After all this talk about Concerned Alumni for Princeton and Judge Alito, Ted Kennedy got his wish and the documents from CAP were released. And sure enough none of the documents so much as mentioned his name. No doubt that the Democrats won’t let go of their guilt-by-association smears, but it’s clear their whole attack strategy against Alito has completely and utterly failed. Alito will become the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and the Democrats have made themselves look like preening fools.

One of the cardinal rule in politics is that you never play a game you know you can’t win. Were the Democrats really dumb enough to think that they could smear Alito into submission? Or are they simply playing to the radical left-wing base? Either way it doesn’t look good for them. Their vitriolic opposition to Alito is ultimately futile for them and the PR backlash will end up hurting them in the long run.

Then again, the Democrats are stuck in a Catch-22. If they’d done nothing against Alito, Ralph Neas and the rest of the hard left would have gone apoplectic – and the Democrats are already behind in fundraising and need the hard left’s large war chest. But the more the Democrats embrace groups like People for the American Way, the further outside of the mainstream they get. So in the end, this whole bit of moronic political theater has amounted to nothing but fodder for future GOP campaign commercials. The Democrats know they’ve lost, and their impotence has come out in partisan blather.

It is as Shakespeare once said: “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury yet signifying nothing.”

UPDATE: Roger L. Simon: ““When Mrs. Alito walked out of the room, I thought of Mary Jo Kopechne..”

Ouch.

P.J. O’Rourke has an brilliantly scathing review of Ana Marie “Wonkette” Cox’s roman a blog Dog Days. Now, in fairness, I haven’t read the book. To be truthful, given the choice between reading a political potboiler about the sex lives of Washington flacks and being forced to sit in a cage full of rabid, enraged badgers, I’d probably have to go with the latter. As O’Rourke drolly comments:

Washington’s pretensions, blown so large in skins so thin, should produce bursts of hilarity when poked with the dullest of tools, and Dog Days is that. The problem is that fiction, especially comic fiction, concerns why people do what they do. The more unlikely or bizarre the reasons the heart has, the better. Why people do what they do in Washington is so obvious that a beginner novelist would be advised to take up a subject that involves more complex motivations. Breathing, for example.

That’s the problem. There is a certain species of person who loves the thrill of political campaigning – and those people are deeply, deeply disturbed individuals. No doubt fans of Wonkette’s blog will love her book, but the inside baseball of Washington politics is hardly the sort of material that makes a wonderful novel. And while Wonkette’s snark is occasionally amusing, it tires quickly.

On the other hand, maybe Cox does us all a public service:

But in Dog Days‘s favor — and there must be something — Cox has written a stirring polemic for those who think Washington is inherently mindless and greedy and who believe that the dim, envious, self-cherishing mess that is politics should be employed only as society’s last, desperate resort. In this, Dog Days is comparable to Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. Albeit the prose makes Hayek’s seem elegant and pellucid. But Hayek’s first language was German.

Dick Morris argues that the political winds are blowing to the left in 2006. When Dick Morris is right, he’s usually right. When Dick Morris is wrong, he is wrong. He states:

A big part of the reason is the success the Bush administration has had in solving and hence diminishing the importance of the Republican agenda. Taxes have been cut, we have not had a terror attack since Sept. 11 and trial lawyers are on the defensive. The issues that remain — energy, environment, healthcare and Social Security — usually are Democratic and liberal.

The drip-drip-drip of Iraqi casualties isn’t helping Bush any, and Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) has done more to hurt the GOP than any Democrat has, but the fundamental reason for the liberal drift is the salience of issues normally identified with the left.

I don’t see this at all – the GOP leadership has done a middling job at best at promoting the Republican agenda. Morris is missing the single biggest issue of 2006: pork. Americans are sick and tired of government pork and waste. There’s a huge groundswell movement against government waste going on – you can tell by the fact that members of Congress are starting to position themselves on the side of fiscal responsibility. A member of Congress is like a weathervane, if they’re moving in one direction it’s usually because they’re being pushed that way.

The Republicans need to get their act together on pork, but the Democrats have a reputation as a party that never met a government program they didn’t like. The GOP is wisely trying to once again position themselves as the party of fiscal discipline. Granted, at the moment that’s largely spin, but at least the Republicans are starting to get serious about it.

If 2006 becomes an election based on security, Republicans benefit. If it’s about pork, Republicans have a slight edge. If it does shift to other issues like the ones that Morris mentions, the Democrats may have a slight edge. However, there’s a major anti-incumbant sentiment out there, and that could very well effect both parties. The leadership on both sides of the Congressional aisle has been abysmal. People are rightly sick and tired of the level of vitriolic political infighting, and sick and tired of the culture in Washington. Neither party has a monopoly on partisanship or corruption.

