The country is almost certainly due for a lurch to the left in 2008. Democratic candidates are building their war chests week after week even as their GOP counterparts are husbanding resources. Many Republican congressmen – finding the constraints of serving in the minority stifling – are retiring, taking away the advantage of incumbency even as the country’s general mood is running contrary to the conservative experiment. In the Senate, more GOP seats are to be defended than those belonging to the other party. To acknowledge these facts is not necessarily to celebrate them.
A change is coming.
How much of a change, and how enduring it will be are the questions that I’m asking myself.
Study after study has shown that a plurality of people in the US describe themselves as conservative, even if many among that group owe no special loyalty to the Republican Party. Which is only fair, seeing that the Republican Party has recently demonstrated that it has no particular loyalty to conservatism: Ostensibly serving as the party of “values” and small government, too many Republican incumbents showed that once they’d gained a majority they only really valued power. Whether in its own right, or as a means to a venal end meant little in the minds of those who elected them to exercise fiscal discipline to constrain the size of the federal bureaucracy, only to see them extend it. And then of course there was and is the war, and all those angry people over there claiming that they had been lied to, claiming that it was all a horrible, unsalvageable mess.
It doesn’t really matter much that the economy continues to hum along, withstanding (for now) the dual shock of record oil prices and writhing credit markets. That unemployment remains at historic lows. That revenues are up and the annual contribution to the deficit narrows. That the stock market sets record after record.
The Republican Party’s traditional advantage in the domain of national security – which ought to be a dead solid lock in times like these – has been badly damaged by the shouting of those who insist on failure and a narrative of incompetence. As if any thing so truly radical as attempting to draw the venom from a toxic culture was ever going to be easy. Nor for any sense of historical proportion and scale, does it seem to matter that even 4000 dead servicemen after 5 years of more or less continuous warfare – each and every one of them a personal tragedy – would have represented less than a day’s ordinary wastage in the trenches of the Somme. That nearly that many fell on the first day of Normandy. That about that many Americans die on our highways in any given five week period – and for what?
But it’s one of the features of our Republic that we grow restless after a while and chuck the bums out. Whichever set of bums happen to currently be atop the heap. Change is good. Or, even if it isn’t good, it is inevitable. And anyway, the democratic process beats civil insurrection all hollow.
So, how much change? That all sort of depends, doesn’t it? How far can the energized hyper-partisans of the “netroots” pull more or less mainstream candidates like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to the left in the primaries without fatally wounding them in the national election? How can Obama – a candidate that, things being as they are I wouldn’t personally vote for but whom I would be resigned, if not content to see win the general race – overcome the advantages of the Clinton machine? A machine that I have seen quite enough of, thank you very much. For all that, how does Clinton, with all the advantages attendant to the machine, manage to overcome her very high negatives in the national race? Both will have to win votes from the middle. Obama’s message and style make that much easier to do, but there stand the usual Clinton-era “War Room” suspects athwart his path.
They will run together – I am even more certain of this now than I was months ago.
When it comes to Congress, I am not a seat counter but I predict that the House will achieve a Democratic majority sufficient to override presidential vetoes, but the Senate will not. Which ordinarily wouldn’t matter with a unified government, but with a party no longer unified and disciplined by their loathing of George W. Bush this alignment might tend to noisily expose the differences within the Democratic Party: An organization riven at least as much by factionalism and narrowly drawn, identity-based interests as is the GOP, if not more so. And with Bush gone, all will not suddenly be sweetness and light between the Party in the White House and the Party in Congress. Hillary is a strongly opinionated person, but Mr. Byrd over in the Senate is fiercely proud of his prerogatives. As are they all.
What does all this mean?
By January of 2009 the Iraqis had better have gone a fair distance towards sorting their affairs or they will be in for serious trouble and no one could later say that they weren’t warned. In truth, by that time we will have done for them all that can reasonably be asked of us, at least in the way of serious fighting by a 100,000+ strong military cohort. Bombs will still be blowing up in market squares of course, and there will still be nighttime violence. It won’t be perfect – we aren’t perfect with a 230 year head start – but it already looks like the outlines of something acceptable are forming. Reason enough to hope.
We will have a huge discussion in Congress on health care. Radical restructuring options will be proposed and vast entitlement programs debated. Industry and interest groups will defend the status quo vigorously. The costs involved will be staggering. They’ll settle for an SCHIP-style, half-a-loaf expansion. For the children. See you next year.
