Big Bounce Back for Democrats?

GOP partisans, who thought that their glory days would last forever (control of Congress and the White House, all at the same time) got a rude shock the other day. It appears that in South Dakota, Stephanie Herseth, a Democrat, won a special election last night to fill South Dakota's single House seat, which was left vacant after Republican Bill Janklow resigned a while back because of a drunk driving conviction. So much for the GOP dominance theory,  much favored by all the rightist pundits.

It's true that the margin of victory for Herseth was small, only about 2000 votes; but the results show a generalized slump in public support not only for GOP policies in the House, but also President Bush’s policies in Iraq. The Democrats also have an advantage that the Republicans currently lack;--they are united in their desire to take back the Congress and the presidency.

Worse yet (or better, depending on your point of view) the Republicans are starting to blame one another for their coming losses. Some Republicans like Sen. McCain support the war effort but wonder why no post-war planning was done to deal with the possibilities of an anti-occupation insurrection. Some Republicans wonder if they were snookered into supporting a war based on trumped-up, if not outright false “evidence” of weapons of mass destruction. To this date, of course, no WMD have been found.

Nonetheless the diehard Republicans  continue to support the Iraq war. Which is too bad for them.  News reports have it that the original source of false rumors of WMD were put out by Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi con-man who ingratiated himself with that pack of ner-do-well neocon artists advising Mr Bush on Iraqi policy. The neocons had been panting for war with Iraq for years. They wanted war,  Chalabi knew it and thought he could give it to them. In return he thought he'd be the next ruler of Iraq.  It hasn't worked out that way for Mr Chalabi. 

Now, ordinarily in a democracy, advisors who have been suckered by outside sources into giving advice which turns out to be disastrous are sacked. But that’s not true with the current administration. Each and every one of Mr Bush’s neocon advisors is still in office and (presumably) still giving out disastrous advice. Just how disastrous is reflected in the continuing car-bomb explosions in Iraq, which are meant as an object-lesson to any Iraqi who foolish enough cooperate with the United States in any capacity whatsoever.

Back in the USA, many voters look at what’s happening in Iraq and see a quagmire. They see little good coming out of a US occupation.  They blame (quite reasonably) the party in power for the way things are in Iraq.

It’s all well and good to talk about the great things the coalition is doing for the Iraqi people, but doing good deeds in Iraq doesn’t count much against the killings of two or three American soldiers and US civilian workers every day this occupation goes on.

And there is no end in sight, at least not with the current crew in Washington. Die-hard Republican legislators will continue to support the war until they are thrown out of office. Same goes for Mr Bush.

The American people are willing to give any president or policy a chance, but enough is enough. Despite what Mr Bush and the neocons might want, the American people are not in the mood to colonize the Middle East. They are not in the mood for pre-emptive wars to establish Jeffersonian democracies where they are (1) not wanted and (2) would never work even if they were installed at the point of a bayonet. 

In any event, the people in South Dakata (and in the rest of the nation) want to see a conclusion to the endless guerrilla war/occupation of Iraq. Under the current administration and  there is little chance of that.

The way things are going now, the GOP  stands to lose the fruits of its so-called 1994 “revolution” as well as the White House. Things are falling apart for the GOP.

And all the forces of the GOP noise machine; the talk-show hosts, the right-wing cable news shows, the rightist newspapers and their flacks (not to mention on the right-wing crazies on the blogs) won’t put humpty-dumpty back together any time soon.

What's needed  is a clean sweep by the Democrats in November.  

Punditwalla--