I find it very interesting that the Dem’s accused Bush as being illigitimate when he won the EC and even won it after numbrous recounts (some where dems did the counting and Rep’s couldn’t even watch) and S. Dashel took the senet majority leader position throught a back door deal and thinks he has a mandate to block Bush. Now that the people have spoken clearly that the dem’s are out they are still looking for a way to illigitimatly take back power.
Found it.
Pubs: 51
Dems: 47
Indie:1
Undetermined: 1 (I don’t know what this is…what races still is undecided?)
So the possibilities are:
Chaffee defects TO the Dems:
R. 50
D. 48
I: 1
?: 1
GOP has control.
Chaffee defects AND the unknown turns out to be Dem:
R. 50
D. 49
I: 1
So, without McCain, it still wouldn’t make a difference. And Izzy’s post is pretty much what I’ve always heard about McCain. Hard to imagine him defecting, but if he did, at MOST he would go independent, and that still leaves control with the Pubs.
So, no Jeffords Miracle this session, I don’t think.
Then again, if we’re counting on karma…
Well, I agree with their assessment of McCain as actually very conservative. But, I think what this “infatuation” with McCain says is mainly about the Republican Party in the Congress…about how few people of real principle there seem to be left in it, so that one has to sort of admire a man who has some principles, even if you agree with only a few of them.
I have to agree with Izzy on this one. McCain stands out in the Republican senate because he’s one of the few true conservatives there. (The rest of the pubby’s are really Fascists or Kleptocrats pretending to be conservatives).
However much he doesn’t fit in the modern Republican party, he doesn’t fit in with the democrats either. He could bail and become an independant, but I don’t see that happening because if he stays in the Republican party, he can chair a committee.
If He and Chaffe did swing majority power to the Dems, the core Republican voters would feel robbed (as they did when Jeffers switched). This would tend to fire them up for '04 and at the same time giving Bush someone on which to blame his failure to improve the economy or stop Al Queda.
I suspect that k2dave is alluding to this ‘we was robbed’ sentiment. But it’s unclear since he throws no less than 3 standard republican lies into one sentence. He could just be a spambot.
Hint to dave to avoid looking like a spambot, try to keep the talking points to 1 per sentence.
Landry’s runoff in Louisiana.
I was talking about the infatuation of “Democrats - and liberal Democrats, mind you”. So if you’re saying that Democrats don’t think the Republicans have any principles, hey, you may well be right…
Disagree with you here. I don’t think the Jeffords switch was a factor in the past election, and don’t see any reason for any other switches to have a greater effect.
Lousiana. There were like three Republicans and 1 Dem running. Apparently one needs to get some certain percentage of the vote and no-one did. There’ll be a run-off election between the Dem and whichever Repub. came out on top in a month or so.
Fenris
That’s Senator Mary* Landrieu*.
Mary Landrieu (not Landry) is facing a runoff 12/2 (I think that’s the date).
Isn’t it just as possible that Zell Miller (D. for now - GA) would switch the other way, if such were to be the tide in the affairs of men?
No matter what, we’re still going to have a split Senate. They’re still going to have to get along - straight party-line votes are rare beasts. The Pubbers can’t blame the Dems for everything anymore, so Lott’s favorite technique is out - that leaves convincement and compromise, just like it oughta be. Lott may hate it, but he’ll have to live with it.
Two Dems, actually. A black activist from New Orleans declared for the race in what he declared was an attempt to play spoiler against Landrieu. He got a few percent statewide, though I’m unsure whether that was enought to prevent Landrieu from reaching the 50% she needed.
Louisiana’s fucked-up election system is the result of not having party primaries. ISTR that it was the subject of a Supreme Court opinion a couple years ago, since it so frequently results in the officeholders being elected long after the federally-mandated election day. Obviously, the system survived the challenge.
Technically, there are two independents in the Senate now: Jeffords, who caucuses with the Democrats and Barkley of Minnesota, who just caucuses with himself.
Of course, Barkley’s gone on Jan. 3.
I assume that Carnahan is still on the job, but the clock’s ticking on her.
His record is not anti-gun control - he wrote or sponsored (I can’t recall) a bill to ban gun shows in the US. Of course, they tried to sell it on the idea of closing the ‘gun show loophole’ - except for the fact that no such loophole exists. All the laws that apply outside of gun shows also apply to gun shows. There is absolutely nothing different or special about them in regards to the law.
In any case, his bill contained quite a few things specifically designed to discourage anyone from ever holding a gun show. I can list specifically the ways in which it attempted to do this if anyone is interested, otherwise I’m not going to bother to look it up. The intent of the bill was to ban all gun shows in the US, and it was sold under the idea of closing a loophole that doesn’t exist. He is no friend of gun owners.
IzzyR’s Washington Times article squares quite nicely with most of the analyses I’ve seen of McCain’s political makeup. He is far more libertarian than liberal (look for the baseball diamond at the bottom of that slow-loading page).
