For Bush, a Test in the Midterms--E. J. Dionne Jr.

[rodeodance]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/02/AR2006010200975.html?referrer=email
For Bush, a Test in the Midterms

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, January 3, 2006; Page A17

Elections at midterm can be low-interest affairs or immensely important. This fall's congressional elections will be a big show with large consequences, because 2006 is looking a lot like the political years 1958, 1966 and 1978, all of which heralded major political transformations.


...........

The 2006 elections will be a test of the audacious Karl Rove-George W. Bush plan to launch a long-term Republican Era. They foresee an alliance of corporate interests and religious conservatives, with the South as its home base. Business provides the money. Middle-class traditionalists furnish the troops.

But the alliance always threatens to disintegrate because its wings have very different priorities and competing values. Moreover, conservatives can't win elections on their own. They need moderate votes, and significant support outside the old Confederacy. Bush's carefully cultivated image as a strong, trustworthy leader in the war on terrorism brought around enough middle-of-the road voters to create the Republican monolith that is now our national government.
............

Bush and Rove's careful management of the politics of moral issues -- show the religious conservatives you're with them without alienating moderates -- collapsed during the Terri Schiavo controversy. The administration and its allies turned out to be well to the right of the national consensus on end-of-life issues and were widely perceived by moderates as pandering to the religious right........

[gumby]

1. Sorry, E.J., but stop being so stooopid.

It's the voting machines dude! You can spout electoral 'analysis' all you want, but it's meaningless.

The Repubs won in 2000, 2002 and 2004 because The People's votes WERE NOT counted. Analise reality, why don't you?

[terryg11]

2. errrnnn!!!

while the voting machine fiasco is a likely culprit, what EJ says does have merit. Talk to anyone else out there? Unless you are lucky/unlucky enough to live in an area with no Bush voters you would probably know that there are a ton of people who voted for Bush for exactly the reason Dionne writes. Press them on it and they get defensive and stammer and usually pissed because "how dare you question such a good man" but they are out there. We gotta reach the people too.

[gumby]

3. Well, hell, my family talks like that.

However, whatever they, or Dionne may say; it's just words on the wind.

It DOESN'T MATTER what ANYONE says if The People's votes AREN'T COUNTED.
Get it?

[terryg11]

4. yeah I get it

I was reading Bev Harris' warnings what, three years ago when she and others would pst here daily on the whole voting machine deal. I agree it probably was a problem in some areas but if you can't convince people you are right on this and other subjects you're not going to get anywhere. Obviously Dionne hasn't been convinced that thre was voting machine fraud or he's just commenting on the upcoming midterms.