Saturday, October 14, 2006
The coming GOP debacle
If it weren't for the war, I would be in favor of the Democrats recovering control of Congress. In general, I think divided government works better than government controlled by one party. There was a time when I thought that total Republican control would be a good thing, but the GOP has so squandered its opportunity that I am disgusted. Glenn Reynolds rather exactly captures my opinion:
The GOP richly deserves to lose its majority in Congress. I just wish the Democrats deserved to win one.
Since it is increasingly clear that the Democrats are going to win and win big, here's to hoping -- rather than expecting -- that Democrats will use their new authority wisely. In particularly, it would be nice if Congressional Democrats finally articulated a national security strategy. It is difficult to imagine how they will chair the foreign policy and military committees without one.
4 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Oct 14, 09:56:00 AM:
You don't really think it will be hard to chair foreign policy and military committees without a foreign policy strategy, do you?
How hard can it be to hold hearings where members can grandstand in front of administration witnesses about everything that has gone wrong? I guess we could call that a strategy of sorts... but it certainly seems like something with which they could stay busy for a long time before having any ideas of their own.
By , at
Sat Oct 14, 02:39:00 PM:
".... it certainly seems like something with which they could stay busy for a long time before having any ideas of their own."
They don't even need to do it for a long time. Just long enough to make it into the 2008 Presidential election campaign.
By 
Lanky_Bastard, at
Sat Oct 14, 09:53:00 PM:
I know this is more of a sour grapes type post than a serious debate, but this is the plan as written by Pelosi.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100600056.html
It looks like their security policy is to implement all the 9/11 commission's reccomendations. It's not novel, but unless the Senate flips too that little task will eat the whole 2 years.
By the way...what's the Republican plan for next year? I mean, if they were to win.
By Dawnfire82, at
Mon Oct 16, 07:49:00 PM:
"We believe in the marketplace," Pelosi said of Democrats, then drew a contrast with Republicans. "They have only rewarded wealth, not work."
How does she figure that those people got wealthy in the first place, I wonder. Maybe they all married into it, like she did...
"We must share the benefits of our wealth" beyond the privileged few, she added."
Hello socialism. I'm impressed on how she says "our wealth" as if it's a collective resource that is somehow selectively and unfairly doled out to the wealthy.
Just implementing 9/11 commission recomendations is not a Security Policy. It's a security policy, and it's just probably the only thing that they could agree on to publish as a prediction. And strictly speaking, the President is responsible for the security of the nation, not Congress, so at best they'll just harp at him for 'failures' without ever articulating a workable alternative.
Not being a Republican or prophet, I can only guess at what they would do. But I imagine it would involve sacrificing Congressional pages to the dark gods that made their victory possible.