The Republicans can win on pocketbook issues, so long as they try to do so. The GOP leadership never fought for Social Security reform, and it died on the table. When the GOP actually fights for something, such as tax cuts and judicial nominees, they have a tendency to win. If the Republican leadership can get their act together and stand behind their agenda, they can cut their losses in 2006.

The GOP does have one big advantage:

The Democrats are helping Bush mightily by their vitriolic response to reports of National Security Agency wiretapping and their opposition to the Patriot Act renewal. Since we have not had a terror attack in four and a half years, the homeland-security issue, the mother of all Republican issues, would seem likely to fade into the background. But by beating Bush over the head for his efforts to keep America safe, the liberals are helping Bush, raising the salience of one of his core issues. In his State of the Union speech, Bush should spend considerable time taking them to task on these grounds, since it will help him enormously.

Morris suggests making immigration and drugs key issues in 2006. Immigration is a no-no – the Bush Administration is dead wrong on immigration, and even Hillary Clinton has outflanked the GOP to the right on immigration recently. Bush’s guest-worker program is popular inside the White House and nowhere else. Unless the GOP can stand behind a true “get tough” policy on illegal immigration, immigration is a weakness for them not a strength.

While drug abuse is a traditional point of strength for the GOP, I don’t see it as relevant issue in this election. Drug abuse rates are down from their highs in the 1980s and 1990s. People don’t view drug abuse as a serious societal problem as they did, and the biggest drug abuse problems we face are meth and prescription drug abuse. Prescription drug abuse isn’t yet effecting crime rates, and meth abuse is primarily a rural problem at the moment. Could Bush make these into national issues? Certainly. Does it have enough resonance with the American people to be effective? I don’t think so. The rates of violent crime have been dropping, and most people are more worried about their economic health than being mugged on the streetcorner.

I don’t see a real shift leftward in this country. The Democrats still have advantages on some issues, and the Republicans have advantages on others. The issue climate remains in favorable Republican territory. Voters trust the GOP to keep them safe and to reduce the size of government, and while the GOP’s done a horrendous job of the later, the Democrats are known for doing worse.

I still think the GOP will take some minor losses in 2006, but this isn’t 1994, this is more like 1998. The Republicans thought they could win on painting the Clinton Administration as a bunch of corrupt politicos out of touch with American values. And while they were right, that message doesn’t work unless a party can show they have a better agenda. The Democrats haven’t shown that yet, and their own instincts are driving them towards trying to fight the Republicans on unfavorable ground. The Democrats don’t have an agenda, they don’t have a message, and what they do have is just vitriol, criticism, and partisanship. That didn’t work for them in 2002 or 2004, and it won’t work any better in 2006. With the demographic trends helping Republicans and the potential for Iran and Syria to emerge as issues in 2006, the chances that the Democrats will be able to shift the political winds to their issues of advantage don’t seem particularly strong.

The Wall Street Journal is saying that it’s time to dump the Abramhoff Republicans:

What’s notable so far about this scandal is the wretchedness of the excess on display, as well as the fact that it involves self-styled “conservatives,” who claimed to want to clean up Washington instead of cleaning up themselves. That some Republicans are just as corruptible as some Democrats won’t surprise students of human nature. But it is an insult to the conservative voters who elected this class of Republicans and expected better.

And indeed, this sort of thing will hurt Congressional Republicans – and it’s hard to argue that it shouldn’t. The GOP swept into power in 1994 on a promise that they would finally clean up government – and since then the GOP’s become every bit as rapacious as the Democrats, and every bit as corrupt and insular. The Democrats say that government can do all, and are wrong. The Republicans say that government is corrupt, inefficient, and blundering – and when they’re elected they seem to prove it.

It’s clear that there’s a complete lack of leadership on Capitol Hill these days. The DeLay era needs to come to a swift end – even National Review is saying that DeLay should not run as Majority Leader again – and the Republicans need to return to the values of the 1994 Republican Revolution. Small government isn’t just a line, it’s a philosophy that’s central to conservative political thought – and some Republican members of Congress seem to treat it as the former rather than the latter.

Not everyone who received donations from Abramoff are guilty of anything, and the Abramoff scandal is likely to be a bipartisan one. However, as the Wall Street Journal notes, conservatives expect more from their leaders, and many of them may simply stay home this November unless Congress cleans up its act.

They also note:

One danger now is that, rather than change their own behavior, Republicans will think they can hide behind the political cover of “lobbying reform.” While this has various guises, most proposals amount to putting further restrictions not on Congress but on “the right of the people . . . to petition the government,” as the Constitution puts it explicitly.

Lobbyists per se aren’t the problem; most of them are hired to protect Americans from a federal government that wants to take more of their money or freedom. Mr. Abramoff could make so much hay with Indian tribes only because he and they knew that Congress had given Washington the power to make or break fortunes simply by rediscovering “lost” tribes and giving them the power to sponsor casino gambling. The root of the scandal is this Beltway discretion and its misuse, not the lobbyists who attempt to protect their own interests.

