The Republican Party and the Beast It Serves

Big business owns the Republican Party. The people on Wall Street who caused the economic meltdown are donating hundreds of millions of dollars to the Republican Party. For many years, Republicans have been good at changing the subject and stirring up anger. They have not been good at taking an honest look at the world that now exists and what we need to do about it.

In truth, the leadership of the Republican Party has little idea of what it's doing and how to solve any of America's problems. No one exemplifies this more than Rep. Michele Bachmann. Here's a few words concerning an interview with the astonishing Bachmann from by a site that closely watches Republican right wingers:

Despite the fact that she generally has no idea what she is talking about, Rep. Michele Bachmann is planning on holding weekly classes on the Constitution for new members in the next Congress.

(snip)

Q. If, with a snap of your fingers, you could change anything about America, what would it be?

A. Reduce the federal government to its original size and constitutional limitations and to restore the 9th and 10th amendments.

Of course, the population of the United States back when the government was at its "original size" was just under 4 million - it is now over 310 million.

Forget for a moment what an ignoramus Bachmann is. Like many right wingers, she simply puts together a hodge podge of conservative talking points, random articles, email propaganda (usually in the form of jokes or screaming from the rooftops histrionics about the end of the world for things like fair and honest healthcare reform) and hallucinations by people like Rush Limbaugh. Now and then, these conservatives pick up a smattering of honest facts but have no idea what to do with them or how to put them into context.

So, just what would be the consequences of smaller government? Three things. Bigger businesses with much more clout over our lives. Smaller wages. And the wealth of all Americans concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer super-wealthy individuals. It is always what happens when the rich and powerful do not have the counterbalance of democratic government. Dear Michele, the rich and powerful men back in old England is what the colonists were fighting against.

Here's another post, this one concerning an observation about business that more and more people have been noticing in the last thirty years of what has been a very conservative era:

...my basic grievance against big companies is that when they screw up they take 6-8 weeks to fix it, usually after multiple phone calls and whatnot, but if I screw up a penalty is immediately levied. This happens on every scale, from billing snafus with $7 fees, to cases of people being foreclosed on even though they had never missed a payment and spent money on lawyers to prove this...

A good example of this type of thing is trying to get medical approval from the bureaucracy that has been created by big business. I'm old enough to remember when a single nurse or maybe a nurse and receptionist were all that was needed to handle prepping, appointments, billing and insurance for a doctor. It's not the government creating all the restrictions, requirements, catch-22s and other nonsense that screws millions of Americans in the health sector alone. It's big business. More important, it's insurance monopolies dedicated to the principle of making themselves filthy rich rather than serving the American people. There was a time when insurance people were proud to serve their clients.

What's changed? It's not that hard to explain. Today, whether it's healthcare, your phone company, the TV cable company, your gas and power company, the various gas stations where you fill up your car, or the many stores and many businesses where you get the things you need, business executives who run these companies have one thing in common: they think of Americans as fat cows to be milked, bled and carved. That is the reality that exists in 2010, and that is the system Republican politicians wholeheartedly do their best to support. Why? Because partly it satisfies their conservative bent, but largely because it's financially lucrative.

Let's be honest about Republican politicians in Washington. Here's a few problems the Republicans refuse to solve.

1. The mortgage crisis is out of control. Republicans make noise but refuse to actually do anything.

2. Healthcare costs are out of sight, but many Republicans are funded by insurance companies who don't want the monopoly in their state disturbed.

3. Most scientists consider global warming to be one of the biggest threats facing civilization. The Republican solution is to pretend the problem doesn't exist.

4. The world is growing faster than our energy resources. The Republican solution is to pretend the problem doesn't exist.

5. We are having to buy more and more oil from foreign countries as our own production slowly continues to decline. The Republican solution is to pretend we can make up for lost production by drilling for oil. In the meantime, major Republican donors are making a fortune buying that foreign oil from others and passing on the oil to the American consumer for a nice fat profit. This perpetual game of buying foreign oil does not create jobs for Americans. Pursuing renewable energy at home as a way to avoid sending our money overseas would create thousands of jobs for every billionaire making a fat profit buying oil from OPEC. That ladies and gentlemen is a fact. Not a single oil job in America that already exists need be affected. It will take two or three decades simply to ramp up alternative energy while doing nothing more than largely replacing foreign oil.

