if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803
The Long Hard Road Ahead
by Hal_10000
Election 2008 is looking grim for us conservative-libertarian types. First, the gay marriage proposals are all gaining ground:
California is the big surprise. After discouraging polls all summer, the latest CBS News/SurveyUSA Today poll shows Prop 8, the California marriage amendment, surging ahead 47 percent to 42 percent, with 10 percent undecided — that’s a ten point swing since the Yes on Prop 8 campaign ads started airing.
Younger voters are leading the swing against gay marriage, reports CBS News. Why? My best guess is: a lot of them are parents who don’t really want their schools teaching their 5 year olds about King and King (See the latest ad, at http://www.protectmarriage.com.)
Meanwhile the Miami Herald is conceding that polls show the Florida marriage amendment commands a strong majority support.
Getting to 60 percent is a big hurdle, but the undecideds tend to break in favor of marriage amendments.
In Arizona the latest poll shows the marriage amendment is up 49 percent to 40 percent.
OK, so maybe gay marriage doesn’t ring your bell. This will:
Democrats continue to make gains in senate races around the country, and now rate as having roughly a 1-in-4 chance of emerging with a 60-seat working majority.
The most substantial movement this week is in Georgia, where several polls now show a tight race between Saxby Chambliss and Jim Martin. Martin remains relatively underfunded, but his economic populist message is a good fit for his state, his advertising has been sharp, and Chambliss did not do himself any favors by voting for the bailout. Still, Chambliss remains narrowly ahead.
Kay Hagan, meanwhile, has continued to improve her position in North Carolina, which we now rate as Lean Democrat. About the only good news for the Republicans in Alaska, where Rasmussen now shows Ted Stevens with a 1-point lead, though Ted Stevens’ imminent trial could change all of that.
The GOP’s hopes rest with Ted Stevens. Let that sink in for a moment.
Right now, Nate Silver is projecting Democrats to gain seven seats for a 58-42 margin. I have some doubts. I find it hard to believe that the sensible voters of Minnesota will elect that idiotic horse’s ass Al Franken to the senate (although did elect a dumbass poli-sci professor from my alma mater, so you never know). I can’t believe the Liddy Dole is trailing so badly or that Saxby Chambliss is in danger. But there’s no question that the Dems will gain at least five seats.
This is shaping up to be the worst of all possible worlds—a filibuster-proof Senate but with the Religious Right able to claim victory on gay marriage. The later is the ultimate hollow victory—there’s only so many times you can amend state constitutions to ban gay marriage. But I suspect that if the gay marriage amendments win and McCain gets thumped, the core of the GOP will spin a fairy tale that it was McCain’s “moderate” stances that cost him the election and not his increasingly deranged appeals to the rotten base.
We are witnessing the final ugly legacy of Bush—his utter destruction of the conservative movement. We see a McCain campaign that is bewildered—bashing Bill Ayers one night and promising to buy up everyone’s mortgage the next. We see the remnants of the GOP rallying around Religious Right opposition to gay marriage and demonization of their opponent. We see a triumphant Democratic party that may be unstoppable.
I have to hope that the George Will’s closing point is right:
In 1987, on the eve of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s third victory, the head of her Conservative Party told a visiting columnist: “Someday, Labour will win an election. Our job is to hold on until they are sane.” Republicans, winners of seven of the last 10 presidential elections, had better hope they have held on long enough.
I hope that everything Andrew Sullivan and the other Obamacons have said about Obama is true. Maybe he will find the temperament to break from his party more than 4% of the time. Maybe he is smart enough to reign in his spending plans to deal with fiscal reality. Because if he’s not, we’re in for a bumpy ride.
Comments
On the bright side, I’m guessing by 2010 we’ll have a massive swing in Congress back to more conservative representatives, a la Bill Clinton in 1994.
I don’t know if Obama dares to make THAT drastic of a move, but his inability to specify what programs he would cut during the first debate is pretty telling. This is a guy who thinks the biggest problem with education is that not everyone can afford to go to college, rather than the fact that many Americans aren’t capable of handling the intellectual rigors of middle school, much less the universities.
It’s never about how effective something is with people like Obama; it’s how much money is spent. His Iraq ad focused on the cost of a Ferris wheel in Baghdad, for christ’s sake.
Due the horrible fiscal mismanagment of the Republicans for the past 8 years, and in order to implement the programs that people so desperately need, I am unable to pursue tax cuts for the middle class. We will have to raise taxes on everyone instead. It’s horribly unfortunate, but you can blame George Bush.”
This is precisely what Bill Clinton did.
He won’t cut his spending. He’ll just raise your taxes. You heard it here first.
Exactly, he has no intention on cutting taxes anywhere, and never has. Bad news is McCain wouldn’t be any better. Good news is, it would be really tough to be worse than this fuckhead that’s currently in office. I’m sure either one of these dopes will give it a shot though.
I can’t believe the Liddy Dole is trailing so badly
Hal, I gotta tell ya, she has been MIA as a senator of consequence in this state her whole term. I haven’t seen her in the news for or against any issue the entire 6 years. (She has been more absent than John Edwards was!) At least Richard Burr has been out there, increasingly as a well spoken advocate for Republican issues. She has pedigree but that doesn’t entitle her to a senate seat. As a Democrat, I’m happy to see her go.
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I hope so, but I think what will actually happen is this: Around February or March, we’ll hear President Obama say: “Due the horrible fiscal mismanagment of the Republicans for the past 8 years, and in order to implement the programs that people so desperately need, I am unable to pursue tax cuts for the middle class. We will have to raise taxes on everyone instead. It’s horribly unfortunate, but you can blame George Bush.”
He won’t cut his spending. He’ll just raise your taxes. You heard it here first.
On the bright side, I’m guessing by 2010 we’ll have a massive swing in Congress back to more conservative representatives, a la Bill Clinton in 1994.