The Exercise of Vital Powers

It looks like the House and the Senate have switched control. Allen is behind by about 7k votes and although there will be a recount, it doesn’t look like that will help. Lieberman might just become the most powerful person in the Senate, forcing the Dems to move more to the right. This is probably a bad thing for the GOP’s chances to recapture the Senate, however if we can keep the White House and recapture the house in 2008 we’ll be good.

The mainstream media (and I include Fox News in that category) is labeling this as a referendum on Iraq. I don’t buy it. First off, the president’s party always loses lots of seats in the second midterm election. Second we lost about 6 seats due to our own incompetence and corruption: Foley, Delay, Ney, etc. There were more seats where Republican incumbents retired in largely democratic districts. The deck was stacked against our win from the beginning.

I was just on a blogger call with Jack Kingston (R-GA). He basically reiterated what conservatives & libertarians have been saying all summer: We need to go back to the GOP that gave us the Contract with America. We need to avoid scandal. The class of ‘94 was elected in part because of the House banking scandal. What is interesting is that Kingston doesn’t feel that there is a consensus that we spent too much or too little federal dollars.

The rumors of an RSC slate of leadership candidates is growing. Now is the time for Pence, Flake, Shaddegg and the others to take on the appropriators, take on the win at all costs leaders and push for a more fiscally conservative GOP.

Now that the GOP doesn’t have the majority, we can’t control the flow of debate in the Capitol. We will need to rely on alternative media outlets. Blogs, YouTube and other sources will me much more important to getting our message out. This is good because the GOP has never been able to frame the debate in our favor in the media. By building a grassroots support structure to get our message out while in the minority, we’ll be in a much better position to explain and sell our agenda when we do re-take the Congress.

As for the Democrats……

Speaker-to-be Pelosi is already talking about increases in the minimum wage, and spending more money on Medicare Part-D. Neither of these do I expect “Compassionate Conservative” Bush to veto. It will be interesting to see what the Dems decide to do about Iraq.

The Democrats also have unity issues. There were quite a few conservative democrats who were elected with the support of radical leftist groups.

Well, in 34 hours the polls will close in Georgia so I guess I can’t hold off predictions any longer.

National
Nationally, The GOP will retain the Senate and lose the House by a hair. The Dems will have a 1-2 seat majority. As for the Senate, Dick Cheney might be busy the next two years, however I suspect the threshold will be 51-47-2 in favor of the GOP. It will be interesting to see what Lieberman does. It will be more interesting to see what the pundits make of the NetRoots when Lieberman caucuses with the GOP.

This tracks the online betting market at Tradespot.

As for what I want to happen, I think giving the Dems control of the house will make the GOP stronger in 2008. Hastert needs to go. The appropriators need to go. Sometimes the best thing you can do is stand aside and let the other guy screw up.

Georgia
Governor: Sonny Perdue will win without a runoff
Lt. Gov: Casey Cagle will win w/o a runoff
Sec of State: Karen Handel will win w/ a 10pt lead
Attorney Gen: Baker will win w/ a 10pt lead
School Superintendent: Cox will win with a 10pt lead
AgCom: I’ve got no idea on this one. I’m leaning towards a Irvin win.
Insurance: Oxendine has that locked up. 20pt lead for him
Labor Comm.: As much as I want to see Brent win this one, I suspect it will go to Thurman
PSC: Stan Wise and Chuck Eaton win. However there may be a runoff in the Wise race. Libs tend to do well in that race, even if their candidate poses with half naked women.
Supreme Court: Hunstien will win by a slight margin. Wiggins got into this race a bit to late, and the completely unscientific polling I’m getting says Wiggins lack of experience as a judge hurts him.
Congress: Either Burns of Collins will win giving the GOP their only congressional capture this year.

The GOP will maintain their majorities in both the State House and Senate.

So I had a scary thought reading this blog post on the Club for Growth site yesterday.

What if the markets are rallying because a Democratic win will mean the GOP won’t be able to enact xenophobic immigration policies that will harm economic growth?

What if the market fears the loss of immigrant labor, spending and growth more than it fears rising taxes, increased regulation and more powerful labor interests?

That’s scarier than any of the zombie movies I saw last night.

On the bright side, this might finally trigger the divorce between the social and fiscal conservatives in the GOP.

The Republicans in Congress need a change in leadership. Hastert is providing none, and the Delay/Frist/Stevens triumvirate in the Senate is leading the GOP down the path of becoming the Democrats with a Bible.

The GOP needs new leadership in both the House and the Senate that will reign in run-away spending, stop wasting time on fluff issues and return the Republican Party to its limited government roots.

Once they’ve elected new leadership, they need to finish what they started in 1994: put forth a balanced budget amendment, end un-funded mandates, and put education back in the hands of the states where it belongs. Then they need to address major critical issues facing America: immigration, capital flight overseas, our burdensome tax code and an aging population.

Most of all, they need to apologize to the American people for losing their way. They need to acknowledge that they have become the beltway monsters they sought to stop 12 years ago. They need to reaffirm to the world and to our fighting men and women that we are behind them 100% and we won’t cut and run making their sacrifice meaningless.

Only until they do those things will the American voter begin to trust the GOP again. But we can’t do that if we lose the majority, and they won’t do it if they don’t get a wake up call.