6. More and more jobs are being sent overseas to China or other countries who offer cheap labor. Keep in mind that Republicans despise American workers. The philosophy of wealthy and upper middle class Republicans is to overvalue what they do for the average American and undervalue what the average American does for them. This too is a fact. Republicans are big on national security but more and more things that we need for our defense are being built outside the United States. It is a foolish policy and is asking for trouble down the road. But major Republican donors don't want their China connections disturbed.

The list goes on. And yet, Americans are seriously thinking of sending a majority of Republicans to the House and Senate. All that will do is weaken the United States and make almost everyone poorer, except the rich Republicans who are paying the campaigns bills to get what they want. We are in danger of getting right back to where we were just before the economic meltdown.

The way forward is solving our problems, not playing word games. It is what a majority of Democrats are trying to do, but they're not getting much help.

Karl Rove Once Again Backed by the Super-Wealthy

He's back. Karl Rove, who helped elect one of our nation's worst presidents not once but twice is back to his old tricks. This is the guy who scared the nation with those phony aluminum tubes back in 2002 and helped throw our nation into a war we did not need, while President Bush let Osama bin Laden get away.

Let's be clear about this. George W. Bush is responsible for the economic meltdown. He did nothing to stop the wild real estate speculation. He did nothing to help homeowners once the mortgage debacle began to unfold. He did nothing to enforce the law when it comes to bank and Wall Street. In 2002, he signed a business reform bill and stuck the legislation in his desk without any intention of enforcing the law. Who got Bush elected? Karl Rove. Who got Bush elected a second time? Karl Rove. Who's allied to the most conservative and incompetent elements of the Republican Party? Karl Rove.

Here's an article I found in the Los Angeles Times about one of the slipperiest political operators the Republicans have working for them:

The office is marked only by a sign reading "American Crossroads" and "American Action Network." But behind the nondescript entrance is the headquarters of a new political power: a fundraising operation that has pulled in more than $32 million this year, as well as sophisticated marketing, research and advertising operations — all aimed at getting Republicans elected to the House and Senate.

(snip)

American Crossroads and its affiliates are the offspring of George W. Bush administration strategist Karl Rove and other senior GOP leaders who once worked within the regular party structure, especially the Republican National Committee and its tradition-encrusted headquarters near the Capitol.

(snip)

Many of the new groups were formed after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision last year, which made it easier for corporations and unions to spend directly on political causes. New groups formed on the left and right, but the dramatic growth has been on the right.

There's a lot more money going to Karl than that $32 million. He's a slick coordinator who know how to hide money from contributors. Karl Rove and his friends are taking a ton of money from right-wing billionaires, exactly the same clowns who supported George W. Bush, and exactly the same clowns who supported the legislation and policies of Republicans that sent our economy into the tank. If you're out of work, if you're worried about your home, or you're wondering when the economy will recover, Karl Rove and his friends are responsible. Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich have been telling Republicans to block every effort by President Obama to get the economy moving. Obama has moved in the right direction, but if it had not be for the Republicans, the economy would be in much better shape today. And yet the Republicans have the gall to ask for your vote.

The New York Times has details on some of the planning by Karl Rove and other Republicans who were part of the Bush Administration or closely associated to it:

...the Republican fund-raiser Fred Malek, the onetime lobbyist and Bush White House counselor Ed Gillespie, and former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary Cheney, among others — agreed on plans for an ambitious new political machine that would marshal the resources of disparate business, nonprofit and interest groups to bring Republicans back to power this fall.

(snip)

[Karl Rove] has had a major hand in helping to summon the old coalition of millionaires and billionaires who supported Mr. Bush and have huge financial stakes in regulatory and tax policy...

