I got home early today. A client of mine passed away and so my day was cut short. I get online and go to Instapundit , and this is what I see:
REPUBLICANS ARE SAGGING IN THE POLLS: Maybe, in part, it's because Harry Reid is doing better than Bill Frist in fighting pork?
Here's the kind of response that's getting from former GOP supporters: "Okay, real conservatives, Republicans, and libertarians, stay home. Just...stay home in 2006. Or - what the hell - vote for a Democrat. We have to wake up the Stupid Party, before it completely merges itself into the Republicrat Statist Party."
I think that a GOP disaster is now officially looming.
So, it seems that pouting is the way to get what you want in politics.
Yesterday I checked out Glenn's and he was talking down ethanol, said it depleted the soil, as if that corn was not going to be planted any way. I am not saying that ethanol can ever take the place of oil but it seems that every little bit helps. However, when it comes to something that might help farmers libertarians turn into environmentalists.
And today we hear the argument about how irrelevant gas prices are, but hey...look out because the public is going to stay home out of outrage over pork.
What??? How far removed from average Americans do you have to be to realize that people are more concerned about gas prices than they are about Trent Lott's railroad? I mean really. If these people stay home and hand the government over to the Democrats in the middle of a war because of pork then to hell with them.
Disaster looming indeed.
It seems to me that there are a lot of big time bloggers out there that are becoming every bit as arrogant, egotistical, self involved,and self serving as the media they swore they would counter act.
So now after praddling along after Chucky Schumer when he savaged Dubai Ports and the Bush Administration over selling our ports to Muslims we see high profile conservative pundits and bloggers getting all pissy because the Bush administration is [gasp] sounding like Schumer and calling for an investigation of gas prices.
I have no desire to see Exxon nationalized but when I hear from a true blue Republican Hoosier that there is something obscene about the Exxon CEO getting a bonus that comes to about $190,000 a day for everyday he had the job...well, people are wondering if something is amiss.
Between hysterical bloggers bringing back the good old days of the Red Scare comparing undocumented workers to serial killers and libertarians calling for Democratic victory to punish the Republicans who fail to do their bidding I am wondering if some folks in blogland are suffering from hubris.
It also seems to me they have completely forgotten the war. It is as if a bridge in Alaska or some other silly earmark is more important than the fact that CIA agents with ties to the Democratic party are deliberately breaking the rules, if not the laws, and divulging classified information to reporters.
But no matter, Bush wants a guest worker program which means surrender to the wetback invasion and Republicans have not eviscerated domestic spending so what the hell, let's go over to the other side just to punish the GOP. That'll teach them that when we say jump all the hell we want out of them is how high.
Just who do these people think they are? And you know what? My guess is that Trent Lott will win reelection as long as he wants the office, because the people voting for him are not from Tennessee, they are from Mississippi and they just might want that damn railroad.
Maybe Truman was right. After being savaged in the press and pronounced dead in politics he said we should create a new department. The Department of Columnists..to run the country since they think they do anyway. Add bloggers to that list.
UPDATE: AJ has a slightly different view of recent polls than those referenced above:
While the liberal media spins some new polls to paint a bleak picture for reps, the actual numbers show America is sick of them all, left and right. Buried at the end of this fantasy piece is the bottom line:
Americans take dim views of both parties, giving Democrats a positive rating of just 33% and Republicans 35%.
So, the only thing I can tell Dems looking for a silver lining is they are worse than or as bad as the Reps! Don’t expect this to turn into a electorial sweep to the dems this fall.
Makes you wonder.
13 comments:
Reynold's is neither a conservative (not even a faux conservative) nor is he a Republican. He can amuse himself with his Porkbuster toy as he wishes - certainly Perot did.
There's a simple solution to this, Terrye, he's a non-click away from being a matter of no concern. The coming election will not be about spending. Not with the governments total tax take at around 19.5%, if it were above 21% the Porkbusters would have a shot but it's heading down, not up.
I don't expect the issues to firm up until just before summer recess (July 31). "Til then we're still in the blather stage and those empty pages still need to be filled.
Knucklehead:
Today I was talking to a client of mine, a nice young man with big problems. He tends to be conservative in his politics and is very religious. I like him a lot, he said that he thought a lot of folks out there think they are the "base" and they are not.
Rick:
I have been doing that non click thing a lot lateley.
I wonder about it too. It is not as is Bush ever promised mass deportation. It is not as if these same people did not support the war and it is not as Bush was ever famous for being a fiscal conservative.
Why do all these people have a hair up their rear ends all of a sudden?
