Election 2006

That is an important question. On one side, he has recently been a member of the Baker Commission, on the other, he was a key player in Iran Contra. He is an old Apparatchiki.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I predict tough questioning in the senate, but that he will be approved. But they will try to keep him on a tight leash.

Carl Levin will go over his notes from last time, and see if anything has changed. Yeah there is dirt under his nails from working for Reagan and Daddy Bush, but I would not be surprised to see him confirmed - anyone is better than Rummy at this point.(at least it's not Harriet Miers ... )

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
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An article about Trent Lott's comeback mentions that Mitch McConnell has been chosen as Senate Minority Leader. Unfortunately, that is probably going to be true. Not that I have any against the Republicans being a robust or vigorous minority; I think it is unfortunate that the Democrats' anemic performance as the minority party will compare unfavorably to the Republicans' performance. The Democrats have certainly failed in their duties as minority party to be vigorous and robust during that last few years.

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Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

quote:

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The Democrats have certainly failed in their duties as minority party to be vigorous and robust during that last few years.

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With a white house and republican congressional leadership that never had any intentions of listening for two seconds to anything an Democrat said unless they agreed with them, exactly how do you expect they should have done more?They were completely shut out.

Especially when the (exposed as NOT liberal) media wouldn't report it, but would instead run the story-du-jour direct from the whitehouse.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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I dunno, RAZD. I read the actual liberal press, and the actual liberals have been complaining for years (since the Clinton years, in fact) how the Democrats have been mainly playing it "safe" and refusing to provide any real opposition to Republican policies. Now it could be that I don't know what I'm talking about, but I am repeating what actual liberals and progressives have been writing.

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Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

That is pretty well the status of any minority party. The answer would be to seek a strong unified stance on issues, and not simply cave to the opposition.There were few strong voices from the dem side, and essentially no unity. You even had dems going after dems for not caving to rep pressure and allowing topics to be discussed on their terms.

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holmes
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

Oh, I agree that this is the major element - a total lack of leadership. But the point is that whenever a democrat did say something that it was buried in the news and downplayed. If a democrat position did make it to the news the next three or four days would be complete coverage of the republican position.There is no "liberal media bias" now, if there ever was. Edited by RAZD, : adeddit

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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That's part of what you get with liberal thinking. There is no iconoclastic dogma to force everyone into "traditional" lines.What we saw in the republican congress was a forging of a small number of iconoclastic groups (fiscal conservatives, fundamentalist christians, libertarian conservatives, any others?) to a common cause.It seems to me that the fiscal conservative republicans caved just as much and just as irresponsibly as did the democrates, btw. How do they justify the massive cost overruns from a traditional fiscal conservative point of view?It seems to me that the libertarian conservative republicans caved likewise on the issues of small government with the massive growth of government and reduction of individual freedoms. How do they justify the massive government growth from a traditional libertarian conservative point of view?There was something keeping all these groups from expressing their individual points of view ... power and hubris? or corruption and hypocrisy?Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Heheheh... there should have been a drive to unite based on practical issues. Perhaps in other cases this might not be true, but with Bush and Co there were so many real problems lack of a common ideology shouldn't have been a problem in confronting the administration together. You are absolutely right about that. I think many went for power and "my party right or wrong" rather than sticking to principles and sound judgement. McCain is a great example of someone who cut their own balls (and credibility) off.I'll bet after the results of this election, he feels a tad stupid for reaching so low to court the evangelicals.

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holmes
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

quote:

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But the point is that whenever a democrat did say something that it was buried in the news and downplayed. If a democrat position did make it to the news the next three or four days would be complete coverage of the republican position.

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That may have been your point, but it certainly wasn't mine. My point was that there was a definite lack of vigorous opposition by the so-called "opposition party" during the Republican years, a situation that the current Republicans are claiming won't be repeated. According to the actual leftwing media (as opposed to the mainstream media, about which we have no disagreement), there really wasn't any real opposition. Any dissent was made by individuals acting, usually, against the the advice of main body of Democrats and sometimes even criticised heavily for their stances.

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Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

I pretty much diagree with the sentiments expressed here. The way it works in other countries, political parties have specific platforms that they promise to implement, and more or less detailed policy positions that they are on record as holding. There may be some disagreement with various parts of the the overall program, but there are mechanisms for maintaining what is called party discipline, and, generally, if a politician doesn't like the platform they can join another political party or start their own.There is a reason for this. This gives the voters reasons why they should choose one party over another. Voters go into the voting booth with a good idea of what the consequences of their votes are going to be.You might not be aware of this, but in the U.S. barely half of the eligible voters will vote in an election, and much less than that in midterm elections. There are undoubtably a lot of different reasons for this, but one of them is that the main policy platform of each of the two main parties is that they are simply not the other party. Few people voted for the Republicans in 1994 because of the "Contract on America". They voted to get the Democrats out of power. I doubt anyone voted for the Democrats' policies this time around -- hell, I don't even know whether the Democrats even have any policies. They voted to remove the Republicans. Not only is this rather uninspirational to the electorate, but it doesn't seem to me to be a good way to go about choosing a government if you think that the state is actually supposed to be promoting and implementing national policies.

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Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

The way it works in the USA has always been different from the way it works in other countries.Many of the "other countries" are under a parliamentary system. The electorate chooses a political party, based on platform. The party appoints the administration. There is tight party discipline, partly because the cabinet is appointed from the legislature.In the USA, the electorate selects the administration separately from its selection of members of the legislature. The cabinet is not part of the legislature, so is not beholden to the majority party. Party discipline has traditionally been weak, with some legislators taking independent stands on individual bills, voting against the majority of their party.The Republicans recently attempted to institute tight party discipline, with Newt Gingrich being one of the originators of that plan. In my opinion, this has been an unmitigated disaster. Let's get back to the traditional US form of government. Some degree of indecision and bumbling incompetence is to be preferred over a single minded march over the edge of the cliff.

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Just say no to McCain 2008; he abandoned principle when he caved on habeus corpus

It was in addition to yours not contra nor modifying. That's what got buried by the lack of media coverage.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.