Category: Politics

McCain ’08: As If You Doubted

ABCNews declares what’s been hardly a secret for some time, John McCain is prepping a run for the Presidency in 2008.

I have mixed feelings about McCain. On the war, he’s one of this nation’s strongest advocates. He’s also one of the strongest advocates of limited government out there. He’s a fiscal hawk of the first order, and this country desperately needs someone like him to put our fiscal house in order. He’s a little too eager to raise taxes, but I don’t necessarily see him as someone who would undo the tax cuts that have already been made.

What I dislike? His position on interrogations is based on principle, and I respect him for that. I still disagree with it. His overall record on national security is strong enough that I trust him to prosecute this war with the force necessary to win. His position on interrogations isn’t a dealbreaker by any means.

What I cannot countenance is his position on campaign finance reform. I believe that McCain-Feingold is an unconstitutional restriction on free speech, and it should have been struck down by the Supreme Court. I believe that his position on campaign finance rules puts him on the wrong side of representative democracy — you don’t strengthen the democratic process by restricting people’s voices, but by creating a vigorous marketplace of ideals. McCain-Feingold has not created a cleaner system of campaigns, nor has it reduced the influence of money on politics. What it has done is made campaigns dirtier and acted as incumbent protection, silencing the voices of interest groups who have every right to speak out on issues of relevance to their members.

Could I still vote for John McCain? Absolutely, especially as the Democrats are so much worse on key issues, especially this war. Would I prefer him? McCain is much more socially conservative than Giuliani, and also a strong fiscal conservative. Still, Giuliani is someone who could also unite this country and would also prosecute the war with the strength required. Giuliani has his own issues, but right now conservatives seemed more pragmatically likely to support him.

Still, McCain could help bring the GOP out of its current doldrums. We need a fiscal and foreign policy hawk right now, and McCain is working on building bridges with movement conservatives. He’d be a force to reckon with in 2008, and only Giuliani could beat him. The GOP can do far worse than McCain, and if we want to win, he’s one the people who can make that happen.

Friendly Fire

Out of the Race speculates that Democratic control of Congress will take a toll on the American military:

When all is said and done in connection with the Pentagon management shakeup, the Baker commission report and the Dems actively taking control of the legislative branch, I for one will be watching the reenlistment rate among the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. I suspect many troops will opt to return to civilian life if they feel that they no longer have support from the policymakers, rather than be jerked around by people who think like John Kerry. And if the re-up rate goes down, original enlistments will probably decrease, too. Nobody wants to fight in a war that the movers and shakers don’t want to win. That was true in Korea and Vietnam, and it’s true now.

I think he’s right there. The troops support the mission in Iraq. They understand, far better than our chattering classes, what we’re fighting over there. The rates of reenlistment, especially among combat units, has been far higher than what the Pentagon expected. By every measure, America’s fighting men and women have done an incredible job of engaging the enemy in incredibly difficult circumstances.

However, they depend on the support of their government back home, and when the message that the Democrats are sending is that they want to end the mission regardless of what the outcome will be, that has a profoundly demoralizing effect. The Democrats have spend the last three years constantly harping on every aspect of this war — and now they’re in a position where they are supposed to be supporting our troops. Those two positions are irreconcilable.

I do agree that reenlistment will suffer. I think that the result of this will be that the military will end up being less capable in a time when we need to be able to respond to terrorism better. Broken machinery can be replaced, but you can’t replace the leadership that comes from an experienced and effective NCO and officer corps. If we start losing combat-tested soldiers because they’ve lost faith in the political culture, our military will suffer.

One of the chief justifications that the Democrats use for their position on Iraq is that pulling out will help the military. That simply isn’t true — look at how demoralized the military was after the disastrous pullout in Vietnam.

