Politics Blog

The US economy is growing at the fastest pace since 1984:

Powered by tax cuts and low interest rates, the U.S. economy expanded at a 7.2 percent annual rate in the third quarter, the fastest growth in more than 19 years, the Commerce Department said Thursday. The first estimate of real gross domestic product was considerably stronger than the 6 percent consensus forecast.

Riding a strong economy, Reagan crushed Walter Mondale in 1984, winning 49 states. He allowed Mondale to win his home state of Minnesota because Reagan did not want to completely humiliate the former vice president. Mondale later completely humiliated himself by losing Paul Wellstone’s US Senate seat in 2002, thus becoming the only person to lose a statewide election in all fifty states.

-- PoliPundit

The Old York Times’ Tom Friedman says that Iraq is no Vietnam:

There is this notion being peddled by Europeans, the Arab press andthe antiwar left that “Iraq” is just Arabic for Vietnam, and we should expect these kinds of attacks from Iraqis wanting to “liberate” their country from “U.S. occupation.” These attackers are the Iraqi Vietcong.

Hogwash. The people who mounted the attacks on the Red Cross are not the Iraqi Vietcong. They are the Iraqi Khmer Rouge

George Stephanopoulos is predicting a Bush victory in 2004:

“It looks like we are coming out of the recession,” Stephanopoulos said. “Wages are starting to go up. Productivity is starting to go up. Generally if you look at polls across the country people respect President Bush even when people don’t agree with his policies. He has an amazingly strong hold on the Republican party. He’s not going to have a primary opponent. I think when you add all that up it puts President Bush in a very strong position going into the next election.”

Stephanopoulos said he expects the campaign will occur during a good economy and that national security will be the biggest campaign issue, something Democrats classically have had a hard time with. He was especially discouraged by front-runner Howard Dean’s campaign based on antiwar outrage, believing Americans will prefer Republican optimism.

“I was meeting with Bush officials today,” Stephanopoulos said, “and they were salivating to run against Howard Dean so they can accuse him of raising taxes.”

Despite his doubts about Dean, Stephanopoulos did not express confidence in any other primary candidates.

He said Gen. Wesley Clark has lost support because he lacks a defined platform, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was hurt by waffling on the war issue; Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., is seen as too old; and Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., is too young. He added that Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., originally polled high but hasn’t been able to excite Democrats or raise money.

This closely matches what I’ve been saying.

-- PoliPundit

PoliticsUS.com has posted a copy of RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie’s recent memo on GOP strategy.

-- PoliPundit

Wherever George W. Bush campaigns for a candidate, he brings victory.

Wherever Bill Clinton campaigns, he seems to bring the stench of failure along with him. Deborah Orin notes this remarkable string of Clinton failures:

Clinton helped launch [Weasel] Clark in a wave of media buzz by talking up the retired general as one of the Democrats’ top two stars - along with wife Hillary - and prodding allies like Mickey Kantor to back him.

But political novice Clark is sinking in most polls, down to also-ran status in Iowa and New Hampshire, and had a few deer-in-the-headlights moments at last Sunday’s debate.

Officially, Clinton now insists he wasn’t promoting the retired general, but other Democratics don’t buy it. “Yeah, and he never had sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” sniffed a rival strategist.

What now looks like Clinton’s Clark miscalculation comes on top of other missteps by the former president - like claiming the way to stop Arnold Schwarzenegger in California was for Gov. Gray Davis to copy his own strategy during the impeachment crisis.

Funny how Clinton disappeared at the end of that race.

Or take Clinton’s all-out 2002 push to beat President Bush’s brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, last fall. Jeb won by landslide. And many other Democratic candidates last fall asked Clinton to puh-leeze stay out of their states.

And guess whose big mug was grinning from ear to ear at Paul Wellstone’s “memorial service.”

-- PoliPundit

Bob Novak has a quick look at the Mississippi gubernatorial race, which has grown increasingly nasty and personal.

As I’ve noted before, there are three governorships up this year - Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi. Since they’ve lost California, Democrats need to win all three remaining races in order to retain their share of the nation’s governorships. That seems unlikely, given that all three races are very tight and Republicans have a slight partisan edge in all three.

The loss of Kentucky would be particularly hurtful for Democrats, since they’ve touted the race as a referendum on the “Bush-Fletcher economy.” President Bush will be stopping by in Kentucky to help Ernie Fletcher, the GOP candidate, who, if he wins, will be the first Republican governor of Kentucky in 32 years.

And then there’s the very interesting Louisiana race, which is just as scary for Democrats because 32-year-old Indian-American conservative Republican Bobby Jindal is winning endorsements from notable black leaders. If Jindal makes inroads into the black vote, he will have figured out a way to eliminate the Democratic advantage in the only state never to have elected a Republican US senator.

-- PoliPundit

I’d missed this story: A couple of weeks ago, NPR (yes, NPR!) had a collection of remarkable quotes from Weasel Clark’s former colleagues. You’ll love what some of them had to say about him in the second half of the audio clip.

-- PoliPundit

This picture was taken at the “memorial service” for Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN) exactly one year ago. It shows a former president and vice president grinning ghoulishly at the thought that a colleague’s death may help them hold on to his Senate seat. It reveals Democrat leaders for what they really are: America-hating, partial-birth-aborting, tax-raising, power-hungry career politicians who have no respect for the basic norms of human decency.

It is essential that we reduce the Democrat party to a permanent minority party in 2004. That’s the only way to preserve the American Dream.

Today is Wictory Wednesday. Every Wednesday, I ask my readers to volunteer and/or donate to the Bush 2004 campaign. If you’ve already volunteered and donated, then get a friend to join you.

If you’re a blogger, you can join Wictory Wednesday simply by putting up a post like this one every Wednesday, asking your readers to volunteer and/or donate to the Bush campaign. And do e-mail me so that I can add you to the Wictory Wednesday blogroll, which will be a part of the Wictory Wednesday post on all participating blogs:

-- PoliPundit

Dorothy Rabinowitz says the latest nine dwarfs debate was one long GOP campaign ad:

There is nothing new about candidates avoiding answers to hard questions, but the mode of that avoidance is always telling. Consider the moment when Gen. Clark was asked his own plans for balancing the budget–particularly since he’d made a point, in his campaign, of criticizing the administration on this issue. The general’s response–a list of entirely vague if impassioned references to the administration’s lack of responsibility–brought an unusual interruption from moderator Gwen Ifill, who asked, politely but firmly, if the general would be specific about what he would do. A request that brought the answer that he would opt for using money wisely and he would try to get the nation on the road to fiscal responsibility.

With his deer-in-the-headlights look–regularly evident whenever he was asked a specific question–it was clear that the general had bet his chances on winging it, and was now coming face to face with results. His platform is, quite simply, opposition to the war–his credential, his status as a former general who has discovered there beats in his breast the heart of a true Democrat. Don’t ask him for details, policies, programs.

Details and programs flow somewhat more plentifully from his competitors. Nothing equals Dennis Kucinich’s spectacular specifics, including his plan for a Department of Peace. Still, it is clear from the unvarying flow of bile emanating from them that the main program on the minds of the Democrats this campaign season is the contest to exceed one another in contempt for the president, for the war the nation has engaged. If the Republican National Committee has any sense, it will be busy making recordings of events like these debates, and cutting them into snippets for airing during the presidential campaign. It will make quite a show.

-- PoliPundit

Will Saletan notes yet another in the long litany of Weasel Clark’s hypocrisies.

-- PoliPundit