Folks, this is what you call business as usual politics. Karl Rove and his friends are not smart enough or honest enough to keep the economy from going into the ditch, but they're smart enough to help their wealthy friends, exactly the kind of people who created the economic mess in the first place. Think of all the money they fed to friends like Halliburton. Think of all the money they fed to their rich cronies during Hurricane Katrina without actually accomplishing anything. This is a slick crowd: they know how to talk and how to raise money from conservative billionaires, but they're a danger to every working American, retired seniors and the future of every child. These are guys who live for today with no regard for the jobs being sent overseas and no regard for millions of Americans looking for a decent way forward in tough times.

Now Rove and his friends are a bit smarter, however, than the Tea Party Mad Hatters, but nevertheless, they are willing to work with them (or roll them?) in order to win the election. There should be no mistake about who's going to be in charge if the Republicans take the House and Senate: the old Bush crowd. The Democrats still have work to do but if Republicans are back in power, watch out. With Republicans controlling the agenda, it won't take much time for the economy to go right back into the ditch, right where George W. Bush and Karl Rove put us in the first place.

Social Security and the Relabeling of George W. Bush

Republicans have a bad product but they can't sell it. They believe the product is just a matter of labeling and that labeling for eight years was George W. Bush. Without a doubt, George W. Bush is one of the worst presidents in our nation's history. Bush is responsible for two wars, the fiasco at Katrina and the economic meltdown that began in 2007 and became increasingly dramatic in the late summer of 2008. Republicans, seeing disaster in the 2008 elections, did their best to distance themselves from George W. Bush. Never mind that they voted for everything Bush wanted and blocked every effort by Democrats for more responsible legislation. They think they can sell the same bad product simply by removing "George W. Bush" from the label.

It should be understood that the economic meltdown of 2008 was the proof that Republicans don't know much these days about economics. They think cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans, hiring crooked corporations like Halliburton to build things in Iraq, privatizing the military and FEMA, giving their friends sweetheart no-bid contracts, killing corporate reform (while pretending to pass reform), sending jobs overseas, buying fossil fuels from OPEC and fueling an essentially crooked real estate boom as far as the eye could see was somehow going to be good for America.

When it all came crashing down, the Republicans in Congress denied they had anything to do with the mess. In fact, they're now selling the same garbage that got us into trouble by pretending that because George W. Bush is no longer president, that changes everything. Except that the Republicans are still peddling the same nonsense. It just no longer has George W. Bush's name attached to the same agenda.

An example is Social Security. Republicans are still pushing the privatization of Social Security, just as George W. Bush pushed the same nonsense. Oh, they like to change the name in one breath, deny it's privatization in the next breath, and sweet talk conservative brokers into making huge campaign contributions so they can dig into all that potential privatization money in the final breath.

I can't put it more plainly than this: privatization is privatization is privatization, no matter what you call it. If you like privatization, you must think crooked corporations like Halliburton are the best thing that's ever happened to America.

What gives the Republicans away is that instead of saying that Social Security will go bankrupt in twenty years (which it won't), they now claim Social Security will be broke in 2010, 2012, or 2016 (which is ludicruous). Everything, so Republicans say, has to be fixed in a hurry and by golly they got just the deal for you. So you hear scary language followed by the same scam that George W. Bush tried to peddle. Republican politicians aren't talking about Social Security because they care about the American people—they're talking about Social Security so they can reap all those campaign contributions (and potential sweetheart deals) from the stock brokers (many of whom are the same folks who almost brought down the economy in 2008).

Here's what President Obama had to say on Saturday (via The Washington Monthly):

After noting the privatization debate of 2005, the president said, "I'd have thought that debate would've been put to rest once and for all by the financial crisis we've just experienced. I'd have thought, after being reminded how quickly the stock market can tumble, after seeing the wealth people worked a lifetime to earn wiped out in a matter of days, that no one would want to place bets with Social Security on Wall Street; that everyone would understand why we need to be prudent about investing the retirement money of tens of millions of Americans.

"But some Republican leaders in Congress don't seem to have learned any lessons from the past few years. They're pushing to make privatizing Social Security a key part of their legislative agenda if they win a majority in Congress this fall. It's right up there on their to-do list with repealing some of the Medicare benefits and reforms that are adding at least a dozen years to the fiscal health of Medicare -- the single longest extension in history.

