Buchanan is the worst–a whiny blowhard who still doesn’t think Nixon did anything wrong. Libertarians are Republicans until they have taken advantage of democratic assistance to the point that they earn enough money to no longer need it, and then wish to deny it to anyone else through tax cuts. Buchanan “claims” to have been against the Iraq war from the start, but gets to have it both ways as he embraces the redeployment doomsday scenario and supports the surge.

I mail the letters to my congressmen, but I’m from Wyoming, and I know not one would dare cross Cheney.

Wrt the first part, what can we do to make your prediction not come true?

1) It has not been made clear why the Iraq policy has failed

2) It is not clear who to blame for bad policy choices and incompetance.(there is lots of speculation and finger pointing, but nothing conclusive)

Hence, there is no reasonable basis to believe the administration can make good on their plans. A totally new crop of people might have some credibility, but even minus Rumsfeld and some generals, this is the same team that has failed on many fronts for years.

RM

This little gem comes courtesy of Sen. Dick Durban (D-IL.), Senate Majority Whip, who took questions from reporters immediately after delivering the Democratic Party response to Bush’s speech on Wednesday, according to Lyn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Choice excerpts from the QA session:

Q But Senator, isn’t the argument that Democrats — that you guys are making over and over again that the American people voted in November to send you here not just to debate, not just to talk, but actually to do something? And you have the power now, in some ways, to actually do something. So how will you use that, not just talk, not just debate, not just have a sense of the Congress or Senate resolution, but actually use your power?

Durbin.: There are limited opportunities for Congress to act. A commander in chief has extraordinary authority to move troops to certain places in the world, and the president’s going to use that authority.

First we’re going to bring before the Congress this question about the policy and try to have a bipartisan debate and a conclusion as to whether this policy is supported by Congress, and then watch for the reaction from the American people and from the president.

In the meantime there will be oversight by our committees. I won’t rule out further action by Congress. I hope I’ve made it clear here and all of us have made clear that whatever action we take will not be at the expense of the safety of our troops that are in the field. But there may be a way to engage the White House on a policy debate at a new level past the first resolution.

Q But as a practical point, these brigades could be dispatched without — (off mike).

Durbin.: Oh, yes. Yes.

Q And that’s probably what’s going to happen.

Durbin: That’s right. And it probably will happen right away. Jack Reed, who, of course has some background on this, says it’s likely that several thousand troops are going to move in a few days, and in maybe a week or two another thousand troops will move. So that’s going to happen even while Congress is in the midst of this debate. The thought that we could stop this in its tracks I don’t believe is practical.

Full story:
blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2007/01/dick_durbin_delivers_official.html

And Bernie, I think the best thing for everybody is for there to be no “surge.” If it happens, it will make things worse for everybody. People have already voted against the war. It will still be going on in 2008, surge or no surge, and Bush will still be blamed.

STAN: There is a century in dog-years until the Nov 08 elections. My prognostication about the eocnomy was crystal-ball gazing, or in more scientific terms, a SWAG. There is one faction of the Republican Party, whose leader is again ubiquitous on television, the Buchananites. They have never been enthusiastic about the war, have always been xenophobic, and have tremendous appeal to Perot-like independents. The elections will be decided, however, not in the General Election, but in the Primaries. Buchananites will inhabit the abandond Congressional spaces of neocons, and both McCain and Romney (front-runners at this extremely early stage for R-Prez nomination) have just endorsed Bush’s desperate “surge” plan… leaving who? Maybe Guiliani, who has crossover appeal based on his tolerance of LGBT folk and his pro-choice position. If Guiliani runs against Clinton of Obama, he will win. Guiliani’s “law and order” rep from his fascistic measures in NYC will play the white-race card without ever saying it aloud, as well as the big-dik card. Dem’s are still unlikely to run Obama, and not exclusively because he will mobilize the R white supremacist base, but because he will be considered unreliable — as Dean was — by the Wall Street-controlled DLC, who Clinton does dog-tricks for at every opportunity (as Clinton before her did). But Clinton is so loathed for her pro-war positions by the most active (progressive) section of the Democratic base, that her nomination will deflate them and force the Dems to rely on media-buys without grassroots campaigning. At the same time, the R’s will roll out Clinton’s out–of-context comments about “baking cookies” and excite their base by tickling its misogyny. Wall Street loves Guiliani, and they will shift their support to the likely winner. The immigration issue will come back to the fore with an ugly vengeance, as the R’s and D’s achieve something like parity on their war-positions, whereupon, the R’s can recapture the loyal enthusiasm of their white base. Based on my inexact polling at Huffingtonpost, when I trashed the junior Nazi, Lou Dobbs, a LOT of Independents and even Dems will buy into the xenophobic (read: anti-Latin@) approach, which will be clothed in Buchananite populist (working class) rhetoric. Dobbs already runs a CNN program called “The War on the Middle Class,” which rails before millions each day against “illegal immigrants.”

On the issue of letters to Congresspersons… believe it or not, I was for a time a registered lobbyist (1996-2000). My experience was that legislators are the only profession more inherently nervous than burglars. They are extremely susceptible to popular pressure, a little known fact that some on the left find inconvenient to their purist fantasies of withdrawing from whitemale-bourgeois-dominated politics altogether. One state senator (a comparatively good one) told me that the efficacy of consituent contact is ranked as paper-letter highest, calls to the office second-highest, email lowest. He also said that three letters on the same issue starts the old acetylcholine flowing. Ten letters moves an issue onto the front burner (even if it is just to publicly attempt its dismissal or cooptation). Fifty letters is a tsunami. It’s not the numbers that are relevant, but that fifty letters on the same issue tells our intrepid burglar that there is organization happening somewhere… the really scary prospect. He also told me that no legislator will take a risky position, even if s/he wants to personally, unless s/he can go to the Party leadership ans demonstrate that “the pressure is overwhelming.” In other words, they need constituents to “make them do it.” They need us to “have their backs.” There is a lot of good-cop/bad-cop that happens with this. Mean people like me can paint everyone with the same brush (as I have done above), call names, ridicule, and generally hurt their feelings. Then organized formations within districts can adopt a more personable tone whle cleaving to the same demands, and promise to “get their back,” by doing the public education work to ensure taking said position will improve electoral prospects down the road. This process may make us all want to bathe afterward, but so does most of our jobs. The instrumental side of short-term politics is just that way. The line that cannot be crossed, imo, is actively embracing backward poltical tropes to gain contingent majorities.. my objection to the chickenhawk arguments against the war.

For example these types say we should have invaded the North (Vietnam). Now we did a full invasion in Iraq and we are getting the same results. Do you think the more military setbacks the empire has the better? It seems protests mean nothing but IED’s and snipers have a better effect.