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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sandintoes who wrote (29857)	11/7/2002 12:53:44 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 59480

REVIEW & OUTLOOK The Bush Majority Now the GOP has to deliver, especially on the economy. URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002587 Thursday, November 7, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST Tuesday's Republican sweep of Congress is of course a personal victory for President Bush, who risked his own political capital for the GOP cause. But more important is that voters showed they are in a mood to reward serious ideas and leadership. While the GOP gains were small in number, they were huge measured against history. Parties that hold the White House typically lose seats in the first midterm elections, especially amid economic anxiety (1982 or 1994). Yet Republicans gained about six seats in the House and at least two to regain Senate control. In essence voters gave Mr. Bush the working majority that the close results in 2000 and Jim Jeffords's Senate betrayal had denied him. Mr. Bush deserves enormous credit for putting his own high approval ratings on the line. Presidents tend to husband such ratings like silver in a vault, only to see them tarnish unused over time. But Mr. Bush invested his capital in race after close race, despite the usual Beltway alarums. He has now won big, and as a result has even more political capital to spend in the next two years. This is a lesson for play-it-safe politicians everywhere. No doubt voters responded to Mr. Bush's standing as a war President, but this is another way of saying that they are looking for leadership. All year voters have been in a serious mood, tossing out the clowns (Cynthia McKinney), the corrupt (Bob Torricelli) and the cranky (Bob Barr). On Tuesday they defeated Arkansas Republican Tim Hutchinson, whose personal life had damaged his credibility. They punished Minnesota Democrats after the mean spectacle of Paul Wellstone's memorial service. And they elected GOP Congressman Jim Talent in Missouri as a more substantive Senator than the political widow Jean Carnahan. Voters also repudiated the crabbed Democratic politics of vendetta. Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe had made Florida Governor Jeb Bush his No. 1 target explicitly for revenge after 2000, but Mr. Bush won in a landslide. Democrats seemed to think they could conjure up a huge black turnout simply by invoking Florida 2000; they found instead that even their most loyal supporters need a reason beyond blame and partisanship to vote. Tom Daschle received a similar rebuke for his Senate strategy of obstructing the Bush agenda at nearly every turn. Georgia Democrat Max Cleland followed Mr. Daschle's orders on union rules for homeland security, and it became GOP challenger Saxby Chambliss's best issue. Senate borking of Mr. Bush's judicial nominees helped defeat Democrat Ron Kirk in Texas, and opposition to estate tax repeal hurt Mrs. Carnahan in Missouri. Mr. Daschle learned his obstructionism at the knee of former Majority Leader George Mitchell. But Mr. Mitchell frustrated the first President Bush because his tactics were never exposed and challenged. This President Bush was willing to make the Daschle strategy a campaign issue, and it paid off. That should cause other Democrats from Bush states to think twice before they vote like Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mr. Daschle can claim some consolation by helping fellow South Dakotan Tim Johnson keep his seat, but only a little. Mr. Johnson is leading Republican John Thune by some 500 votes, an edge that didn't appear until a convenient rush of last-minute ballots from Indian reservations. This followed an earlier discovery of fraudulent absentee ballots in Dakota Indian precincts. Mr. Thune is mulling a recount. Another Democratic strategy that failed was the assault on Social Security reform. The three GOP Senate candidates who most vigorously defended personal retirement accounts--Elizabeth Dole, John Sununu and Lindsey Graham--all prevailed. So did Anne Northup in her House seat in Louisville, despite an amazing Democratic and union assault. If these New Deal-era attacks don't work even in this Enron year, it's worth asking if they ever will again. Other Republicans should now have the convictions of their colleagues' courage. All the more so because even Tuesday's victory includes a warning for Republicans. Democrats managed to pick up governorships in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Pennsylvania, industrial states that a decade ago were the laboratory of GOP reform. But Republicans in those states have run out of passion and ideas; they also failed to control spending, and the voters have deservedly repaid them with defeat. With control of Congress, Republicans in Washington will now have to deliver or suffer the same fate two years from now. Trent Lott has to be a better Senate leader than he has been in the past. The unfinished Bush agenda is clear enough: approving judges, entitlement and perhaps tax reform, faith-based charitable choice and welfare reform, and above all a pro-growth economic agenda that includes tax cuts. The Bush majority finally exists, but Republicans will have to produce to make it enduring.