The really interesting work will be done in the Supreme Court. Justice Stevens is 87 years old, and Justice Ginsberg – who’s only 74, but who has a tendency to nod off in court – has been holding on seemingly in spite. If President Hillary Clinton nominates their replacements the court’s character will remain essentially unchanged. But Justice Kennedy, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan and who has been the court’s swing vote since Justice O’Connor retired, is 71. If Hillary gets to nominate not one but three SCOTUS candidates we could be in for a wild judicial ride – except for this: She will be pulled to the left by her natural constituency, but her native caution will probably cause her to tend towards the center for a third nominee – so long as the third position opens up in her first term. Because you know she’s going to be thinking about that second term before being sworn in for the first one.
If the third seat doesn’t open up until 2013, the Republican Party fails to convincingly develop a system of government that isn’t “Democratic Party-lite plus tax cuts and defense” and Hillary wins a second term despite the disappointments she’ll undoubtedly deliver to the netroots and the outrage she’ll surely engender on the right, watch out for the SCOTUS balance of power to shift towards sudden activism.
The gay lobby has been generous to the Party, and very, very patient. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” will dry up and go away, and frankly, few will lament its passing. That is, until Courts of Military Appeal settle anti-discrimination lawsuits on policies for health care, insurance and fair housing. These will be cited in civil courts as controlling federal precedence, which was really what it was all about to begin with rather than any “right to serve.” The world will continue to spin on its axis.
When that’s done, the domestic agenda will be essentially complete. Gays and health care. And something to do with the United Nations. And France.
France is the destination. That’s where we’ll be going.
Meanwhile, over in France, Nicolas Sarkozy – the most pro-American French president in, well: pretty much forever – waited until his country was crippled with a transportation strike to announce that he and his wife Cecila are on the splits. They’d made and mended before, each of them taking to bed alternatives during previous times of marital strife. Each of them having left a previous marriage to join with each other. The sort of thing which – pace Rudy Giuliani – would make him unelectable for dog catcher through most of the United States. Except of course in New York and maybe San Francisco, where any authentic aversion to or appreciation of such displays of marital shilly-shallying are subordinated to crass political calculations of benefit and gain.
We’ve got a long way to go to get to France.
Over in Iran the centrifuges will spin. And the US military will plan, hold and await further instructions, now thoroughly convinced of the fact that, for too many Americans, the lives they are asked to sacrifice will be valued less by any inherent worth attaching to the missions they are sent forth to accomplish than by the party affiliation of the President that sent them there.
That should be healthy.
Lex:
The country may not shift as far left as you think. Right now, the only people watching the election are hard core political jumkies. A lot can change between now and ’08.
The same for congress. They have a lower approval rating than any congress in history. People are fed up, and if things continue to improve, it may not be as dire as you think. As the democrats continue their in-fighting (Pelosi and Reid), and people see how inept they are, choices could be re-evaluated. As the old saying goes, we’ll see. This goes for possible changes in other countries as well.
Oh, Man! I hate your version of the future, but I worry you could be right. Guess I’ll just cry all weekend.
Lex,
Millions of people hate both of the Clintons for
their “crimes against Americans”. Getting them
to register &/or vote is the task. Sometimes I
think scheduled elections WITHOUT a limit to
when campaigning can BEGIN is MADNESS!!!
Sine Nomine
Well, I survived the Carter administration as a 3rd class AT, and you have no idea how badly being in the post Viet Nam military sucked with that C in C unless you were there. The country survived, too, and I suspect will again regardless of who gets elected. Hopefully without another 9-11, but I’m less confident of that.
As an aside, am I the only one who’s seeing Hillary take on Richard Nixon’s profile? Haldeman and Erlichman would fit right in with her staff… Maybe I just need some exercise.
Interesting analysis.
I can see Obama being VP, but I’m not yet convinced that he would want to be #2 for 8 years biding his time for 2016. Hillary wouldn’t necessarily need him to carry Illinois (read Chicago).
As far as Democrats all holding hands and signing songs as they occupy Congress and the White House (as the Republicans did from 2000-6), as a cautionary example here in Illinois there’s a Democrat Governor and Democrat majorities in both houses of the General Assembly, and things are a complete clusterf***. Overtime sessions, double-crosses, line-item vetoed budgets, etc. Lots of people are sick of it, and we’re the ones who suffer through reduced services.