The proliferation of lobbyists isn’t necessarily a good thing, but the way to deal with that isn’t to limit the power of groups and associations, but to limit the power of government. It is impossible for one person to read the entire 80,000+ page Federal Register, despite the fact that those laws effect all of us. The federal government has its grubby little hands in everything, and combine massive power with little accountability or responsibility and you get disaster.

The GOP used to be the party that stood back and said “enough is enough” to the massive growth in federal spending and the inherent reductions in personal freedom, economic opportunity, and general liberty that were its consequences. It’s time for the GOP to have a leadership that still puts that understanding above all else.

UPDATE: Rep. John Kline of Minnesota is calling for DeLay to permanently step down from his leadership post. It takes a written letter signed by 50 Republicans to force a new elections, and before it seemed unlikely that 50 House Republicans would be willing to publicly stand against DeLay – but with the Abramoff fiasco, that now seems likely. Kline’s an honorable man, and he deserves credit for standing up for doing what’s right for his party and most importantly his country.

So says Ankle-Biting Pundits anyway.

Personally, I have a feeling that the Abrahamoff scandal will be a bipartisan affair – Abrahamoff was perfectly willing to use corrupt Democrats as well as Republicans. Those involved in the scandal are going to have a lot of explaining to do, and as well they should. (The Weekly Standard has a tale right out of The Sopranos involving Abrahmoff’s Indian casino lobbying.) Were the Democrats not terminally clueless and utterly out of step with mainstream America, those warnings about 2006 being a repeat of 2004 might hold some water. Unfortanately for the Democrats, and the country, we don’t have a sensible opposition party in this country at the moment.

I’m still predicting that the GOP will lose ground in 2006, and it’s hard to argue that they shouldn’t. The GOP’s fiscal irresponsibility and loss of perspective have been deeply distressing to conservatives. Many conservatives, myself included, would rather see a diminished Republican majority than see a Republican Party that has lost its moorings in small government and fiscal rectitude. Unless the GOP gets truly serious about returning to Main Street rather than K Street values, the only thing they have going for them is the fact that the Democrats are orders of magnitude worse – and that isn’t anything to crow about.

Hotline asks if we’re in for a replay of the 2002 elections. I think we are.

The Democrats have once again fallen to what appears to be some typically Rovian political jujitsu. As Noemie Emery points out, the Democrats have once again shot themselves in the foot on national security:

Bush now has three gifts: (l) he has an out, in case there’s another attack on the homeland (he tried, but his hands were tied by the Times and the Democrats); (2) he has still more sound bites–“We killed the Patriot Act!”–to add the pile that he had already, and (3), he has the chance to draw still more distinctions between the party of force and of public security; and the party that nitpicks, that is too legalistic, and that somehow always gives the benefit of the doubt to the criminal and/or the accused. In a showdown like this, put your cash on the party of force and security. Willie Horton was not a play on the race card, but a metaphor for the larger use-of-force issue. Does anyone doubt that if Dukakis were president when Saddam Hussein crossed the border, Kuwait and perhaps Saudi Arabia would be permanent parts of Iraq? Remember the Homeland Security Act in the 2002 midterms?

I think 2006 could very well be a return of 2002, not because of the strength of the Republicans, but on the utter fecklessness of the Democrats on the national security issue. It seems quite unlikely that the vast majority of Americans are going to look at the President wiretapping calls between US residents and already identified al-Qaeda terrorists as particularly bothersome. The Democrats may have adopted the Paranoid Style in American Politics, but the American people have not.

Once again, if 2006 comes down to national security like 2002 and 2004 did, the Democrats lose a third time. And what are the Democrats doing? Constantly putting national security as the primary political topic. It’s like Anna Nicole Smith at an all-you-cat eat buffet, they just can’t help themselves.

Of course, that’s exactly what Karl Rove would want them to do. By focusing in on this wiretap issue, the Democrats are basically saying that they would rather force anti-terrorist agencies to work with one hand tied behind their backs by having to go through the lengthy and cumbersome FISA process to gather vital intelligence. They’re forced to argue that a policy that had been in place for the Carter, Reagan, and Clinton Administrations wasn’t a terrible affront to civil liberties when used against drug runners and Mafioso, but in the current Administration the same techniques applied to al-Qaeda suddenly represents the fall of the Republic. Once again, the Democrats keep cementing the idea that they’re the party of weakness who would treat terrorists with kid gloves.

If the Democrats were smart, they’d state that they would gladly work with the President to pass an amendment to FISA to provide proper judicial review without harming the investigation. They’d stand up and say they fully believe that our intelligence agencies should have every appropriate tool to fight terrorism within the law – and then quickly change the subject to Bush’s flagging domestic agenda.

But because the Democratic Party has the self-control of a pitbull on PCP, they had to launch into rants and bromides, and apparently they’re already plotting on articles of impeachment for the President – proving once again that the worst political enemy the Democratic Party has is the Democratic Party.