Sunday, October 14, 2007

Republicans are downcast, depressed, and demoralized. Bush is unpopular. Cheney is even more unpopular. Scandals continue to bedevil congressional Republicans, and it's hard to see the GOP taking back either the House or Senate in 2008. History suggests it's not easy to retain the White House after eight years in power (viz. the elections of 1960, 1968, 1976, and 2000). And the Republican presidential candidates seem problematic, each in his own way.

In that real world, conservative policies are working fine, and liberals are providing little in the way of alternatives. The Bush tax cuts have been thoroughly vindicated: National wealth is up, unemployment is down, and the federal deficit is lower than the day the 2003 tax cuts were passed (though the Bush administration seems incapable of explaining any of this). The Republican-passed Medicare prescription drug benefit is working well and coming in under cost. And does anyone lament the fact that the last big Democratic idea--HillaryCare--failed to become law? Would American health care be better off if Republicans had rolled over and let it pass?

On the Hill, we're about to have a big debate over eavesdropping and wiretapping--areas where Bush's policies have kept the country safe, and helped foil terror plots abroad too. The Democrats haven't figured out that they are being led over a substantive and political cliff by the ACLU. Bush's two Supreme Court appointments are turning out to be exemplary--the Court should be a big issue in 2008--and Clarence Thomas's memoir is the No. 1 bestseller in America.

Have you noticed we're winning the war in Iraq--despite the assurances of Democrats, including their Senate leader, that the war was already lost? It's going to become increasingly clear in the next year that the problem with the Bush administration has not been too much force, too much strength, too much support for democrats abroad. The problem, especially in the second term, was too little of all these.

Labels: fuckfacebillkristol