Jay Reding.com

Time has an interesting poll in which they find that the GOP has a slight edge over the Democrats coming into 2008:

So it’s taken almost as a given among the professional political class that the 2008 Presidential election is the Democrats’ to lose. Republicans are so morose in general, and conservatives so unhappy with their current field of candidates, that the assumption of a Democratic advantage has become bipartisan. And with the public so soured on the Republican in the White House, and so many other trends working against them, including an uptick in the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats, it’s hard to find any good news for Republicans these days. So why, in poll after poll, including the new TIME poll, does that advantage seem to disappear whenever voters are asked to pick a President in hypothetical head-to-head matchups among front-runners with solid name recognition. In our poll, Hillary Clinton loses to John McCain, 42%-48%, and to Rudy Giuliani 41%-50%. Even though Clinton maintains a 7% edge over Obama among Democratic respondents, Obama fares better in the general election matchups. It’s so close that it’s a statistical dead heat, but Obama still loses: 43%-45% to McCain, 44%-45% to Giuliani.

I’m not particularly surprised by these results. It’s important to note that President Bush is basically a lame duck politically — he’s not going to be much of a factor in 2008 for either side. The Democrats continue to run against a man who won’t be on the ballot in 2008, and it’s a lot more difficult to target a party rather than an individual lightning rod.

The factor is that 2006 was not a referendum showing the popularity of Congress, but a referendum showing that the GOP leadership had royally screwed the pooch. Indeed, despite the change in parties, Congress still has abysmal public approval numbers. People aren’t fed up with individual parties, they’re fed up with politics as a whole.

That helps explain the appeal of the various candidates running in the 2008 race. Barack Obama, Rudy Giuliani, and to a lesser extent John McCain all have appeal because they can argue that they are the “outsider” candidates who can transform the sorry state of American politics. In contrast, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and to lesser extends Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney seem to represent the old ways of politics as usual — the last thing the American people want in politics is another Clinton-Gingrich fight.

The reason why this favors the GOP is that the Democrats are currently the party in power — with a White House rendered largely impotent the Democrats have the chance to set the agenda. And the agenda they’re setting is one that prioritizes withdrawal in Iraq and prosecuting the President. Add to that the proposed Democratic tax increases and the Democrats are playing to type exactly in the way the Republicans said they would. That sort of image won’t help the Democrats in 2008.

With the Democrats trying to play to the MoveOn.org wing of their party, now is the time that the Republicans have the greatest opportunity to catch the vital center in American politics. Part of the appeal of a Giuliani campaign is that he can capture centrist voters while advancing key issues of concern to Republicans — strong national defense, low taxes, and more fiscal responsibility. The party that will win the election in 2006 is the party that can reach beyond their own base — and right now the Republicans are better position to do so simply because they’re not in the majority and have no choice but to reach out.

Of course, anything can change in the months ahead — the Democrats could implode, the GOP field could radically change, a dark-horse candidate could emerge that changes everything. However, the reality seems to be that the American people are looking for a Presidential candidate that can break the current status quo, and the GOP has more hopefuls who promise to that than do the Democrats.

If that analysis is correct, the Democratic candidate to watch would be Barack Obama who has wisely based his campaign around the notion of changing the political status quo. The problem with Obama is he’s done that by being as gauzy in his political views as possible, and underneath all that soft-focus media trickery is a politician whose liberalism would alienate many. Obama’s appeal may quickly fade once he has to get involved in the rough and tumble of a real campaign — something he’s never had to face.

In the end, this race is still very wide open, but the early trends show that counting out the GOP in 2008 would not be a smart move for the Democrats — not when the early numbers show the Republican slate being quite competitive with their Democratic counterparts in a year following an abject electoral slaughter of Republicans.

Victor Davis Hanson (himself a renowned scholar of the Greco-Persian War) has an interesting take on why 300 seems to rankle so many on the left:

There is a great yearning among the public for just a small, rare chance to see some issue presented in terms other than moral ambiguity. 300 provided that in a way other costume dramas like Alexander or Troy either could not or did not. The 300 and those beside them were better than the alternative, had the moral high ground, and were willing to match deed with word.

Now, I haven’t seen 300 yet (being a law student and having time and money be in perennially short supply), but it does seem to have hit a certain audience who wants a movie that doesn’t require itself to ponderously attach a host of moral equivocations to its plot. Sometimes the good guys really are good, and the bad guys really are bad. (And the fact that it happened to come out in a time of conflict with the modern-day Persian Empire probably doesn’t hurt either…)

Consider this an open thread…

Austin Bay has an excellent piece that offers much of the context and background for the taking of 15 British sailors as hostages by Iran. The Iranians are clearly trying to rattle the saber, but Bay persuasively argues that it isn’t a true show of strength:

Late spring 2007 finds the Iranian “revolutionary government” facing an extraordinary range of internal and external problems.

There’s a war inside Iran — several wars, actually. Minority Baluchis, Azeris, Kurds and Arabs are restive.

The mullah’s core problem is the Iranian people. Under-30 Iranians have had it with the mullahs’ failed revolution.

A recent visitor to Iran described a twenty-fold increase in “the standard bribe” Tehran bureaucrats demand for a building permit. Call it indicative rumor, supporting the assertion that Iranians now believe their current government is more corrupt than the Shah’s. Moreover, Iranians are aware of Iraq’s political progress. There’s a war in Iraq, yes, but also an emerging Arab democracy — and that irritates Iranians who regard themselves as being more sophisticated than Arabs. The latest U.N. sanctions resolution increases political and economic pressure. It also freezes the economic assets of 28 people and organizations — so the sanctions are tailored to hit specific Iranian actors (bad actors). The resolution passed unanimously, meaning the mullahs cannot count on China and Russia.