“…so long as the [SCOTUS] third position opens up in her first term…”
I would hazard that she would put a more center judge on SCOTUS in her second term–once re-elected she’s no longer beholden to any group, she can do what she pleases.
Too many Republicans that aren’t conservative. Way too many. They are just Democrats dressed in drag. Rudy needs to have a (D) next to his name. Sad that this is our choice yet Hillary in office will be flat out dangerous. Here is some Hillary things to consider. Be very afraid.
YouTube Video about Hillary and election fraud-
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7007109937779036019
Captain …
I tend to agree with rpl. It’s early days yet. And the Democrat’s latest misbehavior in the Harry Reid letter [brilliantly countered by Rush Limbaugh] is a stunningly stupid misstep. Reid made an amateur’s mistake — a threatening letter on Congressional stationery, co-signed by other Democrats whose minds had also gone temporarily on strike. As General Honore said in New Orleans after Katrina … “Are you stuck on stupid, son?”
So, don’t despair. Yet. Young Lochinvar may yet ride out of the west.
Marianne Matthews
I think you vision of the future is way too pessimistic. The thing that Americans should be concerned about is the system of nominating a President is moving out of the hands of the people due to the changes to the primary system.-Thus Hillary becomes annoited the nominee without winning a single election, over a year before the general election.
As for the shift of the country, the Congress will be split, but the good news is that the Republicans will have to come back to the center if they hope to win a decent number of seats. Anything that gets the republicans away from the hold of the evangelicals is a good thing. Same will be true for the Dems.
Regardless of who wins-the pressure will be on to pull out of Iraq. That, I predict will not be as bad as every one says it will be. They will go through a violent spasm then they will finally ger the strongman they have been waiting for. The important thing will be that Americans will not be in the middle of it. And as for the Iraqis-well they will have brought in on themselves. Our work was done a long time ago.
I’d also submit that predictions about SCOTUS are meaningless since most of the justices have acted differently than expected once on the Court. That said-I’d rather have centerist judges than those beholden to the right.
The point is that America will begin talking about America-not lofty visions about remaking the world in some kind of neo-con image. Just havng that discussion will be good for the country and will allow GWB to begin joining the ranks of Warren G. Harding in terms of legacy or lack thereof.
Lex, take a breath. Pessimism doesn’t suit you.
I grant you it looks dire, but we are still a year from the elections, and that’s a very, very long time for voters to be paying attention to the prospective candidates. rpl is right on that part, I think.
I too survived Jimmah Carter’s disaster of a presidency, with a military spouse and the attendant lethargy of the populace at large. We survived the gas shortages (fueling on alternate days, long gas lines, shortages) and the sky high interest rates (13.5 percent for a home loan in late 1980 and it went up to 18.5 percent later on).
I have faith and hope, both a requirement, that Americans will pay attention when the time is right and we will get a President who will live up to the needs of the times. Carter was a fiasco, but it led to Reagan, who brought us out of that malaise and eventually to prosperity.
We tend to get the right people we need for the times we need them. I don’t have a clue who that might be at this point, but I have faith and hope it happens. No one expected Bush to be the right person until he gave his Ground Zero speech standing on the rubble. He’s made mistakes, but who hasn’t.
We are a strong people with a strong will. Hopefully, we’ll get our collective acts together in time for the elections and select the right person.
Have faith.
And I wonder just what kind of tool our military will be…
Will they have what they need? The latest and greatest that works…and enough of it? New humvees and trucks and refurbished tanks? New fighters in numbers that will reduce the over-all age of our fleet? Money for work on the transport planes and helicopters we’re racking up flight time on fast? I can go on, but in short, rebuild a military that in many ways coasted through the 90s…
Big question: Will the competition in the world give us the chance? Or leap out if or when they smell weakness – physically or spiritually? They might even be moving now…
Oh, and are we going to give rocket technology to China again?
Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, will do there best…
Will they have what they need?
My micro-prediction: public monies will increasingly go directly to the entitlement class in ever-increasing amounts, while the public infrastructure (where constitutionally the money should be directed) continues to crumble.
Skip, there are times when I frankly wonder how much of what you write here you actually believe: The “Republicans will have to come back to the center”? If they were any more to the center on spending or social policy they’d be in Nancy Pelosi’s left pocket. There is the war of course, but if you want the foreign policy establishment to return to the kind of “realism” that led to ever-escalating terror attacks you’ll have to show how suffering the occasional catastrophe is somehow superior to the alternative of taking the fight to the foe.