"That agenda is wrong for seniors, it's wrong for America, and I won't let it happen. Not while I'm President. I'll fight with everything I've got to stop those who would gamble your Social Security on Wall Street."

Let's hope Obama comes out fighting in the next week or two, and fights all the way to November. For eight years, Republicans were a disaster for America. We're still paying the price, particularly homeowners and laid-off workers from coast to coast, from Corpus Christi to Portland, Maine. Ever since pragmatism went awol in the Republican Party, a large majority of Americans have been paying the price. Until the Republicans reform their party and shed themselves of the lunatic fringe, what makes anyone think they'll do better the next time?

Economy Continues to Sink While Republicans Play Games

As usual, Washington Republicans and their friends in the media are sitting on their well-financed posteriors playing games and otherwise doing nothing as the economy continues to tank. Some experts say another 2 million jobs may be lost this year thanks to the Bush economic meltdown.

Here's just one example courtesy of Think Progress:

Scarborough, Brzezinski, and other regular Morning Joe contributors have made similarly flawed arguments in recent days:

Brzezinski: “I’m confused as to why we’re being tricked into thinking this is a stimulus bill, when it’s packed with welfare programs.”

Pat Buchanan: “This is just a big Democratic bill with all this pork and slop.”

Jim Cramer: “I have it maybe that there’s 142 people really will get a job.”

Dylan Ratigan: “[T]he Democrats would do themselves a tremendous favor to not put spending programs in when we’re dealing with a stimulus bill.”

Scarborough: “This is a streaming pile of garbage.”

This group of do nothing Republicans suggests more tax cuts. Brilliant. Being rich Republicans themselves, they will benefit from their own suggestion. Like other rich Republicans, they'll buy their clothes from Asia, their yachts and luxury cars from Europe and their diamonds from Africa and that will do nothing for the American economy. Years of economic neglect by Republicans has done enormous damage to the American economy. One might almost call them right wing anarchists since they are more interested in mayhem than they are in the future of the United States as a people.

Bush's Dismal Approval Ratings in the 20s

In a parliamentary government, President George W. Bush would be gone by now. But we're stuck with the most failed president in American history for another year and a half. Of course, the amazing thing is not Bush's low poll numbers, but the fact that so many Republicans in the House and Senate refuse to hold the president and vice president accountable. They insist on standing by a failed vision that is damaging the United States. Both men in the White House are impeachable. I suspect if Cheney alone were impeached, that action would go a long ways to forcing President Bush to clean up his act.

According to Newsweek, 26% percent of Americans still stand by a man who has done almost nothing for Americans in the last six years:

In 19 months, George W. Bush will leave the White House for the last time. The latest NEWSWEEK Poll suggests that he faces a steep climb if he hopes to coax the country back to his side before he goes. In the new poll, conducted Monday and Tuesday nights, President Bush’s approval rating has reached a record low. Only 26 percent of Americans, just over one in four, approve of the job the 43rd president is doing; while, a record 65 percent disapprove, including nearly a third of Republicans.

In case anyone thinks that's a fluke, here's another poll from the American Research Group:

Over two out-of-three Americans say they disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president according to the latest survey from the American Research Group.

Among all Americans, 27% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 67% disapprove. When it comes to Bush's handling of the economy, 29% approve and 64% disapprove.

Among Americans registered to vote, 28% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 66% disapprove. When it comes to the way Bush is handling the economy, 30% of registered voters approve of the way Bush is handling the economy and 63% disapprove.

And yet, when you watch TV or pick up the paper, Wolf Blitzer, Tim Russert, David Broder and the Washington Post editorial staff still seem to think that Bush is doing a good job. Even Hillary Clinton seems to complain that only if Bush had been competent he might have been all right. Conventional wisdom in Washington and the media towers of New York are still behind reality.

