Mass. Governor’s Rightward Shift Raises Questions By Dan Balz and Shailagh Murray, Washington Post Staff Writers

As he prepares for a 2008 presidential campaign, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has championed the conservative principles that guided President Ronald Reagan, become an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage and supported overturning the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

It was not always so. Twelve years ago, Romney boasted that he would be more effective in fighting discrimination against gay men and lesbians than Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), distanced himself from some conservative policies of the Reagan administration, and proudly recalled his family’s record in support of abortion rights.

The apparent gulf between the candidate who ran for the Senate in 1994 and the one getting ready to run for president has raised questions as to who is the real Mitt Romney. Is he the self-described moderate who unsuccessfully challenged Kennedy in the year of the Republican landslide, the self-described conservative now ready to bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, or merely an ambitious and adaptable politician? The answer could be crucial to Romney’s presidential ambitions.

U.S. Sees Growing Threats In Somalia Al-Qaeda’s Influence, Possible War With Ethiopia Are Concerns; By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer

Al-Qaeda, long hovering in the shadows, has established itself as a presence in the Somali capital, say U.S. officials, who see a growing risk that Somalia will become a new haven for terrorists to launch attacks beyond its borders.

Meanwhile, a major war — promoted and greeted approvingly by Osama bin Laden — looms between Somalia [Muslim] and Ethiopia [Christian], threatening a regional conflagration likely to draw more foreign extremists into the Horn of Africa.

Among administration officials, Congress, U.S. allies and other interested and fearful parties, there is a rising sense that Somalia is spinning rapidly out of control. …

“The Council of Islamic Courts is now controlled by . . . East Africa al-Qaeda cell individuals,” Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Jendayi Frazer said of Mogadishu’s new rulers. …

In a taped statement released in July, bin Laden called on Somalis to begin preparing for regional war. He recalled the 1994 withdrawal of U.S. military forces after a warlord attack killed 18 U.S. troops, saying, “This time, victory will be far easier.”

U.S. intelligence officials described the statement at the time as part of bin Laden’s failing claim to the leadership of a worldwide Islamic movement, despite the dispersion of the al-Qaeda network by the U.S. terrorism fight. Now they are not so certain. …

Events in Somalia could provide an immediate spark for a wider war in the Horn of Africa; the roots of such a conflict would be tangled in complicated, long-standing regional animosities. The United Nations reported last month that Ethiopia has sent thousands of troops to help prop up the two-year-old transitional government in Baidoa. The same report said Eritrea, whose 1970s war with Ethiopia is still smoldering over an unsettled border dispute, has deployed thousands of troops to train and fight alongside the Islamists. Arab neighbors and sympathizers are also reportedly providing funds.

Ethiopia, a Christian-dominated nation, also fought a war with Somalia in the 1970s, over the ethnic Somali and largely Muslim Ethiopian province of Ogaden.

Last week, Somali Islamists threatened a “major attack” if the Ethiopians do not withdraw by Tuesday. Ethiopia has said, in essence, bring it on.

Somalia descended into chaos after U.S. and U.N. troops withdrew in 1994, with warring clans competing for power and the rest of the world turning away. When the Islamist push began several years ago, the Bush administration started paying attention — and funding locally unpopular warlords to gather intelligence and gird for battle.

“By making a bad bet on the warlords to do our bidding,” incoming Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) charged last week, “the administration has managed to strengthen the Courts, weaken our position and leave no good options. This is one of the least-known but most dangerous developments in the world, and the administration lacks a credible strategy to deal with it.“ …

John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, who worked on Africa issues in the Clinton National Security Council and State Department, called the current administration’s policy “idiotic.” Tacit U.S. support for Ethiopia’s military incursion has “incalculably strengthened” the Courts’ appeal to Somali nationalism and “made our counterterrorism agenda nearly impossible to implement,” he said.

Duhbya: “He’s King Midas in reverse, he’s King Midas with a curse.” mjh

New Congress Is More Trusted Than President By Charles Babington and Jon Cohen, Washington Post Staff Writers

Asked whether they trusted Bush or Democrats in Congress “to do a better job coping with the main problems the nation faces,” 57 percent of the respondents said congressional Democrats and 31 percent said Bush. When the question was broken down to specific problems, such as Iraq, the economy, immigration and the “war on terrorism,” Democrats held clear majorities over Bush. Their lead was overwhelming in the area of health care: 64 percent to Bush’s 26 percent.

More than half of the respondents said it was a good thing that Congress will switch from Republican control to Democratic; 17 percent called it a bad thing and 1 in 4 said it would make no difference. Shortly after Republicans took over Congress after the 1994 election, 48 percent of Americans said the switch was a good thing.

In the poll, more than 4 in 5 Democrats said the latest change in control of Congress is good, as did 55 percent of independents. Even 23 percent of Republicans called the change a good thing. …

Two-thirds of those polled said Bush “should work mainly to compromise with the Democrats” in Congress rather than pursue his own agenda. …

The public gave relatively low marks to the Republican-controlled Congress that ended last week, with 37 percent saying they approved of how Congress was doing its job and 57 percent disapproving. The Washington Post-ABC News poll was conducted Dec. 7-11 by telephone among a random national sample of 1,005 adults. The margin of sampling error is three percentage points.