To: sandintoes who wrote (29857)	11/7/2002 7:37:09 AM
From: Glenn Petersen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 59480

Elizabeth Dole certainly qualifies as a Steel Magnolia. One of the things that was interesting about this election was that the GOP managed to solidify its position as the conservative party in the South and while at the same time electing some moderate Republicans in the Northeast. Not bad for a Party was supposed to be extinct in the Northeast. Both the NYT and the Washington Post have front page articles this morning on Republican gains in the South. I am going to post both articles. Big gains in Georgia. Ralph Reed rules! Peachy victory for GOP November 7, 2002 BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST suntimes.com Shortly after 9 o'clock Tuesday night, election returns from Gwinnett County, Ga. (30 miles northeast of Atlanta) pointed to a national Republican triumph and trouble for Democrats far into the future. The result validates George W. Bush's aggressive political strategy and signifies collapse of the Democratic southern remnant. These returns showed Republicans running well in Gwinnett, which is usually carried by GOP candidates for president but not state office. The entire state of Georgia itself has been a stubborn holdout to Republican domination of Southern politics. The Democratic debacle in the region Tuesday followed relentless targeting by President Bush and his political high command. The indication that Democratic Sen. Max Cleland was losing to Rep. Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, coinciding with signals from New Hampshire that Republican Rep. John E. Sununu would win the Senate seat there, all but guaranteed that Republicans would regain control of the Senate. Beyond the 2002 election, Democrats face a dilemma. The midterm defeat is likely to push the party more to the left, further eroding Southern support. Georgia had shown more Democratic loyalty than any other Deep South state until Tuesday. While even Georgia voted Republican for president, it was the only state in the Union not to have elected a Republican governor in the 20th century and currently was represented by two Democratic U.S. senators. Autocratic House Speaker Tom Murphy, whose 42 years of service made him the nation's senior state legislator, had crafted a gerrymander designed to produce four new Democratic congressmen. Instead, Republicans elected a governor, a senator and two of the new House members, also defeating Murphy for good measure. It did not happen by accident. Georgia was a key element in the game plan of Karl Rove, Bush's political counselor, with multiple campaign visits from Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. He worked closely with Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition president who was a Southern consultant for Bush's 2000 presidential election campaign and was elected chairman of the Georgia Republican Party last year. Reed launched an early mail campaign to demonstrate Cleland's liberal voting record in the Senate. Chambliss came under withering attack from the national news media for contending that Cleland, a triple amputee from the Vietnam War, lacked the ''courage'' to buck employee union leaders on the homeland security bill. Rove and Reed are determined not to let veteran Democratic office holders such as Cleland masquerade as conservatives. The result was nearly a Republican Southern sweep, broken only by Democrats winning governor races in Alabama and Tennessee and a Senate seat in Arkansas. South Carolina's Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges, elected four years ago on a pro-gambling platform, was retired. Serious efforts at Senate seats in Tennessee, Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina fell far short. The returns had hardly come in Tuesday night when Democratic activists were denouncing candidates who were not tough enough on Bush. The House Democratic Caucus is likely to move left under the expected new leadership of San Francisco's Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Democrats cannot win a majority in either the Electoral College or Congress without the South. Under Pelosi-style leadership, Democrats in the House will rely ever more on African-American voters--whose turnout was disappointing Tuesday. Democratic prospects in the South--and elsewhere--have not been enhanced in the last two years by the party's national chairman, Washington deal maker Terry McAuliffe, who took office shouting that Bush stole the presidency and who has waged a non-stop campaign against him. Georgia's other Democratic senator, the conservative and popular Zell Miller, sees McAuliffe as the party's problem and not the solution. McAuliffe's talking points mailed around Washington daily assail ''Bush's tax cuts for the rich.'' Yet, the president's barnstorming through 15 states in the last five days before the election--something not seen by a president in a midterm election since Richard M. Nixon's effort in 1970--called at each stop for making his tax cuts permanent. That was well-received by voters throughout the country, but especially in the Deep South--Georgia included this time.