Category: The Dish

A handy primer.

… McCain! I mean: who else? He’s been president for six years, hasn’t he? Money quote:

The long and short of this bad but not horrific night was that majorities must act like majorities.  The public cares little for the "traditions" of the Senate or the way the appropriations process used to work.  It demands results.  Handed a large majority, the GOP frittered it away. 

The chief fritterer was Senator McCain and his Gang of 14 and Kennedy-McCain immigration bill, supplemented by a last minute throw down that prevented the NSA bill from progressing or the key judicial nominations from receiving a vote.  His accomplice in that master stroke was Senator Graham.  Together they cost their friend Mike DeWine his seat in the Senate, and all their Republican colleagues their chairmanships.  Senator McCain should rethink his presidential run.  Amid the ruins of the GOP’s majority there is a clear culprit.

What else does Baghdad Bob Hewitt say? Ah, yes, this:

"…Senator Santorum is now available for a seat on the SCOTUS should one become available."

Clinical.

A pathetic scene from a polling station in Philadelphia, where a legally qualified polling officer is barred from entering a station in urban Philly to ensure fair practices. The cops do nothing.

That’s the question. A reader sums up the argument:

Assuming that the Dems get the Senate, could Rove’s final play be: Bush accepts Rumsfeld’s resignation, appoints Independent Lieberman as Secretary of Defense and Connecticut Governor Rell (Republican) appoints a Republican to fill Lieberman’s Senate seat, putting the Senate under effective Republican control with Cheney’s vote as tie breaker?

That is possible, but it would, I think, be politically suicidal for the president. (Still, his campaign rhetoric was suicidal, so maybe he’ll stay that way.) If Lieberman holds the key to a Senate majority, appointing him SecDef would be too political a move, even for Bush. It would divide far more than it would unite.

But there I go again, giving Bush the benefit of the doubt. He’s done crazier things, hasn’t he?

(Photo: Bob Falcetti/Getty.)

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.)