Over at Steve Gilliard's News Blog Steve quotes Marc Shields as saying Republicans now see a 30 seat loss in the House. Steve takes a great jab at Democrats for not taking advantage of the current situation to deliver the killing blow:
What the DC Dems don't get is how alienated Americans have become with Bush and the GOP. They are begging for aggressive leadership, and people are still worried about NASCAR dads....
Folks, you need to worry about Walter Reed dads. They want the war to end, they want a resolution to the War on Terror and not the ham handed methods Bush is using.
Jane Hamsher started a mini-brouhaha over at her site over a post she did citing that CNN poll that shows most Americans would prefer Bill Clinton was still running the country rather than the Chimp. Jane referred to Bill as "the finest Republican President of my lifetime" and got the predictable round of ire from progressives.
Personally I think Bill Clinton was far from a perfect President but when I consider our current position in the world and what it was to have a President surrounded by grown-ups who looked at the facts and made grown-up decisions I feel pretty nostalgic. Not all of our foreign policy was correct, in my estimation, but at least in was based on a rational approach rather than the President's "gut."
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Digby takes on the same CNN poll comparing Bush and Clinton with the goal of deconstructing the roots of voter's disenchantment with Bush:
Bush by contrast has had a free hand. He had an historical moment that could have brought the country and the entire world together --- which he decided instead to use as an opportunity to aggressively assert arrogant partisan and American power. Rather than being a "uniter not a divider" as he promised in the campaign, he roared into office with his one vote majority and treated the Democrats like lackeys, behaving as if he had a mandate to enact the most extreme items on the GOP agenda. He used patriotism as a bludgeon to intimidate all dissent against his inexplicable war with Iraq. At every turn he behaved with insolence and hubris and his failure has been manifest. Now he lives in a bubble, wandering around dazed and confused about what is happening to him --- which is not the result of Democratic partisanship, I might add, but rather the assessment of the American people. (The Democrats were paralyzed during most of his term.) Perhaps that's why his fall has been so steady --- the slow realization among the people that being a leader takes more than a manly swagger and a down home accent....
Bill Clinton may have been an imperfect human being but he was a president. This guy is, and always was, just a brand name in a suit.
The inevitable attack on Iran moves a step closer. Of course the moving of these two carrier groups could be just bluster on the part of the administration.
Right.
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A little over a hundred posts with adjoining pop culture quotes and now three of them have been from the same character in the Princess Bride. I can't help it. I just love Inigo.