The arguments for withdrawal neither overcome the message that they’ll send to the enemy, nor do they overcome the message we’ll be sending to our own troops. Calling Iraq a “failure” is profoundly disrespectful to those brave Americans and our allies who are doing everything possible to win this war. Saying that it is unwinnable when they know better is equally disrespectful. If our political culture doesn’t support our military culture, we will not be able to fight this current war with the vigor it requires — should that happen, we will all suffer the consequences.

Allen Concedes, Democrats Take Senate

Sen. George Allen has conceded the VA Senate race to James Webb, giving control of the Senate over to the Democratic Party.

Allen did the right thing by conceding, as it was clear that the margin in the race was simply too large for him to have any ground to contest the race. Allen may yet have a political career if Sen. John Warner of VA retires in 2008 as it is expected that he will. By bowing out on a gracious note, Allen leaves himself the possibility of political redemption later on.

Stand Or Fall

Mitch Berg notes something rather interesting about this election — the Republicans who ran to the “center” tended to be the ones who lost. In Minnesota, Gil Gutknecht tried to burnish his centrist street cred on Iraq and ended up getting beat by the anti-war Tim Walz. Yet in the Sixth, Michelle Bachmann, who’s as unabashedly conservative as they come, managed to spank Patty Wetterling in a tough climate.

At the same time, the Democrats ran a whole host of center-right candidates. Jon Tester and James Webb almost certainly have more in common with the GOP than they do with a liberal like Nancy Pelosi. The Democrats won a political victory, but it wasn’t an ideological victory. If this really was an election in which the left is ascendant, why did left-wing candidate Ned Lamont get beat in Smurf-ass-blue Massachusetts?

The reality is that America is not a liberal country. Conservatives outnumber liberal by 2-1. The Republicans lost because they tried to run away from who they were. There’s a lesson in that. Republicans win when they’re not running from the Reaganite agenda of small government, strong national defense, and family values.

After all, if what voters are going to get are basically Democrats, why wouldn’t they choose the real thing?

Mike Pence Makes Sense

Via Glenn Reynolds comes some very wise words from Mike Pence:

Some will argue that we lost our majority because of scandals at home and challenges abroad. I say, we did not just lose our majority, we lost our way.

While the scandals of the 109th Congress harmed our cause, the greatest scandal in Washington, D.C. is runaway federal spending.

After 1994, we were a majority committed to balanced federal budgets, entitlement reform and advancing the principles of limited government. In recent years, our majority voted to expand the federal government’s role in education, entitlements and pursued spending policies that created record deficits and national debt.

This was not in the Contract with America and Republican voters said, ‘enough is enough.

Our opponents will say that the American people rejected our Republican vision. I say the American people didn’t quit on the Contract with America, we did. And in so doing, we severed the bonds of trust between our party and millions of our most ardent supporters.

As the 110th Congress convenes next year, Republicans must cordially accept defeat and dedicate ourselves to advancing our cause as the loyal opposition knowing that the only way to retake our natural, governing majority, is to renew our commitment to limited government, national defense, traditional values and reform.

He’s absolutely right, and hopefully Republicans will take those lessons to heart.

Election Analysis – Minnesota

Again, thank heavens Pawlenty won. Mike Hatch would have been a disaster for this state. While Pawlenty’s margins were razor thin, it’s still a victory. In fact, it’s a considerable victory, as Republican turnout was likely depressed in this election. When the bottom fell out of the Kennedy/Klobuchar race, it undoubtedly hurt the rest of the Republican ticket. That seems to show in the other statewide races — Kiffmeyer and Anderson were trounced. GOP voters just didn’t show up to the polls yesterday in as large a number as they normally do. What this means is that Pawlenty was able to get enough crossover support from Democrats to pull off his narrow win — if he had just gotten the GOP base, Hatch would have trounced him by several points.

Bachmann did better against Wetterling than I would have expected. I suspect that both Kennedy and Wetterling were hurt by negative advertising. Going negative is always a risky political strategy, and when Kennedy and Wetterling did it as challengers, it ended up hurting them rather than helping.

