Byron York on Democratic Debate on National Review Online

Joe Lieberman surely wouldn’t want the endorsement of National Review, but it’s hard to deny that he makes a lot of sense for a member of the current field of Democratic presidential contenders. …

What Lieberman is doing — aside from trying to win the nomination for himself — is attempting to prevent his party from driving itself over a cliff. In other debates, he has reminded his fellow candidates that they face disaster if they abandon the type of Democratic Leadership Council-style positions that were so successful for Bill Clinton.

Alpert’s Truth: President Bush is Soft on Terrorism by Arthur Alpert

Obviously, George W. Bush is soft on terrorism.
It is true that, immediately following the outrage of 9/11/01, he properly counter- attacked the criminals – alQaeda – and those who harbored them, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

And then he took his eye off the (terrorist) ball to pursue a geo-political strategy.

See also: Alpert’s Truth: Bush is Soft on Terrorism II

Republicans and conservatives need to recognize Bush is NOT one of them. He is either the leader of the Radical Right or their dim-witted tool — it doesn’t matter which is true. He is changing everything as fast as he can. mjh

Bush’s Budget for 2005 Seeks to Rein In Domestic Costs

As he completes work on his budget, Mr. Bush faces criticism from conservatives, who say he has presided over a big increase in federal spending, and liberals, who say his tax cuts have converted a large budget surplus to a deficit.

Total federal revenues have declined for three consecutive years, apparently the first time that has happened since the early 1920’s. But in those years, from 2000 to 2003, total federal spending has increased slightly more than 20 percent, to $2.16 trillion last year.

Brian M. Riedl, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said: “President Bush is not focusing on his fiscal conservative base right now. He’s trying to position himself in between conservatives in Congress and the Democratic Party. It may be good politics, but it’s bad policy, a lost opportunity to get runaway government spending under control.”

This is a small piece of a very long article that attempts to analyze historical and current differences between Democrats and the neo-cons running the Bush administration. A lot of attention is paid to Dean and Clark. mjh

The Things They Carry By JAMES TRAUB, NYTimes

A poll conducted in November by the nonpartisan PIPA-Knowledge Networks found that 42 percent of Americans said that the president’s handling of Iraq decreased the likelihood of voting for him, versus 35 percent who said it had increased the likelihood. Another poll taken around the same time found that a majority of respondents believed that President Bush is ”too quick to use our military abroad” and that he practices a ”go-it-alone foreign policy that hurts our relations with allies.” Earlier, Democracy Corps, a Democratic polling and policy organization headed by the consultants James Carville and Robert Shrum and the pollster Stanley B. Greenberg, published a study with the following conclusion: ”When Democrats put out a clear message on national security, it now plays Bush’s post-9/11, post-Iraq message to a draw.”

It’s not just the war in Iraq that prompted these hopes of realignment; it’s the Bush administration’s penchant for bellicosity, its barely concealed contempt for the United Nations and for many of America’s traditional allies, its apparent confusion about how to deal with North Korea. Even some traditional internationalist Republicans believed that the Bush administration had abandoned many of the central tenets of the last several generations of national security policy while squandering much of the global good will that came in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Today’s Headlines

On Jan. 4, 1965, President Johnson outlined the goals of his ”’Great Society” in his State of the Union address.

Given a second term, Duhbya will proclaim ”The era of the Great Society and the New Deal are over!” mjh

Op-Ed Columnist: Running on Reform By DAVID BROOKS

The Republican Party has a problem this election year. It’s the governing party, but it lacks a governing philosophy.

The G.O.P. used to have a governing philosophy: reducing the size of the state. This was a useful goal because it was the one thing all Republican factions could agree upon. …

But reducing the size of government can no longer be Republicans’ animating principle. …

[T]he main reason reducing the size of government can’t be the party’s animating principle is that Republicans have no credibility on this subject. … Now Republicans control everything, and over the past three years the size of government has still increased, not even counting the war on terror.

Republicans have learned through hard experiences that most Americans do not actually want their government sharply cut. Voters are skeptical of government, but they elect candidates who promise solutions for their problems, not ones who tear down departments. …

With its old governing philosophy obsolete, the Republican Party is adrift domestically. …

Meanwhile, corporate lobbyists have jumped into the vacuum. If principles aren’t going to guide the Republican Party, the opportunists are happy to take control.

The Former Governor: As the Race Turns Hot, What About Dean’s Collar? By RICK LYMAN

Friends and former employees of Dr. Dean say his temper can indeed flare, although of greater concern to campaign aides is the occasional crisis created by his speaking too quickly on the issues. Even that, he and his top aides say, is not as detrimental as his opponents might hope: as long as he talks straight and from the heart, he said in an interview in Iowa not long ago, voters will overlook a little roughness around the edges.

“What people are responding to is that I believe in what I’m doing and it’s not calculated,” he said. “That’s a quality you can’t fake. People can tell the difference.”

The greater danger, a number of aides say, might be trying to muzzle him. Dr. Dean maintains that one reason many Democrats have not connected with voters in recent years is that they allow their message to be filtered through layers of focus groups and skittish pollsters.
“He hasn’t yet got the filter completely in front of his face,” Mr. Rogan said. Though some of those around him are urging that he do so, “his attitude is, `If I do that, I’ll be just like them.’ “