Terrye,
I agree with Rick. Glenn is neither a conservative nor a Republican. You've got to get out of the habit of thinking of all these people as the same. I personally value Rick's insights into politics far higher than Glenn's. Glenn is an academic for God's sake he doesn't get it. Rick is a Republican, but he's an honest one who understands deeply what people vote about and why.
The question is why we read Glenn. Mostly, it's not for his opinions, but for his ability to digest large amounts of information from the best blogs and therefore to give us a very quick view of the daily zeitgeist. Like the NYT, he imagines that because he has a lot of readers that means that he has a lot of people who care about his opinions. There's some truth in that in both cases, but not nearly as much as both parties would like to believe.
Personally I haven't read Glenn much (or Roger either) for the last year or so. Once you've figured out what their positions are on all the issues, it becomes boring--just more of the same. The true value-added in blogging occurs not in more opinions--we all know what opinions are like, because everybody has one=--but in value-added projects which can't be found elsewhere. Two excellent examples of this are the piece you did about your father yesterday and Rick's ongoing series of analyses of Senate races.
MHA:
I know that Rick is the real thing. I live in Indiana, the state that voted overwhelmingly for Bush. In fact my county voted 75% for Bush. These folks are also the real thing.
And I bet there are not a handful of them who read Glenn.
So I know what you mean.
But blogging is like a small town. Everyone knows everybody's business. And sometimes we forget that there is a big world out there that could care less.
I think we read these people out of habit. And because we think they speak for other people like us. Of course, that is an illusion.
In fact the number of blogs I read is not a fraction of what it was. And the list just got one less.
Knuck did a post mentioning polipundit last night. There really does seem to be something strange in the air.
So. Are you guys telling us that Republicans are NOT going to sit on their hands in Novemeber?
It seems to me that just because some people don't read Glenn anymore, they think he doesn't matter.
It's all okay. Don't worry.
Yeah. Right.
You know damn well we need Karl out there to even get some of these folks to the polls. It's not as if this type of thing has never happened before.
knucklehead:
I am afraid that Andrew Sullivan's descent into madness may have been a sign of things to come.
Issues like immigration are complicated. If it was all that simple to deal with the powers that be would not have passed over it year after year.
I think that some people do not want solutions, they just want something to get outraged about.
Well if you look at the poll that has got the blogs buzzing it has the following choices as things you most want to see Congress deal with: Immigration 32% [woo hoo] Congress giving money to projects designed to help only a few people 39%. Pensions and Taxes were only about 9% or 10%.
Well hell, look at the choices. And not a majority among em.
Would you rather jump off a building or be set on fire?
Talk about self fulfilling prophecy.
Syl,
Since I'm not a Republican, it doesn't particularly exercise me much whether they control or don't control Congress. I don't believe all the hype I hear about the Democrats being the party of the end of the world as we know it. I imagine that if they take one or another house back, then what will happen is what almost always happnes: they will tack to the center (whereever that is), much as Bush has moved to expand welfare programs in various ways.
Sitting in your ivory tower office on a college campus thinking of how you think the world should be ordered and actually crafting a proverbial sausage that 300m people have to agree to eat are two entirely different activities.
Terrye,
That update led me to the poll itself. AJ could have gone a lot further than he did in talking about a buried lede. The poll is an over 18 (and it's 1.5% overweight to women, to boot). I use a rule of thumb of 5% subtracted from the Dem side for such a sample to arrive at an approximation of a likely voter poll.
The Dems are in hotter water than I had anticipated based on that - a 6-8% negative spread to the Reps. It takes a 3% shift in a 5% district to move a seat. AJ made a nice catch there.
This has been such a smile that I can't not do this just this once:
194 days to go.
My only serious observation for now and probably until at least the end of September is to keep an eye on the Democrats in Ohio and the Republicans in Maryland. Otherwise, read for smiles. Bloggers don't descend into madness. Hope this isn't news—that's where they start.
God bless us, Every One!
"Observation" should be "advice". It helps if you start from scratch when you abandon a train of thought for simplicity's sake.
What?
MHA:
If I thought most of the Democrats were like Evan Bayh I would not be that bothered either. But there is something decidedly shady about some of those folks and I wonder sometimes if it is about covering their asses. defence.
In other words, I think that some folks in the CIA screwed up badly and they know it and they are trying to cover their asses by going after Bush and there are Democrats associated with the Clinton years who put those screwups in those jobs.
I really did not think that it was that big a deal until the leaks started happening with such frequency and the threats to impeach Bush made me believe that there is a good reason not to let Democrats get control while Bush is still in office.
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