It’s also difficult to understand what you mean by this:
If you mean those theocons jurists that have in the last several years overturned Roe v. Wade, made public school children recite the Lord’s Prayer and instituted Mosaic law, then I fully understand you. Apart from the fact, of course, that none of those things actually happened.
Because conservative jurisprudence is defined by a reverence for the Constitution as it’s actually written and interpreted – as best as can be – by the intent of those who framed it. Provisions having been made inside that same document for a process of revision and amendment by a legislature accountable to the people for their employment and to the several states for ratification. An inherently conservative process, I grant you, but one that has largely kept us from lurching into any kind of enthusiastic governmental absurdity.
The alternative being the permanent elevation of unelected and, for all intents and purposes, unimpeachable star chamber of robed elitists who discover to their joy that their personal policy preferences are enshrined as freshly discovered rights which somehow emanated into the penumbra when no one was looking.
Which, hey: When it comes to foisting unpopular law upon the sheeple it beats using the legislature. They’re accountable.
I believe what I write-all of it. Maybe 20 years ago I toed the conservative line, but life experience has changed me for the better. I’m not going back to that world ever again.
When Rudy Giuliani can espouse a position that a majority of Americans agree with and earn the ire of a noisy wing of the Republican party-it is hardly in the center.
Which is why he has to continue to use the words “strict constructionist judges” over and over again to appease those people.
Both parties have been co-opted by elements that have taken them away from their roots. That’s what makes the whole thing so sad. Neither side gets the leadership that it should. And politics ends up being about trivia.
The only reason Bush has even been half as successful as he has been is because the Dems have been so stupid.
In today’s twisted political environment, President Nixon would be considered a Liberal, given many of the programs and policies of his administration.
I really pity whoever wins the next presidential election, for they will have to endure and try to correct the many serious errors and omissions of the current Administration. Indeed, the legacy of this Administration will be a drag on our country’s morale, prestige, and progress for many years. Whoever is elected, they will inherit a plethora of prickly problems not of their making.
Today’s drop in the Dow is merely a minor prelude to major economic problems in the years ahead. Debt – both private and public debt – is far too excessive and cannot continue indefinitely. Eventually, the piper must be paid, and it will be painful. It has been debt that has fed our ever-growing GDP, masking many fundamental and growing social and economic problems. And debt has produced much higher tax revenues – revenues that are incredibly still not enough to cover our monstrous federal budget, thus creating an untenable federal deficit.
Eventually – as we are seeing now in the sub-prime and housing market – these faulty fiscal policies will come home to roost. The stage is set for a recession, and for a long period of debilitating stagflation; much like was seen during the Carter presidency.
However, there exists a possibility of much worse economic repercussions. Dollar-based oil will inevitably climb well above $100 /bbl. crippling our oil dependant economy. But as the dollar continues to fall against the Euro, the OPEC nations will pull their dollar-based investments out of our US Treasuries – dollars that mitigate our horrendous trade imbalance and fund our wars – and invest instead in Euros. If that ever happens (and it may, as Iraq did before the invasion, and some OPEC members now hint) our economy would be devastated.
Economic tribulation is but one serious predicament the next Admiration must grapple. Bush’s legacy produces many: A failed foreign policy that must be rebuilt, brick by brick; departments filled with cronies unqualified for the position; low morale and loss of key career (and apolitical) personnel in many federal departments, especially the CIA; tax structure that cannot support expenditures; chinks in the Constitution; added layers of bureaucracies; a greater terror threat than before; no Middle East peace progress; corruption; lobbyist excesses; loss of stature and international prestige; de-regulation of environment protections; weakening of the separation of church and state; rejection of international organizations, corporate welfare; failure to successfully address the monumental problem of Social Security; loss of the middle class; failure to improve healthcare; oil dependency and failure for developing viable alternatives; failed neoliberalist policies; and the list goes on.
President Bush has set this country up for a great fall. And it makes little difference if the next administration is Democrat or Republican – they will be overwhelmed with major problems on their watch not of their making. And they will be blamed. But they will have to prevail because they must, for our great nation.
As one after one we peel those “war on terrorism” bumper stickers off our cars the country is barrelling head long into European socialism.