I notice that a third of Republicans now disapprove of Bush. But one has to be careful. Most Republicans who disapprove of Bush disapprove of him for the same reasons as the rest of us. But a significant number of right wing conservatives disapprove of Bush for a strange array of reasons involving various reasons such as Bush's immigration policy, Iran, and the economy. Some right wing conservatives are whining that Bush isn't conservative enough. Some clowns are saying that Bush is actually a liberal since he's for big government, big spending, etc. Sorry, but Bush is no liberal. He's a radical conservative with a strong authoritarian streak (and there are Republicans who want to see more of that authoritarian nonsense; they get plenty of it in presidential candidates like Giuliani).

But what of the two thirds of Republicans who still approve of Bush? How can they approve of a man who went to war in Iraq without a legitimate reason for that war, without a plan, without enough troops, without allies and without an exit strategy? How can they support a president who refused to do anything before 9/11 despite clear warnings of a terrorist attack? How can they cheer a president who let Osama bin Laden get away so he could pursue his bizarre war in Iraq? How can they stand by him? How can Republicans stand by Bush's lawbreaking on a wide range of issues? Why are Republicans silent every time the president ignores the US Constitution for petty political reasons? How can Bush's remaining supporters approve of his behavior after Hurricane Katrina? Katrina, by the way, was simply an indicator of Bush's failure and indifference on a wide range of issues.

I know, I know, human nature is human nature and part of our nature is stubbornness even when we know we're probably not being led well by our politicians. But if Republicans who approve of Bush care about their children and the future of their children, they better think long and hard about continuing to support a man who has been wrong on so many issues and who has put politics of the presents well ahead of our future needs. The future is coming and it's coming faster than most of us realize.

Republican Debate: The Good News and the Bad News

Let's deal quickly with the good news: the Republicans provided Democrats with considerable footage demonstrating their sheer foolishness.

Here's the bad news: one of these idiots could be the next president of the United States.

Here's a quick summary of the top three:

McCain mangled his words on several occassions and was frequently incoherent; I'm sorry to say it but he's clearly slipping. On the occassions when he was understandable, it was usually meaningless boilerplate that could have answered dozens of questions without actually saying much. For one brief moment, we saw the old McCain when he said he believed in evolution but had no trouble seeing God's handiwork when he was at the Grand Canyon; but that McCain started disappearing in 2004 when he decided to jump aboard the Bush express.

Mitt Romney was the Stepford man. He makes Hillary Clinton's triangulations look human and natural. It was embarrassing to see him rush up to be the first candidate to shake Nancy Reagan's hand after the debate. A slick man. Very slick.

Rudy Giuliani was probably the most dangerous man on the stage. In many ways, he presents himself effectively and can probably get away with campaigning as a sort of conservative moderate. But recent appearances suggests that the unitary executive nonsense that Cheney and Bush have been pursuing the last six years would continue unabated under Giuliani. There's not a doubt in my mind that Guiliani is a bully at heart. That Bernard Kerik was his police chief speaks volumes. If Giuliani continues to do well in the polls, I'll have more to say about the ugly qualities he shares with Bush and Cheney.

I enjoyed watching my wife while we listened to the debate. She has a wonderful way of rolling her eyes when the Republican candidates say stupid or dishonest things. It was appalling that several of the candidates thought Scooter Libby should be pardoned. It was embarrassing how unwilling these guys were to criticize the most failed president in our nation's history. The list goes on. I think the reader has the general idea.

If the reader will pardon an imperfect analogy, these candidates are like fools running for mayor while the current mayor has delegated the job of repairing a dam upstream from the town to his cronies and some corrupt campaign donors. The engineers with integrity say the dam is cracking, largely because of cheap construction materials; it's also been raining for twenty days and these Republican fools are telling the townfolk the best way to solve the town's problem is to fill in more potholes. A lot of good filling those potholes will be when the dam breaks.

The dead giveaway was the attempt to ride on Reagan's coattails. Reagan's presidency was finished nearly twenty years ago. The world has changed a lot since then. Reagan spent his presidency ignoring a number of problems that are beginning to have a significant impact. Reagan ignored the environment, he ignored the need for a real energy policy and he had a lousy eye for honest government officials. The nostalgia for Reagan perfectly reflects the fantasies that seem to drive the right wingers who control the Republican Party these days. We need people in the White House who don't live in a bubble, who have a chance—at least a chance—of connecting to reality.

