January's GOP Asshat of the Month

Given her track record of public displays of insanity, it was only a matter of time until Minnesota's newly-elected Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann embarrassed Minnesota on the national stage. She lived up to expectations and even exceeded them with her performance at last week's State of the Union address, groping the President like a pre-teen schoolgirl at a Jesse McCartney concert.

For those of you who didn't notice, the attractive but batshit crazy freshman Congresswoman grabbed hold of the President's shoulder as he was exiting the hall during the State of the Union address, refusing to let go for nearly 30 seconds until he finally gave her a smooch. If I was trapped in confined quarters with a lunatic female stalker, I'd take my odds with Glenn Close's "Fatal Attraction" character any day over my home state's nutball Congresswoman.

One has to expect that the negative media exposure is giving plenty of the North Metro's voters buyers' remorse for their decision to elect this lunatic last November, despite mountains of evidence that she was dancing on the edge of both mainstream American political ideology and of sanity. But Bachmann was operating on favorable turf in Minnesota's 6th Congressional district, the most conservative of the state's eight districts....and even there Bachmann only squeezed out a bare 50% majority against a divided center-left vote which split between weak DFL challenger Patty Wetterling and a third-party newcomer who is not yet 30 years old.

With the demographics of her district, Bachmann probably gets a little bit of slack in the rope voters handed her before she hangs herself with it.....but MN-06 is not Utah, West Texas, or suburban Atlanta. Too many more incidents like what the whole world saw on the night of the State of the Union address and even the fatcat Republicans of Forest Lake and St. Michael are gonna cry fowl.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the "Big Three"

Now that all three of the alleged frontrunners for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination have officially announced their candidacies, it's probably a good time for me to run down the litany of strengths and weaknesses that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards bring to the table, along with some more compressed thoughts on second and third-ring Democratic contenders. Let's start with the woman who this past week's polls indicate has a commanding lead among Democrats nationally

Hillary Clinton Strengths: Without a shadow of doubt, the biggest gun in Hillary's arsenal is the monstrously intimidating political machine she has at her disposal. Just as George Bush's loyalists did whatever needed to be done to crush the insurgent John McCain in the early primaries of 2000, Hillary's network of political thugs will be just as ruthless if not more so in squashing her primary rivals should they have the audacity to threaten her perceived entitlement to the nomination. Beyond that, early polls suggest that the black community is surprisingly loyal to Hillary, even with Barack Obama in the mix. Every candidate who is challenging Hillary has no idea what they're up against. The Clinton machine will be a fundraising engine more than happy to steamroll anyone who stands in Hillary's way.

Barack Obama Strengths: Obama's charismatic fresh face, pure and simple. The country is in the mood for something new, and at least superficially, Obama offers that. And once a political figure has planted a favorable seed in the minds of voters, it often takes alot to undo that. A national media swooning over Obama's every word will also help to keep his headlines favorable barring a stunning gaffe.

John Edwards Strengths: A very favorable early primary schedule, where Edwards is well-positioned to score victories in both Iowa and Nevada, the first and second states holding caucuses, with South Carolina, the state Edwards was born in, holding its make-or-break primary soon afterward. And primary voters savvy to the political winds of Middle America are likely to recognize that Edwards is probably the only candidate of the "Big Three" that has a prayer of winning the general election against ANY of the Republican frontrunners.

Now for the weaknesses of the three candidates.....

Clinton's Weaknesses: Where to begin.... First of all, Bill Clinton was a smooth and charismatic politician. That does not mean his wife is. In fact, the only reason she's even a serious contender for the nomination is her last name. She certainly didn't get to where she is today because of her political skills. Furthermore, she's coming out of the gate with more than 40% of voters holding an unfavorable opinion of her. That's an almost certain death sentence as every candidate's unfavorables go up under the spotlight of a negative campaign. And the very ruthless political machine supporting her will be called out for its thuggish tactics. James Carville will not get away with "swiftboating" Barack Obama the way Karl Rove did to John Kerry in 2004 or John McCain in 2000. Even if Hillary does prevail, she'll come out of the primaries with her hands bloodied. And of course, the biggest question of all regarding Hillary's electability....How many of the 31 "red states" in the last election cycle can you picture voting for Hillary Clinton in 2008? If your arithmatic is anything similar to mine, the answer is "far fewer than the 19 "blue states" from 2004 that Hillary is likely to lose to a competent GOP challenger."

