Month: November 2006

Joe Lieberman seconds my suggestion. Anyone who actually wants to win the war should. Of course, that hasn’t yet included the president, who would rather lose a war than concede any mistakes. And Mike Allen says he’s in no mood for magnanimity. Three words for POTUS: get over yourself.

It’s a Sunshine Day!

Money quote from the AP:

In a triple setback for conservatives, South Dakotans rejected a law that would have banned virtually all abortions, Arizona became the first state to defeat an amendment to ban gay marriage and Missouri approved a measure backing stem cell research.

Barry Goldwater’s state voted against discriminating against gay citizens in its own constitution, despite John McCain’s vociferous support. Long live Goldwater.

"You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time," – Abraham Lincoln, my kind of Republican.

Bellow Falls, Vermont, 6.30 am.

This election doesn’t mean America has given up on the war in Iraq. It means, at a minimum, that the president must be forced to realize he cannot keep his defense secretary. If this election was a referendum on the war and its execution, the will of the people is clear. No one can have confidence in Rumsfeld as defense secretary at this point. He has to go. I know the president said he’d keep him for two more years regardless. (It was one of the dumbest things he has ever said.) But any president wishing to form a sustainable middle ground on Iraq now has to abandon Rumsfeld. It’s that simple. Fire him; and reach out to the Democrats and moderate Republicans in order to form a strategy for victory or stability in Iraq. And have the good sense to be graceful about it.

(Photo: Haraz Ghanbari/AFP/Getty.)

The House of Representatives has now become a key check on an out-of-control executive. It reflects a big shift in the minds and souls of Americans. The Senate is still unclear – but the Dems have made gains, clearly. The founders knew what they were doing. The country wants to go back to the center, to have a sane, reality-based debate about what to do in Iraq, how to rescue the looming fiscal catastrophe, and how to defeat Islamo-fascism and how to detain and interrogate terror suspects. So we have a re-balancing. I think we know enough now for this:

Here’s some new data:

Young voter turnout in a set of targeted precincts increased by an average of 50 percent over the 2002 election, and by as much as 111 percent in some precincts, according to an Election Night analysis by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), continuing a national trend of growing young voter participation that began in the 2004 election.

"Based on numbers provided to us by the New Voters Project, it appears that in selected Ohio precincts with high concentrations of college students, the turnout increase was very substantial compared to 2002. Overall, the number of votes cast in those precincts increased by about 50 percent, ranging from 6% to 111% in specific precincts," said Peter Levine, Director of CIRCLE.

It’s looking more likely.

Three reader comments on Santorum’s defeat:

In his concession speech, the first thing he wanted to say was that he "thanks God". So do we, Rick, so do we!

Then this from "a proud central Pennsylvanian":

Man, Santorum looks like he really needs some meth to throw away.

And this:

As much as I loathe Rick Santorum’s positions, it is heartbreaking to watch his teenage son cry behind him during the concession speech.