The big shocker was the Gutknecht/Walz race. It wasn’t close, Walz soundly trounced Gutknecht. Obviously the early reports that MN-1 was safe were completely and totally wrong. Again, I think that turnout is key in that race. The GOP turnout was probably much lower than it should have been. Two other factors seem to have been in play. The first is that Gutknecht was far too complacent, and many Republicans are blaming him for running a campaign that was lackluster at best. He thought he had a safe seat, and while conventional wisdom would have said that was true, every smart politician runs like they’re 10 points down. Gutknecht didn’t do that, and it cost him.

The second one is that the demographics of the First are changing. Rochester is trending more and more Democratic. Immigration is changing the demographics of cities like Worthington. It’s a less safely Republican district than it has been in the last few cycles, and redistricting made it much more diverse than it was. It’s quite possible that a smart GOP candidate can knock off Walz in the next electoral cycle, but it’s going to take a lot of work.

No doubt about it, the Republicans got trounced in Minnesota, even harder than they got trounced nationally. Ron Carey hasn’t been able to pull off what his predecessor did, and that’s hurting Minnesota Republicans. The Minnesota GOP is going to have to work hard at fixing their problems and increasing turnout. Minnesota will be firmly in the spotlight in 2008, and while the GOP has suffered a major setback, that doesn’t mean that Minnesota will forever be a blue state — just that there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.

Virginia The New Florida?

It looks like Allen has a less than .1% lead against Webb in the VA Senate race. If the predicted strength in GOP absentee ballots is right, Allen could squeak by, but it looks like this race is going to be a very contentious race. Undoubtedly there’s going to be a flurry of recounts and litigation overt this race — one that should never have been this close had Allen not made several unforced errors. I’m with Michael Barone on this one, had Allen made this an ideological contest rather than a person one he could have easily defeated Webb. Instead, this race is one of those infuriatingly close ones that could take days or even weeks before a final result is determined.

Pawlenty Ahead, Gutknecht Down

Well, looks like the situation has reversed itself from earlier tonight. Gov. Tim Pawlenty is now very narrowly ahead of Mike Hatch in the gubernatorial race, and Democrat Tim Walz is building a sizable lead over Gil Gutknecht in MN-1. Michelle Bachmann appears poised to defeat Patty Wetterling in MN-6.

Pawlenty’s lead is very tenous, but he’s managed to come up from behind, and it seems likely that Hatch will lose, if by the narrowest of margins. The Walz lead is a bit perplexing to me. The early reports indicated that the GOP had strong turnout in MN-1 — which may be true, but that turnout appears to have benefited Pawlenty rather than Gutknecht. It’s possible that Gutknecht will pull enough of a margin in his home turf in southeast Minnesota, but with Rochester and Olmstead County trending more Democratic, that’s not as certain as it may have been in past elections.

It all turns on where the remaining votes remain. Pawlenty, Gutknecht, Kiffmeyer, and Anderson all need some significant help in order to stay in office. Pawlenty seems to have good odds, but today is not a good day for Minnesota Republicans.

UPDATE – 11:15PM Central: The trends are staying steady. Pawlenty is slowly gaining. Gutknecht appears headed for a loss.

The Star-Tribune has called the auditor’s race for Rebecca Otto. Again, that’s a testament to Democratic voting strength, assuming that people are voting straight party line on those statewide positions. If that’s true, it also means that Hatch is doing poorly with DFL voters — and the county and precinct-level figures seem to point in that direction.

SD Abortion Ban Fails

CNN is predicting that the referendum on South Dakota’s abortion ban will fail.

The abortion ban was unconstitutional and draconian. Even as an opponent of abortion, I would have voted against it. Despite the push from churches to get people to vote for it, I’m not surprised it failed. It would have been struck down regardless, and it won’t prevent abortion. The South Dakota Legislature and Gov. Rounds would have been smarter to pursue an incremental attack on abortion.

Even for those many South Dakotans who oppose abortion on moral and ethical grounds, this ban was ill-conceived and doomed to failure.