Politics Blog

As I’ve mentioned before, the Iranian people’s deep disaffection with the mullahcracy is going to come to a head on July 9, when massive demonstrations and/or a general strike will likely erupt.

Mark Steyn sums up the prospects for change:

It’s mullah time! The question now is whether Iran’s ayatollahs and the original ‘’Islamic republic'’ can survive the summer, or whether President Bush will mark the second anniversary of Sept. 11 with two-thirds of his axis of evil consigned to the trash can of history.

That would be a remarkable achievement, by any measure save that of Democratic presidential candidates such as John Kerry, who seems to be running as the French foreign minister (a niche market of limited appeal even among Dem primary voters, one would think). Senator Kerry will continue to insist it’s all a disaster and possibly a cover-up, too. But over in North Korea, the third member of the axis will get the picture. For one thing, it’s hard to be an effective axis when there’s just one of you.

…

Even the Christian Science Monitor’s mullah-friendly coverage concedes that, according to recent ‘’polls,'’ 90 percent of Iranians ‘’want change.'’ If I were one of the A-list ayatollahs, I wouldn’t bet on many of that last 10 percent hanging tough when push comes to shove.

A year ago, I wrote of Iran: ‘’So far as one can tell from the patchy reports, it sounds more like Hungary 1956 than Czechoslovakia 1989.'’ The reports are still patchy but this summer’s looking more like 1989 every day. The only question is which of the European models applies: the Czech version, where the old monsters are civilized enough to perform one real service for their people by handing power over peacefully; the Romanian version, where the saner elements in the ruling party decide to remove the leadership and hope that’s enough to assuage their subjects; the Bulgar version, where the former Royal Family returns from exile to spearhead a new democracy . . .

I’ll wager there are more than a few quiet-life mullahs weighing the options. Iran is not a one-man cult like Saddam’s Iraq, and many imams, whether ‘’conservative'’ or ‘’liberal,'’ can recognize the smell of death percolating from the head office. The regime begins this year’s riot season see-sawing between savage but ineffective crackdowns and humiliating but insufficient concessions. Tipping point beckons.

(link via Betsy’s Page)

About a week ago I noted the possibility of the GOP’s becoming a “Governing Party” in 2004.

Now here’s a headline from Sunday’s Washington Post:

GOP Aims for Dominance in ‘04 Race

Republicans to Seek Governing Majority by Feeding Base, Courting New Voters

The article continues:

The president himself established the ambitions behind the 2004 strategy earlier this year, when he authorized advisers to begin planning for a reelection campaign that began in earnest last week with a series of fundraising events. According to several GOP strategists, Bush told his team: Don’t give me “a lonely victory.” Said one top Bush adviser, “He said, ‘I don’t want what Nixon had. I don’t want what Reagan had.’ “

Both President Richard M. Nixon in 1972 and President Ronald Reagan in 1984 won landslide reelection victories, but neither victory produced the lasting benefits to the party that Bush is seeking in 2004. “He [Bush] was explicit about that,” a GOP official said. “He doesn’t want to [win] with 55 percent and have a 51-49 Senate. He wants to expand the governing coalition.”

…

Bush’s desire for a party-wide victory, according to strategists familiar with White House planning, means that the president’s travel schedule, particularly in the final weeks of the campaign, will be determined by where he can do the most good for Republicans in competitive House, Senate and gubernatorial races as well as for himself. That would be a rerun of 2002, when Bush successfully used his political capital to rally GOP voters.

And, despite the Bushies’ characteristic downplaying of expectations in the rest of the article, a Governing Majority is entirely possible, as you can see from my 2004 Senate analysis and the brilliant scheduling of the 2004 Republican National Convention.

With a little luck, my post-election-2002 predictions will turn out to be as accurate as my pre-election-2002 predictions.

As I’ve been noting since January, Democrats today have a seething hatred toward the president that is leading them to take hardline positions that will come back to haunt them.

David Brooks has a must-read piece that examines this hatred. The piece is a classic and all of it is so good that I’m not even going to try to excerpt it. Go read the whole thing.

Bob Novak says that the ever-vacillating Senator Bob Graham, who says he’s only running for president, but will not rule out running for Senate, will be forced to make a decision much sooner than he’d like:

The Republican-controlled Florida Legislature, ready to make it impossible for Sen. Bob Graham to enter Democratic presidential primaries while keeping his options open for Senate re-election, may consider further limitations on him.

