Save Yourself, Blame Bush – washingtonpost.com By Joe Scarborough

I can’t help but feel sorry for my old Republican friends in Congress who are fighting for their political lives. After all, it must be tough explaining to voters at their local Baptist church’s Keep Congress Conservative Day that it was their party that took a $155 billion surplus and turned it into a record-setting $400 billion deficit.

How exactly does one convince the teeming masses that Republicans deserve to stay in power despite botching a war, doubling the national debt, keeping company with Jack Abramoff, fumbling the response to Hurricane Katrina, expanding the government at record rates, raising cronyism to an art form, playing poker with Duke Cunningham, isolating America and repeatedly electing Tom DeLay as their House majority leader?

How does a God-fearing Reagan Republican explain all that away?

Easy. Blame George W. Bush. …

Republicans on the Hill [have done] little more than rubber-stamp Bush’s domestic and international agenda because lawmakers were intimidated by his power and his popularity with the Republican base.

Even when the administration would not give generals the troops they needed to win the war in Iraq, Republican leaders did nothing. When the president refused to veto a single spending bill while the deficit spiraled upward, Republican leaders looked away. And when chaos was reigning in the streets of New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast in Katrina’s horrific aftermath, Republican leaders remained mute.

That silence — proof that it is better to be feared than loved in politics — has had devastating results. The United States is more divided than ever, our leaders are despised around the world, our fiscal situation is catastrophic and congressional approval ratings are the lowest ever. Since nothing sharpens the mind like a political hanging, Republican leaders in the Senate and House are finally considering doing what effete newspaper editorialists have suggested for years: throwing Bush overboard.

Of course, the mere suggestion makes some Republican loyalists shudder. Being a faithful follower of Brother Bush has long been synonymous with loving Jesus, supporting the troops and taking a stand against sodomy. But no more. Many of the conservatives who put Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich in power are counting the days until Bush goes to Crawford for good. Some mutter that their leader’s governing style looks more like Jimmy Carter’s every day — and among that crowd, there is no harsher insult.

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Hurting U.S. Terror Fight By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer

The war in Iraq has become a primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers may be increasing faster than the United States and its allies can reduce the threat, U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded.

A 30-page National Intelligence Estimate completed in April cites the “centrality” of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the insurgency that has followed, as the leading inspiration for new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by little more than an anti-Western agenda. It concludes that, rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position, according to officials familiar with the classified document. …

The latest terrorism assessment paints a portrait of a global war in which Iraq is less the central front of actual combat than a unifying battle cry for disparate extremist groups and even individuals. “It is just those kinetic actions that lead to the radicalization of others,” a senior counterterrorism official said earlier this summer. “Surgical strikes? Nothing is surgical about military operations. They tend to have impacts, affects.”

That description contrasts with Bush’s emphasis this month on offensive military action in Iraq and elsewhere as the United States’ principal road to victory in the global war.

“Many Americans . . . ask the same question five years after 9/11,” he said in a speech in Atlanta earlier this month. “The answer is yes. America is safer. We are safer because we have taken action to protect the homeland. We are safer because we are on the offensive against our enemies overseas. We’re safer because of the skill and sacrifice of the brave Americans who defend our people.”

But “a really big hole” in the U.S. strategy, a second counterterrorism official said, “is that we focus on the terrorists and very little on how they are created. If you looked at all the resources of the U.S. government, we spent 85, 90 percent on current terrorists, not on how people are radicalized.”

Remember a few months ago, when gas prices passed $3 per gallon? People were angry and weren’t going to stand for it. Somebody should do something, they muttered at the pumps. Congressional hearings were held. Our commander-in-chief-executive, the failed oil tycoon, talked about hydrogen cars again.

Leave aside that it was ridiculous to be upset at such relatively cheap gas. Ignore that we haven’t had shortages like we had 30 years ago, during the oil embargo that taught us nothing except that we’ll pay anything for a fix (what an ironic use of that word).

Now, gas prices are in free-fall less than 2 months before a crucial election. Simple market forces at work? Or could it be:

(1) Corporations know that Republicans serve them better than Democrats;

(2) Foreign oil producers know that Republicans serve them better than Democrats.

Wouldn’t want the rabble roused. Go back to sleep. mjh

Major Problems At Polls Feared By Dan Balz and Zachary A. Goldfarb, Washington Post Staff Writers

In the Nov. 7 election, more than 80 percent of voters will use electronic voting machines, and a third of all precincts this year are using the technology for the first time. The changes are part of a national wave, prompted by the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 and numerous revisions of state laws, that led to the replacement of outdated voting machines with computer-based electronic machines, along with centralized databases of registered voters and other steps to refine the administration of elections.

But in Maryland last Tuesday, a combination of human blunders and technological glitches caused long lines and delays in vote-counting. The problems, which followed ones earlier this year in Ohio, Illinois and several other states, have contributed to doubts among some experts about whether the new systems are reliable and whether election officials are adequately prepared to use them.

In a polarized political climate, in which elections are routinely marked by litigation and allegations of incompetent administration or outright tampering, some worry that voting problems could cast a Florida-style shadow over this fall’s midterm elections. [mjh: Especially if Republicans defy all odds and polls and make gains in control of the House and Senate.] …

What is clear is that a national effort to improve election procedures six years ago — after the presidential election ended with ambiguous ballots and allegations of miscounted votes and partisan favoritism in Florida — has failed to restore broad public confidence that the system is fair. …

Twenty-seven states require electronic voting machines to produce a paper trail available for auditing during a recount, but an analysis of Cuyahoga County’s paper trail by the nonpartisan Election Science Institute showed that a tenth of the receipts were uncountable.

In a Pivotal Year, GOP Plans to Get Personal
Millions to Go to Digging Up Dirt on Democrats
By Jim VandeHei and Chris Cillizza, Washington Post Staff Writers

Republicans are planning to spend the vast majority of their sizable financial war chest over the final 60 days of the campaign attacking Democratic House and Senate candidates over personal issues and local controversies, GOP officials said.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which this year dispatched a half-dozen operatives to comb through tax, court and other records looking for damaging information on Democratic candidates, plans to spend more than 90 percent of its $50 million-plus advertising budget on what officials described as negative ads.

The hope is that a vigorous effort to “define” opponents, in the parlance of GOP operatives, can help Republicans shift the midterm debate away from Iraq and limit losses this fall. …

GOP officials said internal polling shows Republicans could limit losses to six to 10 House seats and two or three Senate seats if the strategy — combined with the party’s significant financial advantage and battled-tested turnout operation — proves successful. Democrats need to pick up 15 seats to win control of the House and six to regain power in the Senate.

Against some less experienced and little-known opponents, said Matt Keelen, a Republican lobbyist heavily involved in House campaigns, “It will take one or two punches to fold them up like a cheap suit.” [mjh: noble Republican rhetoric.]