Obama's Weaknesses: He's a man with nowhere to go but down. Charisma can get you far in a Presidential campaign, but not all the way, at least if you're a Democrat. As Obama's personal and professional liabilities start becoming common knowledge, his unfavorables will start rising. Obama can be expected to lose some low-lying electoral fruit based on his middle name ("Hussein"...don't think Karl Rove would let that little nugget go unnoticed by the coal miners of West Virginia) and his past cocaine use, but his biggest personal liability is his current tobacco use. The growing ranks of tyrannical busybodies in Obama's own party will be relentless in hammering this seemingly benign bad habit into an irreconcilable character defect....and it may work. Furthermore, Obama is not battle-tested. He's had cakewalk election victories in his uber-liberal Chicago district in the Illinois Legislature and to the U.S. Senate in 2004, where he faced the hapless Alan Keyes after previous opponent Jack Ryan was washed away in a sex scandal a few months before the election. Obama's lack of political experience will certainly be exploited by his opponents in the primaries and in the general election if he gets that far, but his lack of experience in competitive campaigns is what I really expect to see on display, particularly when he's trying to slay the Hillary dragon.

Edwards Weaknesses: His economic populism is a solid selling point for socially conservative Middle American voters, who believe the Democratic Party has lost touch with its working class base and has become the party of abortion, gun control, and gay marriage. However, that same economic populism will not be a selling point among the wealthy northeastern liberals who write all the checks that fund Democratic campaigns. Edwards will be perceived as an anti-business candidate by the deep-pocketed business Democrats whose support for the party is based on any number of issues, but slowing the growth of free trade and instituting new anti-poverty programs are not included in that list. Along that same theme, Edwards has a huge immigration problem, starting with the primaries and continuing in the general election if he gets that far. Edwards needs big wins in Iowa and Nevada one week apart if he's gonna seriously contest the nomination, but he'll be walking a logistical tightrope on the path to those victories. Iowa's industrial unions are largely critics of liberalized immigration reforms, but the services workers' union that dominates Nevada's Democratic caucuses has an entirely different agenda. Edwards' support for "comprehensive immigration reform" would likely hurt him in Iowa, but would be necessary for him to score the service workers' union support in Nevada. Edwards' larger problem on immigration is that, if he comes out in support of McCain-Kennedy or some variation of "comprehensive immigration reform" that's light on border security and heavy on "guest worker" provisions, it undermines the very premise that is the foundation of Edwards' campaign.....combatting poverty. McCain-Kennedy is a deliberate means of growing poverty in America, and growing it substantially. Edwards will have zero credibility on his anti-poverty platform if he comes out in favor of "comprehensive immigration reform"...and every indication is that he will.

The other guys:

Bill Richardson: I'm with Sara in pulling for a Richardson candidacy, as I expect he would be a very tough opponent for any Republican candidate except McCain, who would likely come out on the winning end of a divided American Southwest and deny Richardson states like Nevada and Colorado that he'd need to win nationally. I'd like to think Richardson could be a contender here, but I have a hard time seeing how he gets a foothold against the Hillary-Obama-Edwards juggernaut.

Joe Biden: I'm not sure why, but there are plenty of Democrats who genuinely dislike Biden. I have mixed feelings about him. He's very smart and centrist enough that he wouldn't instantly alienate 47% of the electorate, but he has a hard time controlling his anger and his dripping condescension towards those who disagree with him. Hard to imagine that Biden could keep his unappealing side hidden through the course of a yearlong high-profile candidacy.

Christopher Dodd: A non-starter. He's a good Senator and a smart politician, but there's absolutely nothing about him or his resume that would indicate he should be taken serious
as a Presidential contender.

Dennis Kucinich: Another vanity run that will allow Republicans to represent Kucinich as the yardstick with which the entire Democratic Party should be measured. I like this guy, but the only purpose he serves in a Presidential primary is making everybody else look moderate by comparison.