What a siren song…
I’m with P-3W on this…pessimism doesn’t suit you. Honestly, I don’t think Hilary (as the first female President) would survive her first term in office. Nor do I think Barrack Obama would.
Please do not get me wrong – I do not want anything like that to happen. I just have a gut feeling that she wouldn’t.
That being said, I just don’t see the Dems winning in 2008 unless the GOP nominates someone that self-destructs in the middle of the race. I just don’t think they (the Dems) have it together at this point.
Then again, I’m an optimist.
fliterman – you forgot bird flu. And global warming. Apart from that, you’ve pretty much enunciated the sum of all fears. And you even brought in a single data point – today’s market results – and drawn a straight line to misery. Well done, best traditions of the service, etc.
See you on the bread line in a year or two. Or not.
I love the optimism, HFS. Gotta say that I wouldn’t trust your judgment at this time, though–the world’s just too beautiful of a place right now.
[For those not in the know, HFS welcomed her helo-pilot husband home from a year-and-a-half deployment only three days ago.]
re: life experience has changed me for the better
That comes through loud and clear in everything you write.
“The country may not shift as far left as you think. Right now, the only people watching the election are hard core political jumkies. A lot can change between now and ‘08.” RPL
… THAT’S because we already KNOW who we’re voting for…
We aren’t watching all of the election drama because we’re not still trying to figure out what box to check.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Change… it is a comin’!
Um… is there a Obama link on the bottom of this comment section?
“Join the Movement” link to barackobama.com
WTF?, Over?
I can’t stop laughing…
All things considered, while I’d prefer a Thompson or Romney in the Oval Office, I’d take Hillary over Obama for one real reason — she can be counted upon to do whatever is best for her, and occassionally that might be best for the country.
But it’s interesting, to me, to note how well she’s playing the game. People talk of Karl Rove categorizing the voters and targeting them specifically, the evangelical vote and the conservative vote and the dog catcher vote or whatever, but Hillary is doing an even better job than Bill or Dubya of targeting.
Single women, the poor earning under six figures a year, there’s not a week that rolls by without her proposing some new entitlement scheme. All she need is the votes of single women, a portion of the poor or opportunistic, and the hard-core democrats and she has the election locked up.
If she wins, hold on to your wallet first term, because she’ll cash in those chits for a second term. Second term, she’s going to be concerned with her legacy. As the first woman president it wouldn’t do to have historians question your policies. The second term will be all about Hillary, the first will be all about getting the second, and she’ll do it the same way — handing out taxpayer money to whomever she can buy a vote from, taking it from whomever wouldn’t vote for her anyway, and if anybody hasn’t noticed a boomer generation approaching a fixed income and retirement you’ve not been paying attention.
I bear Hillary no ill will in this — I expect it from any politician as a matter of course. I am simply impressed at how well she does it, and how little it has been trumpeted as a strategy.
And ya know what? The nation will survive. As will we all. We’ll adapt, overcome, persevere.
Don’t be so pessimistic, Lex — you’re talking about Americans, and we know a thing or two about out-lasting a Clinton in the White House.
– Max
If the 2008 election was viewed as WWII, this would be early 1940…”The Phony Campaign”…I agree with rpl the first commenter.
Nobody is giving money yet because, in my view, we’re all still “boycotting” sorta…
Once the primaries roll and Hillary looms, the wallets will be broken out and the $$ will flow…Mine will. And I gotta tell ya- if another SwiftVet org pops up that tickles me, I’m capitalizing it..I’m not sending $$ tothe disjoint organization of Mel Martinez…. (Republican operatives take note)
I gotta tell ya..any Republican on the list is a 1000% better than than HillBillery (except that nut Paul..).
She’s polarizing (men don’t like her and neither do women-real women that is)..Americans voted against the Clintonista’s, as much as anything, in 2000 and 2004..2008 will still make it close..
And if I’m wrong? Ahhh maybe it’s time to build on that plot o’land out west and get off the coast…
b2
The MSM will sacrifice itself in 2008 to elect the Democratic candidate, as Dan Rather did in 2004. Hillary is already their favorite. She’s also the perfect soulless political technician to leverage that to maximum advantage.
That’s missing the forest for the trees, however. The country will be left in an ungovernable state by the campaign, regardless of the winner.
Sir-
Not sure if you were in during the Carter Administration, but I was, and I vividly remember the words to us of SecDef Harold Brown:
“You should worry less about your pay and more about getting the President re-elected.”