Confronting these problems, Iran’s Islamist hardliners take Western hostages.

Isolation may be enough to get the regime in Tehran to back off or end up provoking regime change within Iran. If that were all that were involved, that would be the right strategy. The problem is that Iran is pursuing and may be perilously close to obtaining a working nuclear weapon. Should they do that, can the West trust Ahmadinejad not to take an action that would lead to a nuclear confrontation? Given the messianic streak in his rhetoric and his past history as an Islamist radical and hostage-taker in 1979, that’s not a bet that any leader should be comfortable taking.

In other words, we’re under a time crunch that is not of our devising. If Ahmadinejad gets ahold of a nuclear weapon, it will be too late. Even if his regime collapses, he could very easily allow that weapon to fall into terrorist hands. Worse, even if a “better” government comes on in Iran, the Iranian possession of a nuclear weapon would undoubtedly set of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East at large. A world in which Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, or even “allied” countries like the UAE have nuclear weapons is not a safe one — it would be too easy for one or more weapons to fall into radical hands and end up being used in a terrorist attack.

Isolation and containment may be the best course of action over the short term, but if Iran obtains nuclear weapons it won’t be enough. Any sanctions regime must be absolutely effective in containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, or the use of military force (such as Clinton’s bombing of Iraq in 1998) should still be on the table.

The Iranian government may be shaky, but we’ve all heard rumors of impending revolution coming from Iran for years now, and it still hasn’t happened. It would be nice of the situation organically defused itself, and perhaps it will. However, the job of policymakers isn’t to look at the world through rose colored glasses, it’s to predict what the worst-case scenario is and prepare accordingly. If we’re not ready to see a nuclear-armed Iran allow a nuclear weapon to fall into the hands of a terrorist organization, we had better have a strong plan on the table to prevent that happening — because such an event is very possible and may be much closer than we’d like to hope.

National Review has an editorial which calls for the resignation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General:

What little credibility Gonzales had is gone. All that now keeps him in office, save the friendship of the president, is the conviction of many Republicans that removing him would embolden the Democrats. It is an overblown fear. The Democrats will pursue scandals, real or invented, whether or not Gonzales stays. But they have an especially inviting target in Gonzales. He cannot defend the administration and its policies even when they deserve defense. Alberto Gonzales should resign. The Justice Department needs a fresh start.

Ultimately, I don’t think the President has any intention of asking Gonzales to step down or even accepting his resignation. Then again, this may be another case like the one of Harriet Miers in which the President is forced to back down.

There’s a time for stubborn tenacity such as when fighting a war, and there’s a time to understand that one is in a politically untenable position. The President finds himself in a politically untenable position — Gonzales has damaged his own credibility to the point where it is not at all clear that he can continue on as Attorney General.

The sad fact is that the only thing the Democrats are going to do this term is hound the Bush Administration with all the determination of a Captain Ahab or an Inspector Javert. The Bush Administration cannot stonewall for the next two years, even though the Democratic Congress seems to have every intention of riding roughshod over every principle of separation of powers that they can conceivably get away with. If Bush thinks that holding onto Gonzales will somehow diminish or delay the Democrats in attacking his administration, he vastly underestimates the raving partisanship of the Democrats.

Gonzales may be an able public servant, but he’s damaged himself politically to the point where it is no longer tenable for him to remain in office. The Bush Administration should ask him to retire from public service and spend more time with his family for the good of the Department of Justice and of the nation.

The Christian Science Monitor has an intriguing article on how Dwight Eisenhower solved the illegal immigration problem of his day:

In 1954, Ike appointed retired Gen. Joseph “Jumpin’ Joe” Swing, a former West Point classmate and veteran of the 101st Airborne, as the new INS commissioner.

Influential politicians, including Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D) of Texas and Sen. Pat McCarran (D) of Nevada, favored open borders, and were dead set against strong border enforcement, Brownell said. But General Swing’s close connections to the president shielded him - and the Border Patrol - from meddling by powerful political and corporate interests.

One of Swing’s first decisive acts was to transfer certain entrenched immigration officials out of the border area to other regions of the country where their political connections with people such as Senator Johnson would have no effect.

Then on June 17, 1954, what was called “Operation Wetback” began. Because political resistance was lower in California and Arizona, the roundup of aliens began there. Some 750 agents swept northward through agricultural areas with a goal of 1,000 apprehensions a day. By the end of July, over 50,000 aliens were caught in the two states. Another 488,000, fearing arrest, had fled the country.

Eisenhower’s solution to illegal immigration worked — enforcing the nation’s laws is a perfect viable way of restoring public order. Not only did Eisenhower significantly reduce the economic impact that illegal immigration has, he made it more difficult for deported illegals to return by ensuring that they were deported well inside Mexico rather than merely shunted across the border where the opportunity costs for a second crossing were significantly lower.

Such a plan would be quite doable today, even though it would also face significant political opposition. Even Eisenhower did allow for a “guest worker” program which allowed Mexican citizens to hold temporary worker permits for a fixed amount of time. A similar political compromise could work today.

This country is a nation of laws, and it should be seen as widely unacceptable that our nation’s immigration laws are largely unenforced. If Mexican nationals want to come to America for opportunities they can’t seek at home (which is a problem all to itself), then they should do so under a clear legal framework. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a political consensus in either party to take anything other than cosmetic steps towards enforcing the nation’s borders. Multiculturalists on the left don’t like the idea of enforcement any more the economic interests on the right do. Until that changes, the situation is likely to fester.

Eisenhower was able to accomplish five decades ago what our policymakers have so far been unable to do — and perhaps now is a good time for Congress to open their history books and take a look at a model for what a successful solution to our immigration quandary look like.