That wake-up call is coming. According to the polling data, we will have a razor thin majority in the Senate and lose about 7 seats in the house. Hopefully this will be the wake-up call our elected officials in Washington need to stage a revolt and elect new leadership.

The good news is that Trader Joe’s will be coming to Atlanta. A Midtown and Sandy Springs store will be the first two with ten more to follow. Alas, I’ll still need to fly to CA to get my cheap single malt, as the dunderheads under the Gold Dome don’t’ allow liquor to be sold in places that sell non-liquor.

The bad news is the Patriot Act was renewed.

The sad news is Harry Browne (1996 & 2000 LP Presidential Nominee) has passed. While his foreign policy would have been a disaster and his proposals were out there, he had an eloquence that most in the LP lack. I still find myself using some of his lines to describe the failure of government.

These comments show that Newt really gets it (now):

In Mr. Gingrich’s view, the problem with the Tom DeLay era in Congress was that Mr. DeLay was “the Hammer.” He demanded loyalty above all else, and the Republican conference was too top-down. The party governed to maintain power, and so lost touch with its electorate. And here he adds a warning: “Our natural majority in the country is a very reform majority. It’s the taxpaying majority. It’s the people who do not trust Washington, do not like seeing their money wasted, are not impressed with pork–if anything, they’re irritated by it. And either the House and Senate Republicans are going to move substantially in the next few months or they’re going to run a very real risk of losing the fall election.”

… “From a Republican perspective they’ve got to be strongly in favor of passing the tax cuts permanently. And I think this goes back to the question of who votes in an off-year election. Our base are the people who work and pay taxes. Our base cares about abolishing the death tax permanently and it cares about extending the tax cuts.” And then the kicker: “If our base sees that it can’t rely on a Republican Congress to do something that’s profoundly Republican, I think there’s a grave danger.” He spells it out: Come fall, “people will just stay home.” (source)

Newt really borked the Contract with America and the impeachment. I’m really curious what he has to say now about what he did then, and what he learned from the experience. If I wasn’t planning on Law School in the fall I’d drive up to Cobb county and volunteer for is campaign.

You might be surprised, but the 2006 and 2008 elections are already being decided by the courts. How can this be?

Well, it started when Justice O’Connor announced her resignation and Chief Justice Rehnquist died. President Bush was able to nominate two justices to the Supreme Court - one replacing Justice O’Connor typically called the swing vote. By all accounts the court has moved to the right.

There are several abortion related cases working their way up the appellate system right now. Gonzales v. Carhart is a challenge to the federal partial birth abortion ban and Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood is a challenge to a New Hampshire state law requiring parental notification for minors wanting an abortion.

Should the Supreme Court uphold either of these laws (or the soon to be law South Dakota abortion ban), it would be a boon to the Democrats. Just like fear of Al Qaeda and Gays drove the Republican’s conservative base to open the checkbooks and run to the polls, the prospect of a Supreme Court over turning all or part of Roe v. Wade will mobilize the feminist base of the Democratic Party in a way that Kerry, Dean, or even their hatred of Bush, could never do.

The pro-life radicals in the Republican party may win their little victory in the battle over abortion, but they may cost us the culture war.

The prairie fire of ‘06, which threatens to clear Congress of its “Contract with America” deadwood.

As a political philosophy, the belief that “it is the job of government to widen the chance for development of individual personalities” is not merely lame and insulting, but dangerous. The endless widening and development of our personalities will require and legitimize the endless widening and development of our government. The threat goes beyond taxes, spending, borrowing and regulating that increase without limit. It culminates in a therapeutic nanny state that corrupts both its wardens and its wards. Convinced that they are intervening, constantly and pervasively, to assist the growth of people who would otherwise stagnate, the enlighteners don’t need coercion to enfold the people in a soft totalitarianism. The objects of this therapy, meanwhile, may grow accustomed to it, and ultimately prefer being cared for to being free; or conclude that being free has no value apart from being cared for.

An interesting opinion piece on why the Democrats continue to fail.

David Friedman has posted yet another unworkable plan for how the Democrat Party can capture the “libertarian vote” away from the GOP.

First off, I don’t disagree about his attack on the GOP, the current leadership in Congress and the White House is anything but limited government. I suspect even their tax-cuts were more an attempt to revitalize the economy and increase revenue that is was an effort to let working Americans keep what they earn.

Friedman’s proposal is that the Democrats should embrace marijuana legalization¹. This plan to “pull the libertarian faction out of the Republican party” won’t work. As was discussed on Catallarchy back in June, libertarians who find themselves identifying with the GOP don’t really care about drug legalization. Republican libertarians tend to be much more socially responsible than Democrat libertarians, or even Libertarian libertarians (ie LP members).

Do I support marijuana legalization? Probably. Is that issue so important to me that I’ll go along with all the other baggage the Democrats bring along: big labor, radical environmentalism, soak-the-rich tax policies and overreaching nanny-state regulations? Hell no.

The War on Drugs is a failure. It doesn’t stop the problem, it raises grave civil liberties concerns, and it costs lives. However ending the WoD does not have to mean legalization - and that is a crucial point the LP and many left leaning libertarians miss.

¹ For every one Libertarian who says the LP isn’t just about drug legalization, there seems to be about four that do something to disprove that notion.