That’s what we’re going to get in a third and fourth Clinton Administration: we’ll be used as a social lab and be cut back so as to pay for every social program available, and then be used only for vanity wars (think Bosnia) to get the President a shot at a Nobel Prize.
Mike
Lex, filterman also forgot to mention the heartbreak of restless leg syndrome and toe fungus in his litiany of woes placed at the feet of GWB… in my opninion filterman is a relentless and insufferably verbose ivory tower gasbag hopelessly enthralled by his own certainty on all matters… and as such best ignored. Best
SE, I think I love you…
Indeed, the legacy of this Administration will be a drag on our country’s morale, prestige, and progress for many years. Whoever is elected, they will inherit a plethora of prickly problems not of their making.
BS of the highest order.
The angst of the general populace that they will inherit, assuming it is a Dem inheriting it, is completely of their own making.
Their constant drumbeat of negativity and ginned up scandal, solely intended to sell the myth that a Dem Administration is all Jello and bliss, is the tiger that they have chosen to ride. When it turns around and bites them on the ass, they have no one to blame but themselves.
‘You may triumph on the Fields of Pelennor for a day, but against the Power that has now arisen there is no victory.’ I do not bid you despair, as he did, but to ponder the truth in these words…
If the democrats sweep to victory in the executive and legislative branches of Government and break the country as they have each time they’ve been there before, what of it. Hard working men and women will labor to fix it.
We tend to elect democrats when we’re not facing national extinction.
Mind you, by the time the democrats get kicked back to the curb they will have elevated every potential enemy that could hurt this country into a terrifying threat. Why else would anybody vote Republican? Taxes, public school choice, adherence to the rights handed the citizens of this country by its constitution, endless increases in taxes and spending aside, what value does anybody place in the Republican Party?
If there was a true conservative movement and party then people might vote for them before the democrats turned every situation into one of dire proportions and out of control spending. Alas we find ourselves with a choice between fools and knaves. We’ve been there before and its not as if our great statesmen had a stamp on their foreheads saying “Great Statesman” prior to election. Hell, we might get lucky!
The rose colored glasses that I put on last week do not extend to politics. The optimism is genuine. I just don’t see the Democrats having their poop in one sock well enough to win in 2008.
I heard tell they say that the optimists tend to win elections.
Oh, and having taken a peek at exactly who is on Giuliani’s foreign policy staff, I find it a bit, uh, interesting.
Heck, even Michael O’Hanlon’s helping HRC in issues military…
‘Today’s drop in the Dow is merely a minor prelude to major economic problems in the years ahead.”
Fliterman why do you even get out of bed each day?
Us fulltime traders see 2.6% drop in the Dow as a normal correction in a Bull market
Lex.
Even looking at worst case scenario with Hil in the WH and Dems in charge of both houses, I think you’ll then see some of the middle dems like Lieberman really move more toward the center and assert their independence. This I think may put a check on the WH plans. Also, I believe the Republicans need a swift kick in the a$$ to get them back to doing the peoples work.
“Many Republican congressmen – finding the constraints of serving in the minority stifling – are retiring, taking away the advantage of incumbency even as the country’s general mood is running contrary to the conservative experiment.”
I think it’s entirely possible that there is something else going on here. This might be a slightly more complicated case of “distancing oneself from the Bush administration”. I think it is entirely possible that Conservatives feel that so many people are unhappy with the way that the Republicans ran things for six years they they have decided that the best possible way to success in ’08 is to quitely discourage some of the party members from running again. Nudge them towards retirement.
Why? By doing this – by voluntarily ending their political careers, the Republicans can allow new, younger, bright stars to run against the Democrats in ‘ 08. These cute little faces (in my fatasy is the women of the IDF running, but that’s just me) will be able to look at voters and say “Yes, ew are Republicans but- Oh no sir, we are not those Republicans! I wasn’t in any public off the last 8 years.
They can compain saying that no, they didn’t like all those thinks that the evil Republicans were doing, but they’re here to change that.They can campaign freshly and plausibly deny and say lots of nice things that the poeple wan to hear.
Yes, the only for Repblican may be retirement.
Snake,
Along with the fungus and r-legs, don’t forget the Levitra and Flowmax!
b2
I was just teasing ya, HFS. Sorry if it didn’t come off right.
No worries FbL! Trust me, my sense of humor is firmly in place these days