John Kerry: I hope Kerry runs again just for comedy value. Unfortunately, I think he might even see the writing on the wall at this point.

Tom Vilsack: Unlike Kucinich, Vilsack seems smart enough that he wouldn't be making this Presidential run based entirely on ego. Even prepping himself for a Vice-Presidential run seems unlikely to be fruitful, particularly if Vilsack loses his home state in the Iowa Caucus, which seems very likely at this point. My guess is that he's attempting to score a Cabinet position in the administration of the eventual winner. That is most likely the best he can hope for.

I know I'm forgetting somebody here, but it's most likely irrelevant as the big names of this race are likely to monopolize the fundraising and push most of these candidates out of the running long before the first vote is cast in Iowa. While the Republican field is pretty much wide open, I'm moving back towards the position that I held before the November midterms....that the built-in advantages make this nomination Hillary's to lose. God help us!

The 2008 GOP Dark Horse That Could Be Trouble

The 2008 Republican field for President is looking less formidable with each passing day. Mitt Romney is a shameless flip-flopper to the caliber that 2004's Massachusetts patrician candidate could have only dreamed of being. John McCain foolishly tied his credibility to a hypothetical "troop surge" in Iraq that is about to become a reality, and virtually nobody believes the policy will succeed. And Rudy Giuliani's support is a mile wide and an inch thick, leaving him nowhere to go but down once "values voters" in the Old Confederacy realize he's to the left of Hillary Clinton on the cultural issues they care about most. Meanwhile, the two conservative candidates that seemed most likely to bridge the divide between the GOP's values voters and robber barons--Bill Frist and George Allen--are both yesterday's news after the comedy of errors that was their 2006.

So who is the GOP left with that won't come out of the starting gate with two strikes against them? The roster of second and third-tier candidates produces only one name that scares me, and that's former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Granted, I don't know alot about Huckabee and he may well have some seriously liabilities, but what I do know of his personal and professional resume is noteworthy. Hailing from Arkansas, the South's last remaining Democratic state, Huckabee is also an ordained Baptist minister and a professed conservative with a modestly successful gubernatorial record. And unlike fellow conservative contenders Newt Gingrich and Sam Brownback, Huckabee doesn't come across as an extremist lunatic. As for Iraq, Huckabee will need a solid plan to be taken seriously, but has the luxury of never having to make a single vote in Washington on the war, thus keeping his hands clean.

A Huckabee nomination would probably avert the looming Republican Party civil war, as he would satisfy the evangelical conservatives in a way that McCain, Giuliani or Romney wouldn't, without frightening away the stock brokers in Greenwich, Connecticut, who fill Republican Party coffers with cash. He would all but guarantee a GOP sweep in every state south of the Ohio River, taking the real possibility of a Democratic victory in Arkansas away from either John Edwards or former native daughter Hillary Clinton. The significant evangelical vote in purple states like Ohio, Iowa, and Michigan would be certain to come out in full force if "man of God" Huckabee was their torchholder.

While it's easy to laugh off Huckabee's chances right now, remember how the low-profile Governor of Vermont came from out of nowhere to become the Democratic frontrunner by the fall of 2003? And you can be sure there are Republican strategists out there playing the same numbers game in their head as I am, and they could easily direct the party establishment to rally around Huckabee if current trends continue. The already embattled Republican Party desperately wants to avoid a civil war, and the nomination of either McCain, Giuliani, or Romney would likely give them one.

It's still too early to speculate too heavily on what will be happening politically next year at this time. As Howard Dean (and John Kerry for that matter) can attest to, things can change dramatically in just a few short weeks in primary politics. And that's why I raise a red flag about a potential Huckabee candidacy now. If the 800-pound gorillas start looking less and less scary, the ensuing vacuum at the top could alter the landscape on a dime, and whether the new man of the hour is Huckabee or someone else, the Democrats had better be ready for him when he comes.

Was Former President Ford Right to Pardon Nixon?

Ever since the death of former President Gerald Ford last week, pundits from all political persuasions have been retroactively validating Ford's controversial decision to give Richard Nixon a full pardon. The logic, parroted by all the geriatric journalists who have spent the last nine days lavishing praise upon Ford, is that it would have been a horrifically traumatic ordeal for the country if Nixon had been prosecuted for his role in the Watergate Hotel break-ins.

