, no efforts to cut back wasteful spending, etc. These are small-bore type iniitiatives, but the public takes notice that you're trying. How much mileage did Clinton/Gore get out of "ReGo," "Reinventing Government"? Not a hell of a lot was done there, but certainly small improvements were made here and there, and they got credit for trying. They were trying to improve the government's ability to serve the public, even if in a minor (and much overhyped) way.

There's been a listnessness, a lack of energy in the government for a long while. To some extent, this always happens in the sixth year of a presidency, which is the reason for the six year itch. All of the major pieces of business have either been accomplished or attempted and rejected (like reforming Social Security).

And yet that hardly absolves Congress from acting on its own initiative to improve matters, to tinker with the way things work to make them work better. I'm not talking about spending more money. But if you have a collge loan program that's going to cost you so many billions of dollars per year anyway, for example, what the hell, why not see about improving customer service and the like?

Bush has been excessively passive and lethargic for two years, and Congress followed his lead. This passivity and lethargy he inherits from his father -- how obvious was it that George Bush the Elder had simply run out of steam in 1991?

Even the latest spate of anti-terrorist legislation was essentially reactive -- they were forced to act legislatively due to an adverse court ruling against administration-authorized policies existing for years. What, really, has Congress done for two years? Certainly it didn't cut any spending, God knows. But even if you're not in the Democratic tradition of addressing every new perceived need with a glittering new federal program, there's hardly any reason to not try to improve what programs we have in a revenue-neutral way.

And revenue-neutral programs would be a major goal for this past Congress, had they achieved it.

The conservative complaint is that government doesn't work very well. Fine-- but that hardly means that conservatives should allow government to work less well than it could. No, government isn't the answer to all of life's problems, but if you've got a government, you might as well fix a few of life's problems. Remember the public ecstacy over the micro-initiative of merely creating the federal Do Not Call registry, and ending telemarketers' calls into the home? Does anyone doubt their life isn't just a tiny bit better due to that?

Clinton was, of course, a master at this game of governmental small-ball. He controled the agenda because of this stuff.

And this Congress? Outlawed online poker. And couldn't even do so, except on the sly, attaching it stealthily to a security bill sure to pass. If you have to hide your legislative victories like old porn mags, they're not, in fact, victories at all.

Perhaps the only domestic issue that really could have moved votes was security-first-amnesty-later. But due to Bush's faith-based position that we need to make millions of Central and South Americans new American citizens every year, the Republican Congressmen were unable to seize upon this and save themselves. They lost elections due to Bush's political sins.

As Drew points out, there is now a defacto "timetable" in place for Iraq. Simple realism means that when the anti-war party wins an election, the war is just about ready to be declared over. That gives Bush a few months to try something bold and daring -- like sending over 30,000 new troops for a short period of time -- to stabilize the situation and get results. If he can't get them, then the Democrats have their wish -- they will force a loss in a war they never wanted to fight, and were determined to lose, all along.

If there's one silver lining, it is that the political enemy now has a face, and can no longer hide behind the mainstream media's skirts, even if they want to help hide them. I was very nearly laughing at Chris Matthews' statement tonight that he hoped Democrats, as they were on the brink of taking power, would think seriously about their position on Iraq. Hah-- now that they're about to take power they should think about it. Apparently Chris was just fine with them not thinking about it for the past year and a half-- but now they should come up with a plan.

But they will have to. They ran, basically, on the platform that they had a plan to ultimately have a plan. Well, the election's over, and now they're in power. The public elected them to help make Iraq better, and the public is going to be expecting that Plan the Democrats have long planned. Now that they can no longer merely carp from the sidelines, we'll see the brilliant plans the Democratic War-Fightin' Brain-Trust comes up with-- and so will the public.

Another commenter said that Bush's narrow victory in 2004 should have put him on notice the public was giving him a short period of time to prove he could fix things.

The media will certainly be pulling with all its might for Nancy Pelosi, but there's no evidence the public is willing to give the Democrats much longer than two years, either. We'll see how their plans to have a plan progress, and how that all works out for them in 2008. Nancy Pelosi will find it harder to evade every substantive question when she's now the leader of the House of Representatives. She promised she would, at some point, have answers; we're all ears.

Liberals blame voters for their decisions. I don't want to do that. But if politicians have to live with the consequences of losing their voters, voters have to live with the consequences of losing their politicians, too. According to early estimates, perhaps one-third of previous evangelical voters flipped and went for Democrats. If scandal and such put them off, fine. But if John Paul Stevens now retires, and Bush cannot get anyone but a liberal (of a moderate stripe) through the Senate, they will know precisely what that defection cost them. Can't say it's their fault; if the Republicans alienated them, such is politics. But I'm not sure evangelicals will find their choice in their own interests.

But most importantly: Back to work. We snoozed for two years, trusting that 9/11 and patriotism and little else would carry us through, even though we weren't delivering on even the basics of bedrock conservative principles. Or even clearly winning the war we trusted would keep the public on our side.

We were wrong, and we were bloodied. We got our clocks cleaned. The Democrats didn't do much except try not to say anything at all and nominate pretty candidates who had no previous history and thus could plausibly pose as moderates or even monderate-conservatives. But if you don't play your best game, you can be beaten by weak teams. Winning teams always play their best games. Losing teams put in half-hearted effort and just hope luck and opponents' mistakes will carry them along, barely.

That's what makes them losing teams.

It's time to start coming up with fresh and popular ideas again, and fighting for them, and keeping the Democrats on permanent defense. And, maybe, just for fun, proposing serious deficit reduction packages consisting chiefly of budget cuts.

And we'll see what the "Pay As You Go," very fiscally-responsible balanced-budget-hawk Democrats have to say about that.

And... Sidhe cheers me up by saying, basically, "Buck up, we've had our dirty barbarian asses tossed out of better places."

Posted by: Ace at 12:51 AM | Comments (242)
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Republican House losses are mounting, and may or may not stanch at 30. Could be more.

Cardin actually looks like he's going to win, Talent is probably going to lose, Allen is behind by 3000 votes and probably lost. And Burns will lose too.

So we lost it all.

But we've still got Bush.

And his super-popular amnesty plan, of course.

Posted by: Ace at 09:16 PM | Comments (160)
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