The Washington Times

As we mull the implications of the November elections for what comes next in Iraq, it’s worth keeping in mind that this was, in fact, the third time voters have had an opportunity to weigh in on the subject. I think that there are some reasonable conclusions to be drawn from the electoral judgments voters have rendered. But if people fail to look at all three and concentrate exclusively on the most recent, they are going miss some important aspects of our current predicament.  The first thing to note is that the surprising midterm Republican pickup of seats in 2002 took place against the backdrop of a rather one-sided debate about going to war in Iraq. True, some House and Senate Democrats voted against the congressional authorization of the war. For this, they have earned the lasting gratitude of their party’s left wing. But many Democrats joined most Republicans in support of the use of force against Saddam Hussein if he failed to comply with U.N. resolutions.    

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The Washington Times

Generally speaking, elections are about comparative judgments. It’s not so much a matter of “What do you think of Mr. A?” and “What do you think of Mrs. B?” It’s “What do you think of Mr. A compared to Mrs. B?” Whom do you choose between the two?     

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The Washington Times

Beginning a little less than a year ago, Democrats set expectations for today’s elections at levels ranging from high to highest: They were going to win back control of the House for the first time since 1995 and the Senate as well. The reasons for this coming victory were an increasingly unpopular war undermining the Republicans’ key advantage on national security issues; a Republican-controlled Congress that, in their telling, was a slough of corruption and complacency; and the alternative program playing to their own strengths on domestic policy they were going to offer voters.    

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The Washington Times

Here’s an observation for one week before the midterm: Throughout the Bush administration, Democrats have generally believed that they are poised on the brink of victory, which makes sense to them as a matter of right: They deserve to win because Republicans deserve to lose. Republicans, for their part, have generally believed that Democrats have it about right: The Republican Party fears defeat is at hand, and that, in truth, the party has it coming.    

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The Washington Times

Is the GOP position in collapse, freefall, meltdown? For such is the impression you could get. For example, in Virginia, a reliably Republican state in presidential voting, a once-popular incumbent senator, once expected to be a credible candidate for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination following his easy re-election this year, is in trouble, or such is the impression you could get. A major newspaper (not this one) has gotten into the habit of referring to the race as a “virtual tie.” If the Virginia seat goes Democratic, it’s hard to see how Republicans won’t be losing their Senate majority.    

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The Washington Times

There was one consistently amusing poll question asked in the run-up to the 2004 presidential primary season. It asked people whether they would vote for George W. Bush or the Democratic nominee for president. More people said they would prefer the Democrat.    

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The Washington Times

If I had to sum up the conventional wisdom a month before the congressional elections, it would be this: If Democrats can’t win control of the House this year, they really are lame. The trouble with that analysis is that it vastly understates the difficulty of picking up 15 seats in the House of Representatives.

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The Washington Times

When Karl Rove relinquished the position of deputy White House chief of staff earlier this year, supposedly in order to concentrate full-time on retaining the Republican majority in this year’s congressional elections, the most prevalent Washington reaction was that the move constituted a demotion. Mr. Rove, at the time, was barely (or perhaps not entirely) out of the woods from the independent counsel investigation into the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, and those who had been clamoring for (or at least eagerly anticipating) his comeuppance couldn’t resist imposing their narrative on this White House personnel move.

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The Washington Times

Every so often I retreat to the privacy of my cerebrum to debate the following proposition: Resolved, that the sole reason the United States remains democratic in character at the national level is the election of its president every four years, the Congress of the United States having become a dysfunctional and decadent institution. The majority of my neurons always vote to defeat the resolution, but it’s amazing how close the “ayes” have come.     

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