Given free reign to vote his conscience, which he regularly does not do out of a fervent and apparently genuine deference to his current party, you may see him change course on some of the big-ticket social items, primarily separation of church and state and its close cousin, abortion, but I’m not very certain of that. My opinion is that he is only liberal in the sense that he has great respect for most minorities and cultures (except, apparently, the French) and doesn’t like enforcing morality through legislation (despite the fact that he regularly votes to do just that by toeing the party line).
In all other respects he is actually highly conservative, in my opinion. He’s in favor of school vouchers, Social Security privatization, and private gun ownership. His record demonstrates opposition, sometimes strong opposition, to finding solutions to global warming, drug decriminalization, preventing federal money from going to faith-based social services, and relaxing the death penalty.
However, McCain is in serious danger of being completely put out to pasture come the 108th Congress. The House has already ceded control to the religious right in the form of the steering committee, which now approves all cardinal assignments in the House, and is suspected (by me) of organizing a pogrom of moderate Republican Subcommittee Chairs in the House. If something similar were to happen in the Senate (and I don’t know for sure whether or not it even could happen), McCain may be attracted to the freedom of voting his conscience for a couple of years, then gracefully bowing out. You might see a rare switch from Republican to Libertarian, or perhaps a Libertarian-aligned independent status.
But not Democrat. No way, ever. I think the way he sees it, it was the Dems that put him up in the Hanoi Hilton for all those years, and I doubt he’ll ever forgive them for that.
One other comment about McCain. I don’t see any evidence that he is any more principled than any other politician. It’s not as if he has taken positions that have been deeply unpopular and threatened his career at the time only to be vindicated by the passage of time. To the contrary, his positions have been wildly popular at the time he took them. They were not greatly popular with his fellow party members, but they certainly helped McCain with his presidential ambitions at the time. And in the case of his attack on religious conservatives, they were clearly designed for just this purpose. He seems to me to be no more or less principled than any other opportunistic politician, though with his maverick streak his opportunism has expressed itself in an independence from party loyalty.
I wonder if you or someone could explain to me what exactly is the difference between an independent who caucuses with the Democrats and a Democrat. Is it just that back in his home district he is registered as an independent (who cares?) or is there some difference with regards to his Senate position, and if the latter, what?
Carnahan lost the special election. She’s out on January 3, as well.
Isn’t Carnahan out as soon as Talent’s victory is certified?
Oooh…didn’t realize that. But on some investigation I see that you are right.
I have read that the governor of Missouri has to certify the election. And since the governor was the man who appointed Carnahan and is also a Democrat, he might just sit on the results for a while.
Especially since the present governor beat Talent out for governor two years ago.
As for the difference between Jeffords and Barkley, it’s strictly for organizational purposes. Somebody has to be the majority leader. And the majority leader gets to set the agenda.
But the word “majority” here is a bit deceptive. Right now there are 49 Democrats and 49 Republicans in the Senate. One independent (Jeffords) sides with the Democrats for organizational purposes (and is assigned committee seats on that basis) while the other independent (Barkley) is with no one.
So while the Senate may look like its 49-49-2, it’s really 50-49-1.
If Barkley were in the Senate for a full term, he would likely not be assigned to any plum committees because he doesn’t “play” for either team.
The House has one independent also, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, but he votes with the Democrats when it comes to choosing the Speaker and such. But it’s not like he’s the most popular guy on the Democratic side of the aisle.
If you think a Chaffee or McCain switch is a live possibility, I have to ask…why didn’t they do it before? Like, during the last session of congress, when they would have been going from minority status to majority status, with all it’s attendant perks. That would have made a lot more sense. Now, in order to just keep the majority status they already have, they would have to both switch together, which is an order of magnitude less likely than a single switch, and pray that Zell Miller doesn’t go the other way.
Speaking of whom, I think if anyone is going to switch parties in this congress, Miller is the most likely candidate, given the Republican sweep in his home state this year, and the fact that he would be getting his majority perks back.
—This is all delusional. Try this, from the Washington Times—
How cute of them. When he takes a position contrary to his own party, even on pure pork that has nothing to do with ideology, or if he runs against the chosen one, he’s a pro-choice, big government liberal. But when they need him to be a conservative for a little while, he’s back to being a conservative again. I don’t think the analysis here is wrong (it’ll be a cold day in hell if McCain switches), but it’s kind of funny to see his label shift with the wind and the current needs of spin.
I also wonder if this: “Such a defection … would constitute a self-obsessed, opportunistic, megalomaniacal act of unimaginable proportions.” deserves to be in the piece: though it is, I guess, par for the course with the Times. No one can possibly do anything contrary to current dogma because they think it’s right: the only concievable reason is because they either have a mental condition, or are looking out for number one. The same logic gets used by rabid liberals against Bush, and it’s just as sickening.