Election Day--Anguish vs Hope

The long awaited election day finds this cut-and-run Republican deeply disturbed by the tactics and actions of his "former" party. We have our President shrilly making ridiculous statements and charges, Condi on the campaign trail, various candidates, activists and pundits making ridiculous statements to any TV camera and our Vice President making absurd comments about Iraq on his way to shoot something. While some Republicans are realistic the vast majority, including our Pres, VP and most of the candidates need, in the words of Andrew Sullivan, an intervention.

As I write, I can hear in the background absurd statements by David Brook's favorite candidate--Rick Santorum. The man is totally out of touch with reality.

What will tonight bring? Reason leads me to a prediction that the Democrats will take the House by 5 to 8 seats and the Republicans will barely hold on to the Senate 51-49 or even 50-50. If I am right, I dread the spin that we will hear from Republicans about how this result was both expected and normal. They will try to convince the public that the overall results is an endorsement of this Republican administration. The end result will be that the party will unfortunately continue with business as usual with no lessons learned. A very bad result for the party and a severely weakened Republican party which only benefits Democrats--an unacceptable alternative. (Why in the world did the Democrats trot out Barbara Boxer and Howard Dean on TV over the weekend to remind us how bad that alternative would be?)

What if almost all of the pundits are wrong, that Karl Rove is both a genius and right, and the Republicans hold both the House and the Senate by whatever margin? That result would appear to effectively destroy the Democratic party and result in a disaster for all of us. Yet, the bright side would be that the current crop of Republicans would have two more years to make matters worse and thus increase the chances for their loss of both the White House and Congress in 08. It would take either a new entity such as www.unity08.com or another third party to save our republic, or whatever is left of it, in 08.

The third possibility is that I am underestimating the Democratic wave. If the Democrats win the House by over 20 some seats and also take the Senate, I would predict that Republican talking heads will play the blame game tonight and perhaps, just perhaps, true Republicans will get the message and realize the errors of their ways. This provides the only realistic hope of cut-and-run Republicans to regain the grand old party and start a movement to nominate a real Republican to run in 08.

So there is both anguish and hope. Anguish about the state of my party and hope that by soundly defeating the present so-called leaders of the current Republican party, and those who have mindlessly supported them, can get the Republican party back on track. If that comes to pass we can thank Terri Schievo. The incompetency of Iraq and Katrina won't look so bad in retrospect if it rids the country of the Bush-bunch once and for all.

One final prediction. Given all of the events surrounding this election look for one or more changes of party among our Senators and Representatives. The pressure for party changes will be extreme if control of either the House or Senate is hanging by a string.

Tonight is a time to mourn the state of politics in the United States as representative by negative advertising, dirty tricks, misrepresentations and outright lies. It is is time to be outraged by the spin that will spew from both Republicans and Democrats in an attempt to "make the worser appear the better course". It is a time to decry the absence of real debate on the issues of our time. Hopefully, it is a time to also realize that something must be done about an incompetent President (spelled Rove) who seek to scare the people, lie to the people and govern by spin and rhetoric. It is a night to go to bed mad.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the 08 Presidential race--a day that hopefully the lessons of the midterm elections will result in a rebirth and redirection of the Republican party so that cut-and-run Republicans can come home.

Pastor Ted vs John Kerry

This week John Kerry "blew" a joke and Pastor Ted Haggard _ _ _ _ (you fill in the blank). Yet this morning Presidential PR guru Dan Bartlett stressed that, since Pastor Ted was not running for office, and that since all Evangelicals cannot be tarred with his actions, the incident would have no effect on Tuesday's vote. Hmm--I dindn't know that John Kerry is in fact running for office and that he speaks for all Democrats. Saying anything to get elected was a major factor in Kerry's 2004 loss. Will the same fate befal the Bush administration?

Kerry--Still Makes Bush Look Good

Watching John Kerry being cute, spouting trite slogans, and trying, but failing, to crack a joke brings back the painful memory of why I voted for George Bush in 04--and why, despite all that has happened, that I do not regret that vote. The good news is that Kerry's bad joke should spell the end of any possibility of another run. As the 08 Presidential campaign begins on Wednesday, I can only hope that we have learned from Kerry and Bush that character matters and that we cannot afford incompetence in the oval office. The American people are entitled to better than a choice between a Kerry and a Bush. Can the Republican or Democratic parties change, rise to the occasion, and nominate a reasonable candidate? If not there is always Unity 08. See www.unity08.com.

The Buck Stops Where?

On Wednesday President Bush vowed to keep Don Rumsfeld in place till the end of his term because of the "fantastic job" he was doing in Iraq, Afghanistan and in "overhauling the military. "Your doing a hell of a job Rummy."

On Thurday Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, senior US military office in Iraq 2003-04 stated that he was forced to retire from the army after 33 years because "he was not offered another position in a three-star or four-star command" and that he "had become an embarrassment to the top brass."

As our Republican Majority Leader John Boehner said yesterday on TV--don't blame Rummy--blame the generals in Iraq. Seems to me the chain of command goes right through the Pentagon to the White House. Our President has always hid behind the fiction by claiming that the generals have not requested more troops for Iraq. Now that it is apparent that more troops are needed the Generals have requested more troops, but the administration has decided that the request should be for 100,000 more Iraqis.

Stay tuned--we will be getting a new story from the administration as soon as the election is over. A good start would be to admit that our Secretary of Defense is both responsible and that he has been wrong. Our military is a mess and we need to substantially increase its size and its capability. This crowd has left us unable to stand up to Iran, Syria, Korea, nuch less to win in Iraq or Afghanistan. It will take years to rebuild our military so that we are capable of fighting and winning wars in the 21st Century. Place the blame where it belongs-- the SecDef and POTUS.