Given that I wasn't even born until three years after Watergate scandal crashed and burned, I'm in no position to support or reject this new conventional wisdom for this specific case, but I completely reject the implication that the President should be above the law "for the good of the country's morale". If the President guns down a nun in Central Park at high noon, should we also accept his successor's decision to grant a full pardon to "spare us from the national embarrassment" of prosecuting a former President for his crimes? Where is the threshold in which the crimes a President commit are deemed severe enough that he or she is brought to justice by the legal system he or she was ordered to uphold? Or does no such threshold exist?

The logic here is not only insulting, but dangerous. It reminds me of the frequent Republican talking point that criticism of the war in Iraq should be muted lest we "send the wrong message to the troops." Just as it's inconvenient for politicians who foolishly get the country involved in pointless and disastrous wars to face scrutiny for their actions, it's equally inconvenient for lawbreaking Presidents to face the same legal consequences for their actions as Bob in Cleveland does. But the real disservice to our country is hold our elected leaders above criticism and above the very law they were elected to uphold. If only someone could articulate this obvious logic to Bob Schieffer, or virtually anyone else in the punditocracy, who have mindlessly defended Nixon's pardon with the same one-dimensional logic this past week.

My New Year's Resolution

At this time of the year full of fresh starts and new beginnings, I make the following pledge to all of you. In the year 2007, I will be more partisan. I have been way too easy on Republicans in the past year....an inexcusable oversight given how vile their agenda is. The conservative movement is reeling, and 2007 must be the year that we deliver the knockout blow to put it out of its misery.....to turn it into a puddle underneath our bootheels. Only after we've heard the conservative movement's bones crunch under our jackboots can we turn the Republican Party into the serious opposition party that it was in previous decades. It won't come easy, but if the good guys' soldiers surge ahead with tireless resolve and merciless partisanship, 2007 can become the worst year for the conservative movement since Barry Goldwater's landslide defeat in the 1964 Presidential election.

December's GOP Asshat of the Month

There were no clearcut winners for 2006's final month in terms of a GOP asshat, but the guy who looks to be on the disappointing end of a huge gamble is John McCain. Apparently under the assumption that a troop withdrawal from Iraq was imminent, McCain's official position on Iraq in the past few months is that the only workable solution is to deploy MORE troops. McCain's logic, politically, appears to have been that calling for a troop "surge" while everybody else is calling for troop withdrawal would allow him to stake out a position hawkish enough to win over Republican primary voters and give a hindsight reminder to all voters in 2008 that "if we had just done what I had recommended, we wouldn't have been humiliated by cutting and running from Iraq with our tails between our legs." It's not bad political logic, but unfortunately for McCain, it backfired. George Bush has actually taken McCain's advice and is deploying thousands more troops to Iraq. Unless a miracle occurs and this troop surge produces positive results, McCain no longer has a leg to stand on with his Iraq position in the campaign. It sometimes seems as though George Bush's primary reason for being on this Earth is to deny John McCain the Presidency.

I thought long and hard about who to coronate as the GOP Asshat of the entire year of 2006, and settled on two very worthy contenders. The runner-up is Virginia Senator George Allen, who was the frontrunner for the 2008 Presidential nomination only six months ago, but after a series of astounding self-imposed campaign gaffes, couldn't even get re-elected to a second term in the U.S. Senate. It was said by a number of analysts that Allen would have probably won a second term if he had not said a word or spent one minute on the campaign trail this year....and that only by opening his mouth did he ruin his career. That's probably a fair assessment. The Asshat Supreme of 2006 has to go to Florida Congressman Mark Foley, however. Here's a guy that flaunted his pedophilia to every male teenage page that came to Washington, practically begging to be outed. Rather than recognize that his personal problem represented a golden opportunity for political exploitation and step down, Foley (and his party's leadership) took a pointless gamble and stood by their man....0nly to have the scandal blow up in their faces at the worst possible moment. Without the Mark Foley scandal, the Democrats may not have had the momentum to win back the House of Representatives this year. It can be legitimately argued that Foley was a bigger factor in the GOP's loss of majority party status than George Bush this year.