Cheney Must Be Happy: Halliburton Up $43

Bush and Cheney's war in Iraq is a disaster that has done very little, if anything, for the United States. Back when the war started in 2003, I was posting on the AOL message boards and was treated like a traitor for pointing out any number of obvious contradictions. I was actually slow to oppose the war and was bothered by a number of people I respected who supported the war, but by February of 2003, I was against it. I despised any number of outright lies that were becoming increasingly obvious and being bandied about to justify the war and, at the same time, I was particularly bothered by how Afghanistan wasn't going as well as it should have been, partly because of the administration's obsession with Iraq but mainly because the administration didn't seem to take its job very seriously. Osama bin Laden was based in Afghanistan. That's where al Qaida was. I found it disturbing that the Bush administration didn't seem concerned about finishing the job in Afghanistan.

The issue of Iraq has now taken on a larger context and we now recognize that Bush's war was a strategic failure based on a poor understanding of foreign policy and the world. Yes, there was incompetence but the larger failure was the conception of grandiose scheme to remake the Middle East in ways that contradict who we are as a nation and in ways that have little to do with democracy. Bush's policy was riddled with hubris and ideology and nonsense.

In Truthout, Frank Rich of The New York Times can be found once again giving his perspective, this time four years after the start of Bush's folly in Iraq:

Tomorrow night is the fourth anniversary of President Bush's prime-time address declaring the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In the broad sweep of history, four years is a nanosecond, but in America, where memories are congenitally short, it's an eternity. That's why a revisionist history of the White House's rush to war, much of it written by its initial cheerleaders, has already taken hold. In this exonerating fictionalization of the story, nearly every politician and pundit in Washington was duped by the same "bad intelligence" before the war, and few imagined that the administration would so botch the invasion's aftermath or that the occupation would go on so long. "If only I had known then what I know now ..." has been the persistent refrain of the war supporters who subsequently disowned the fiasco. But the embarrassing reality is that much of the damning truth about the administration's case for war and its hubristic expectations for a cakewalk were publicly available before the war, hiding in plain sight, to be seen by anyone who wanted to look.

(snip)

In one of its editorials strongly endorsing the war, The Wall Street Journal writes, "There is plenty of evidence that Iraq has harbored Al Qaeda members."

[In a Feb. 12, 2007, editorial defending the White House's use of prewar intelligence, The Journal wrote, "Any links between Al Qaeda and Iraq is a separate issue that was barely mentioned in the run-up to war."]

(snip)

President Bush declares war from the Oval Office in a national address: "Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure."

Price of a share of Halliburton stock: $20.50

[Value of that Halliburton share on March 16, 2007, adjusted for a split in 2006: $64.12.]

That last one is my favorite, though Mr. Rich offers many other examples. No bid contracts indeed!

Too many Republicans in Congress, the White House and the media lie to our faces and then deny that they're lying to our faces. Our country, at minimum, needs a two-party system, but it's time to send the Republicans home until they start offering people with more integrity. Integrity or not, even the rubber stampers should be sent home for turning a blind eye to the most corrupt era in anyone's memory.

Another Reason We Need Health Care Reform

A year ago, I had some leftover from an old dental abscess cleaned out. Unfortunately, the x-ray didn't show a small side channel that the dentist missed and the abscess took off before I realized what was happening. When the abscess started getting into my tongue and going down my throat, I called my dentist group on the weekend and quickly got some antibiotics. I saw my dentist on Monday and he took one look at my throat and prescribed something stronger. In a couple of days, I was fine though there was some minor damage to the muscles in my tongue that took about three months to heal. Although I have some medical and dental insurance, it was actually fairly cheap medicine but there are people in our country who hesitate to spend twenty to eighty dollars when they have other expenses to deal with.

Susie of Suburban Guerilla points to a sad story on MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.

A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.

If his mother had been insured.