Before it adjourns next week, the Legislature is expected to move the May 7 deadline for the Senate primary to early March – prior to the California and Florida presidential primaries. If the Democratic nominee is not determined by then, Graham would have to make an early decision on whether to abandon his presidential ambitions or leave the Senate.

Forcing Graham to make an early decision may force him out of the Senate race, which would be an immense boon to Republicans, as you can see from my 2004 Senate analysis.

Despite its deciding the highest-profile case in US history in 2000, the Supreme Court is still relatively obscure. Two-thirds of Americans cannot name even one SCOTUS Justice.

After Monday, when the court will likely hand down its University of Michigan affirmative action decisions, more people will hopefully be able to name at least one Justice.

My first prediction on the Michigan cases is here. A revised one is here.

Rich Galen asks an interesting question:

• Also, in a Quinnipiac University poll of voters nationwide, Kerry loses to George W. Bush 53-37. Actually, EVERY Democrat tested loses to George W. Bush including the Recently Re-Sainted Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham who loses to the President by a 53-40 bulge.

• [Pause while 25,000 readers type a snappy retort to the use of that word and hit the “REPLY” key.]
• Done? Ok. Let’s move on.
• Fox News did a poll which showed that if George W. Bush ran against Bill Clinton, Bush would win 53-32. Extra credit question for stat majors: Does that mean Hillary would beat Bill in an election match-up? If so, by how much?

French wine sales are plummeting.

I was watching the movie Nuremberg and it occurred to me to remind those worried about Iraq that allied forces faced far worse difficulties in France and Germany after WW II.

After the war, Germans routinely strung up wires to decapitate allied soldiers driving in their jeeps. Several GIs were killed by the wires before the allies began to outfit their jeeps with steel bars in the front to cut through the wires.

As for France, looting was widely prevalent; but it was much less of a concern than the fate of hundreds of “collaborators” - some genuine, others not - who were murdered by their fellow Frenchmen after the war. The oh-so-civilized French used the aftermath of the war not just to murder genuine collaborators, but to settle many old scores.

Things in Iraq are going much better than the lying socialist treasonous liberal media want you to think. They highlight every minor incident as a devastating failure and concoct lies and fabrications, just as they did throughout the Iraq war. You can see a catalog of some of the lying socialist treasonous liberal media’s lies and fabrications about Iraq here.

Yet another nutcase liberal is finally discovering how brilliantly the GOP has scheduled its 2004 national convention.

If liberals had bothered to read this blog, they would have realized all this last November. Here’s a concise, but comprehensive, list of reasons why the GOP convention date provides the Republicans with significant advantages.

Victor Davis Hanson on Iraq’s reconstruction:

For about ten weeks now, the headlines of our major newspapers blare out something like the following: “Iraq Attacks Hamper U.S. Reconstruction” or “Increasing Resistance to U.S. Efforts in Iraq.” Often the ominous headers add qualifying comparatives - “more” or “greater” - or apocalyptic adjectives and nouns such as “bleak,” “crisis,” and “chaos” - suggesting that the disorder is increasing geometrically, rather than incrementally.

Since we were told things in Iraq were getting “worse” after week two, one wonders what the daily reappearance of “worse” means by week ten - and when we will, in fact, arrive at the promised Armageddon. In the blink of an eye, we went from reading about the “massive” Shiite demonstrations, to the “irrecoverable” losses of the Baghdad museum, to the “reconstitution” of the Baathists, and now onto the sinister conspiracy concerning the temporary absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

…

In reaction to this depressing daily fare, I often receive dozens of e-mails, phone calls, and questions during interviews that I could sum up as something like: ‘Why don’t we just leave them to themselves and go home?’ The more systematic thinkers, sensing that such a solution is at best knee-jerk and incomplete, will add, “And then if they still attack us again, we can always hit back, bomb them, and leave.”

I could summarize the anguish as something like a preference for a perpetual, but passive, Middle East no-fly zone, where American military forces contain rogue regimes and terrorists, without setting foot into the quagmire itself, thereby avoiding costs and deaths, and the inevitable charges of “occupation,” “interference,” or “imperialism.”

Americans cannot be blamed for their exasperation. In Afghanistan #1 we once kept our distance, armed the locals to fight Russian expansionist Communism on their own, left when the common enemy was defeated, accepted noninterference in Afghan affairs - and were blamed as cynical Cold War realists when the inevitable chaos followed. In Afghanistan #2, we defeated an equally odious force, stayed on to promote consensual government, attempted to provide aid - and are now being blamed as either cynical imperialists who lust after some mythical pipeline or na