House Win Adds Insult to Injury for DeLay By Sylvia Moreno and Chris Cillizza, Washington Post Staff Writers

Former congressman Ciro Rodriguez’s victory in a House runoff election Tuesday in Texas not only allowed Democrats to pick up their 30th seat of the 2006 elections but served as a final rebuke to one of the architects of the Republican House majority: Tom DeLay.

The former congressman from Texas was the mastermind of a 2003 redrawing of congressional lines in the state that led to the removal of six House Democrats in the 2004 elections.

Two years later, DeLay’s fortunes have suffered a near-total reversal, as the redistricting map that once seemed certain to cement his legacy and GOP majorities for years has instead led to the end of that career and may well be a building block for a reenergized Democratic Party in the state. …

“The genius of Tom DeLay is now seriously in question,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University. …

If DeLay decimated Democrats in 2004, he also seems responsible for their revival. …

“Before this election, DeLay was in the grave with dirt on top of him,” [Matt Angle, a Democratic strategist,] said. “This is a final repudiation of DeLay’s arrogance and bullying ways.”

66% Think U.S. Spies on Its Citizens By Dan Eggen, Washington Post Staff Writer

Two-thirds of Americans believe that the FBI and other federal agencies are intruding on privacy rights as part of terrorism investigations, but they remain divided over whether such tactics are justified, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released yesterday. …

Compared with June 2002, for example, almost twice as many respondents say the need to respect privacy outranks the need to investigate terrorist threats. That shift was first evident in polling conducted in January 2006.

That sentiment is still a minority view, however: Nearly two-thirds rank investigating threats as more important than guarding against intrusions on personal privacy, down from 79 percent in 2002. …

Sixty-six percent of those questioned said that the FBI and other agencies are “intruding on some Americans’ privacy rights” in terrorism investigations, up from 58 percent in September 2003. Thirty percent think the government is not intruding on privacy.

Support for intrusive tactics has dropped even more significantly during that time. A bare majority, 51 percent, feel the tactics are justified, down from 63 percent three years ago.

Democratic Wave in Congress Further Erodes Moderation in GOP By Zachary A. Goldfarb, Special to The Washington Post

[T]he Democrats’ victory in the midterm election accelerates a three-decade-old pattern of declining moderate influence and rising conservative dominance in the Republican Party. By one measure, the GOP is more ideologically homogenous now than it has been in modern history. The waning moderate wing must find its place when the Democratic majority takes over in January.

“The irony of this election is that the public, in seeking change, has . . . weakened the center,” Leach said recently. “In a sense, what has occurred is the strengthening of the edges of the parties.”

Eight of the House’s 20 most moderate Republicans lost their seats: Rob Simmons and Nancy L. Johnson (Conn.); Jeb Bradley and Charles Bass (N.H.); Michael G. Fitzpatrick and Curt Weldon (Pa.); Sue W. Kelly (N.Y.); and Leach. Also, moderate GOP Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert (N.Y.), is retiring, and he will be replaced by Democrat Michael A. Arcuri, the Oneida County district attorney.

On the Senate side, the defeat of Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.), a critic of the war who declined to vote for Bush’s reelection in 2004, underscored the same trend.

By one measure, the 110th Congress will have the fewest moderates since the 19th century. …

An important factor in the Democrats’ victory in the midterm election was that independent and moderate voters abandoned the GOP in droves. Since the 2002 midterms, support for the Republican Party has declined seven percentage points among moderates and nine percentage points among independents, according to exit polls.

Lott Rejoins Senate Leadership – washingtonpost.com
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 16, 2006; Page A04

Four years after racially impolitic remarks cost him the Senate’s top post, Sen. Trent Lott (Miss.) rejoined Congress’s leadership ranks yesterday when his Republican colleagues turned to the veteran insider and skilled vote-counter to help them plot their return to majority status. …

Lott’s feat ranks among the more impressive political comebacks of recent times, just as his fall from grace in December 2002 was spectacular and painful. At a 100th-birthday party for then-Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), Lott said the nation “wouldn’t have had all these problems” if Thurmond had been elected president in 1948. Thurmond had run on a segregationist platform as a Dixiecrat that year, and critics denounced the remarks as racist.

Lott said he was simply flattering an old man. But Bush administration supporters and other Republicans helped engineer his ouster just as he was about to become Senate majority leader again after the 2002 midterm elections, replacing him with Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). …

Referring to Lott’s Thurmond comments, [Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), a Lott supporter,] said that Americans believe in redemption. “It’s one of those things that happened fairly long ago,” he said, “and people have moved on.”[mjh: 2002!?]

Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, was less forgiving. “For many African Americans the sting of Trent Lott’s hurtful words are unlikely to expire anytime soon,” he said in a written statement. “However, his Republican colleagues have given him a second chance to address many of the glaring disparities that impact poor people, particularly African Americans, that he and his party have ignored for so long.”