Random Politics

There’s too much for me to just concentrate on one subject.  It’s all so much fun.

Ohio Congressional Battle
A mid term battle for a spot in the US House, 2^nd district seat in Ohio, favors a Republican, Jean Schmidt, over the Democrat Paul Hackett.  Now Hackett apparently is a combat veteran, serving during the first Gulf War.  He ran a campaign that weighed heavily on criticizing Bush’s rational and handling of the war in Iraq.

Schmidt only beat Hackett by a few percentage points in a district that gave bush 64% last year.  So obviously the Democrats are hailing this as a major victory for them, getting so close.  Saying things like “the Iraq combat veteran was uniquely qualified to talk about the war,” and “the war is not what it was six months ago, or 12 months ago in terms of being an automatic advantage for Republicans.”

So obviously they are looking at this as  a possible bell weather for the nation, and hoping that it signals a recovery for Democratic candidates.  But I’m unconvinced.  By their own logic, they ran a veteran and labeled him qualified to criticize the President and Republicans for not conducting the war well.  Enough people in Ohio might have bought that and voted differently, however wrong that assumption was.  Being a military veteran will give you insight into military operations, but certainly doesn’t make you overly qualified to make judgments on policy.

And there’s a difference between a special election for a House spot and an election to determine the President of the United States.  I wonder what the Republican/Democrat split was for that district in the last congressional election, in 2002.

Also, while I’ll admit that the President’s poll numbers are down lately, it certainly doesn’t mean that “no district is safe.”  This was a poll between two non-incumbents.  If the Schmidt had been in that slot in the first place, would Hackett have done nearly as well?

The article says this

The outcome shows that Republicans need other major campaign planks besides just standing behind President Bush and criticizing Democrats for criticizing him.

But I don’t really see that happening everywhere.  And as we have talked about before, the Republicans have had a much more robust platform than the Democrats for the past 4 or 5 years now.  I think this might be a case of seeing the race as you want to see the race.

 And then there’s the big wooden plank

John Kerry asserted that Hackett's showing "sends a warning signal to the Washington Republican establishment and the Ohio Republican Party that voters... are troubled by the corrupt culture and do-nothing Congress."

Oh, and Democrats can promise that they won’t be corrupt and do-nothing?  When pigs fly!
By the by, it’s hardly a “vindication of Bush administration policies” either, as Schmidt claimed after the victory.  Really.  Run your own race already.

Bolton Nomination
Another non-issue. 

Democrats are banging the "shady"/"secretive"/"abuse of power" drum.  Senate Foreign Relations ranking member and potential presidential candidate Joe Biden (D) e-mailed supporters: "It is important to remember that the reason John Bolton didn't get a vote in the Senate is because the administration refused to provide information to which no one disputes the Senate is entitled."

Oh, is that really the reason?  From the NYT:

Now that he is finally going to the United Nations as ambassador, John R. Bolton is supposed to "provide clear American leadership for reform" there, President Bush said Monday. But American officials say much of their reform agenda at the United Nations has been accomplished during the months while Mr. Bolton's nomination languished.

Most of the reforms sought by the United States are well on their way to completion," said a senior administration official, speaking anonymously to avoid undercutting the rationale for the Bolton appointment. Another said that because so much had been achieved, there was little concern that Mr. Bolton's combative personality would jeopardize the agenda.

So, really, it never mattered who Bush sent to the UN.  Who’s going to suffer more for this, Bush or the Democrats?
There’s nothing wrong with Bush making a recess appointment here.  If he didn’t there wouldn’t be anyone representing the US for a while, because I doubt that Bush would pick anyone else at this stage, preferring to let Democrats shout into the wind and look ridiculous doing it. As it is Bolton will only be there for a bit more than a year, and Bush will have to nominate someone else next year. 

And it’s not abuse of power to do so.  It’s perfectly within his right to appoint someone at recess, as has been done before.  It’s just as rare for the Senate to filibuster an nominee as it is for the President to make a recess appointment, but if the Democrats can do it, why can’t the President?
I’ll make the same comparison to what the media was calling the nuclear option a couple of months ago.  Making a recess appointment is not the nuclear option, it’s the ballistic missile option.  Filibustering is the nuclear maneuver. 

Frankly, for reasons that I’ve stated before, I think the UN needs us to play tough and push reforms.  I doubt that the reforms that the US is pushing right now are enough anyway.

Roberts Nomination
The WSJ, Washington Post, Boston Globe and all the other major poop machines are getting on Roberts’ case because of all the documents from the Reagan administration.  I note that I haven’t heard anything about any of his decisions during the last 2 years he has been on the DC Federal court of appeals.  Does that mean that there’s nothing to criticize there?  Wouldn’t that be a better indication of how he makes his judgments than documents written over 20 years ago?  Don’t people change their mind, mature their views over time?  Couldn’t many of those views and statements been made in the favor of his employer at the time, as opposed to his raw personal views?

Orin Kerr, over at Volokh’s site, has looked at some of the documents and determined, “It’s hard to read too much into this one memo, but to me it’s consistent with the idea that Roberts is less a committed political conservative than a committed judicial conservative of the Harlan/Frankfurter school.”

Instapundit notes that ScotusWire is a clipping service devoted to “the first blogged Supreme Court nomination in history.”

Plame game
I’m not even going to get deep into the Plame/Wilson scandal right now.  It’s dissolved into a he said/ she said game from reporter to reporter.  They still haven’t figured out who first revealed the information that Plame was a CIA agent.

And really, I can’t for the life of me figure out why any of it matters.  Why does anyone care?  Plame wasn’t a covert agent of the CIA and hadn’t been for over 6 years.  So why does everyone care who outed her?

What people really should be caring about was what Wilson found in Nigeria and whether or not he lied about it when he got back because he doesn’t like Bush.

Tom Maguire has been dealing with this for some time.