The boy died when his tooth infection spread into his brain. Keep in mind that there are many times when children are not treated early enough, but they manage to survive, and are physically damaged by the results. These incidents of medical breakdowns are not that rare. For lack of insurance for a tooth extraction (and antibiotics?), Deamonte Driver required an expensive brain surgery that was unable to save him. This is evidence of a broken health care system and many children have no choice but to endure such a system.

It's time for our health care system to be fixed. Americans should stop pretending that the Republicans will ever do anything about it. At least not the Republican Party as it now exists, dominated my right wingers who seem bent on taking the country backwards. If we're the greatest country in the world, we need to act like it.

Roundups of Democratic and Republican Senate Races in 2008

Depending on how things go, Democrats will have the advantage in 2008 when it comes to Senate races. Republicans have 21 seats up for election in 2008 and the Democrats have 12; that gives the Democrats opportunities to gain ground.

Here's the roundup of Democratic seats. And here's the roundup of Republican seats. If there is to be real reform in our country, Democrats need to pick up about six or seven seats in the Senate. If the Republicans retake the Senate, it may be a generation before we throw off the power of big money—if at all—and restore a healthy economy for all Americans. Let's get to work.

McCain Losing Support Among Independents

The illusion that John McCain is still an independent maverick is evaporating as he continues to court the far right. The 2008 election is more than 21 months away and much can change in that period. But America's biggest problems are not going away and there's no sign that John McCain or more than a handful of other Republican politicians truly understand what's going on. In fact, since John McCain is calling for more troops in Iraq than Bush, there's a growing sense that he's taking a cynical position since no such troops exist for Iraq and about the only way he can get them is to call for a draft, something McCain is highly unlikely to do.

Here's a story from Brett Arends of the Boston Herald about McCain's falling numbers (via The Huffington Post):

As Mitt, Hillary, Barack and a dozen others jump into the presidential stampede, something interesting is happening in New Hampshire.
For seven years, conventional wisdom has said that the state’s pivotal independent voters would line up behind maverick Sen. John McCain, as they did so famously in the 2000 GOP primary. But new polling data, to be released later this week, will suggest that might no longer be the case.
Manchester, N.H.-based American Research Group finds that McCain’s popularity among New Hampshire’s independent voters has collapsed.

“John McCain is tanking,” says ARG president Dick Bennett. “That’s the big thing [we’re finding]. In New Hampshire a year ago he got 49 percent among independent voters. That number’s way down, to 29 percent now.”

(snip)

Bennett says ARG is finding a similar trend in other states polled, including early primary battlegrounds like Iowa and Nevada. ...

I wonder how long it will take the mainstream media to notice that John McCain isn't the maverick that we once thought he was and that a growing number of Americans have become disillusioned with him.

Most Americans still consider bipartisanship to be an important goal to have in Washington but bipartisanship requires that there be two parties that care about the American people. The Republican Party has so radicalized itself that it has no interest in working with other Americans. It was perhaps thought at one time that John McCain could be the one who could restore balance to the Republican Party and lead the way to a more bipartisan atmosphere in American politics. But those days are gone. If there's to be a new Republican Party, it's people like Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe who may provide the beginnings of reform.

Think Progress offers another example of McCain's fall from grace as he pursues his presidential ambitions and backs away from lobbying reform:

In Dec. 2005, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) announced that he was introducing The Lobbying Transparency and Accountability Act of 2005. ...

(snip)

McCain has engaged in a pattern of flip-flopping on lobbying reform. Prior to his most recent reversal, ThinkProgress reported McCain has been soliciting contributions from K Street lobbying firms while talking tough against lobbyists, and he has been trying to scuttle the lobbying reform effort by adding a “poison pill” to the bill.

John McCain was for good government before he was against good government. I strongly suspect that McCain, if he continues on his present course, will not be the nominee in 2008 for the Republicans.

The real question for the Republican Party is whether it can reform itself in time for 2008 or whether its eventual rebuilding will start in elections after that. A big problem for Republicans is that they are still dominated by members on the far right in safe districts who are still relatively young and have no intention of leaving politics any time soon. In the end, it's the American people who will have to reform the Republicans. But it may take time.