Shooting the Gift Horse

After years of work by Democrats and the Press to create a "culture of corruption" charge against Republicans, the FBI finds that New Orleans Congressman William Jefferson has $90K in freezer, no readily available lie, and on tape taking $100K from an informant. Little things like that would tend to weaken the idea that corruption is somehow a "Republican problem" in an unbiased nation.

It is an election year, the guy is guilty as sin, other than the fact that a good deal of work is required to get the media to do any reporting on a dirty Democrat, it looks like political Christmas in May. So how do the Speaker Hastert and the House Republicans handle it? Well, they complain about the FBI getting into a Congressional office of course, and turn it into another "administration over-step", likely to have a "chilling effect" on the "separation of powers". What are they thinking? Nothing intelligent obviously.

Unless they are just out to lunch, and that should not be discounted in this case, I'm thinking the idiots think something along these lines; "Duh, Bush is unpopular, we want to be popular, we better distance ourselves from Bush". Makes one wonder how the country can operate if that is what counts for thinking at that level. The country is a 50/50 country, Bush is at 32 because he has alienated 18% of HIS base, and likely more than that. He alienated them by "governing as a center-right moderate" which he is, and always has been. That seems pretty obvious, for those that are not sheep of the MSM or the 20%+ from the right that are ticked at Bush, but apparently not.

prescription drugs, Harriett Miers, UAE Ports deal, small tax cuts, immigration and even the general level of military response to 9-11 have all been "center right" (at best, some are middle to center left). Since the media and the Democrats in this country are bordering on far left, but naturally call themselves "moderate", the skew gets confusing to folks that pay probably the rational level of attention to current events and politics. I pay an irrational level of attention because I seem to like to waster time. If the MSM analysis of where they are is correct, then there is nobody to the right of Bush, and TONS of folks to the left of NYT, NPR, and the Democrats. There are PLENTY of people to the right of Bush on all the issues that I mentioned before (Like 20% of the country), but it is very hard to find folks to the left of even elected Democrats, let alone MSM moonbats.

Clinton was able to "triangulate" and "run to the right", since there was a "D" next to his name. The MSM, as well as all but the farthest right Republicans were more than willing to give him credit for NAFTA, welfare reform, and his anemic little military adventures in the face of the mounting terrorist threat of the '90s. There are at least two severe problems when a Republican attempts to be "moderate". First of all, the MSM will give them no credit at all ... it will be labeled as "pandering", "weak and ineffectual", "wrong", "complex", "not a real program", or some other term that means that even though potentially vast amounts of dollars and political capital have been squandered (as in prescription drug benefits), the amount of political benefit to the Republican is essentially zero.

The 2nd problem is that Republicans have principals, and believe that consistency IS an issue. If Democrats believed the same they would have turned on Clinton in droves as a result of NAFTA, Welfare Reform, Somalia or Kosovao. Where Clinton was able to keep his base and the media reasonably happy even though he was mining votes on the center right, nobody in the center or left of center is moving to Bush because of his moderate policies, and 18-20% of his base on the right has abandoned him since they see him as abandoning them first.

The media keeps up working hard to defeat Republicans, Bush has had some severe missteps for sure ... Meirs, Ports Deal but he hasn't left any stains on any dresses that I know of. Now the Republican congress seems intent to be as stupid as possible, the only remaining bright spot is that Republicans STILL get to run against Democrats in the fall. The benefit of that can't be overstated. Americans are still goint to have to look at the other side before they punch the buttons for Democrats all over the country. Everyone was "sure" in '02, and '04, that Republicans were going to go down in those elections are well. The congress seems to be doing all it can do to help, but it is still a long way until election day.