Politics Blog

The Dean campaign just passed its record third-quarter fundraising total of $14.8 million and may well pass $15 million before the day is up! That is, of course, more money than any Democrat has ever raised in a single quarter.

Meanwhile, John Kerry is having a disastrous fundraising quarter.

As I’ve been saying for several weeks, Weasel Clark’s fourth-quarter fundraising numbers of $12 million or so should instantly make him the anti-Dean candidate.

UPDATE: Dean just hit $15 million!

-- PoliPundit

Despondent Texas Democrats have yet to put up a single candidate for statewide races in 2004. The deadline for filing is Friday. Texas Republicans have wonevery statewide race since 1994.

-- PoliPundit

So, what are my predictions for 2004? Well, I see no reason to change the predictions I made over a year ago, on November 7, 2002:

I’ll do the obviousstuff first, that will play out in the next few weeks and months. Democrats in congress will now fight a bloody civil war within their ranks between those who say they need to move to the center and those True Believers who will say they lost because they moved too far away from their ideological moorings.

The Liberals will win.

Nancy Pelosi will become House Minority Leader, defeating moderate Martin Frost. This is perfect for Republicans. Pelosi is a hard-left San Francisco Liberal who voted against the Iraq resolution. If the GOP needs a bogeyman, she’ll be glad to play the part. Pelosi’s ascendance will result in the defection of some moderate Democrats to the GOP, giving the GOP an even bigger margin in the House.

In the Senate, Tom Daschle may be able to fend off a challenge from Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd for his post as Minority Leader. Daschle will likely barely prevail and preside over a fractious caucus where the Liberals clamour for evermore leftward drift and moderates seriously consider defecting to the GOP to disassociate themselves from the Liberals and save their skins.

Meanwhile, the White House and congressional Republicans will put forward a disciplined agenda consisting of more tax cuts, rolling back regulations, Tort Reform (particularly sweet since it hits the Democrats’ fund raising base - trial lawyers), ANWR exploration, a department of Homeland Security, reforms of agencies like the INS, EPA and IRS, and the confirmation of true-blue young Conservative judges to the federal judiciary. Moderate and vulnerable Democrats will be forced to go along with these proposals. In the past, Democrats could vote like Liberals in Washington and then go home and lie to their Conservative constituents. That will no longer work. As the GOP Senate candidates proved this time, 30-second attack ads featuring a candidate’s position on a defining issue can be particularly effective in beating moderate Democrats in Republican states.

Saddam Hussein is toast. An attack on Iraq in 2003 will result in a further boost for Bush’s approval ratings and enable him to pass even more of his agenda.

Now for some speculation (in politics, 2 years is a lifetime; so some of this stuff is quite likely to be wrong.) The economy will come roaring back, setting Bush up for re-election in 2004. Bush will run for re-election on a bold platform of Social Security partial privatization, a flat income tax or national sales tax to replace the current “progressive” income tax, and his successful prosecution of the War on Terrorism. Now largely devoid of moderate voices because of the 2003 purges, Democrats will revert to their Liberal roots and give their Presidential nomination to someone far to the left, like John Kerry of Massachusetts or Howard Dean of Vermont. This candidate will get shellacked by Bush, setting up a GOP majority that might prove as enduring as FDR’s Democratic majority in the 1930s. Remember that it took the GOP almost 50 years to overcome the thumping it got from FDR.

So far, those predictions have held up pretty well, no? The last paragraph is the only one that still needs to be tested.

-- PoliPundit

Here’s a New Year’s resolution worth making: I resolve to get off my butt and do something to help stop Democrats like Pat Leahy, Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy.

Today is Wictory Wednesday. Every Wednesday, I ask my readers to volunteer and/or donate to the Bush 2004 campaign.

If you’ve already donated and volunteered for the Bush campaign, then talk to your friends and enlist them in this battle for America’s very soul.

If you’re a blogger, you can join Wictory Wednesdays simply by putting up a post like this one every Wednesday, asking your readers to volunteer and/or donate to the Bush campaign. And do e-mail me at wictory@blogsforbush.com so that I can add you to the Wictory Wednesday blogroll, which will be part of the Wictory Wednesday post on all participating blogs:

-- PoliPundit

According to the Brazilian government, fingerprinting and photographing applicants for US visas is “absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis.”

As a recent legal immigrant, I suppose I should be shocked and outraged that BusHitler’s FBI took my photo and fingerprints when I applied for my Green Card. Never mind the fact that I get to live in the greatest country on the planet. How dare they photograph me?

-- PoliPundit

Howard Dean’s Christmas message included no mention of… Christmas!

(Thanks to James Taranto for pointing this out.)

-- PoliPundit

When they’re handing out dumbest-2004-prediction awards, this one by E. J. Dionne will rank near the top:

Here’s what’s interesting for 2004: The conventional wisdom, fed by shrewd Republican operatives and commentators, is that Democrats, so out there in their antipathy for Bush, will push their party into an extremist wonderland and lose white men, security moms and anybody else who does not share their desire for revenge.

The opposite is true. Democrats will not have to spend inordinate time or money in this election year “uniting their base.” Opposition to Bush has already done that.

In the 2000 election, Bush had an advantage over Al Gore because Republican rank-and-filers so hated Bill Clinton – and so wanted to win – that they gave Bush ample room to sound as moderate as John Breaux or Olympia Snowe. Bush’s 2000 Republican National Convention hid the base behind the appealing face of inclusiveness and outreach. Gore, in the meantime, had to claw back the votes of liberals and lefties who had strayed to Ralph Nader.

This time, the Democrats will have most of the election year to appeal to swing voters. Democrats are so hungry to beat Bush that they will let their nominee be pragmatic and shrewd.

Not a chance. Democrats live in a liberal cocoon and are convinced that the way to win presidential elections is by being insanely liberal. That’s why they’re backing candidates who support massive tax hikes, gay marriage, HillaryCare and Saddam Hussein.

-- PoliPundit

The decision by John Ashcroft to recuse himself and turn over the Wilson/Plame investigation to a special counsel is stupid, stupid, stupid! I’d always thought the whole Wilson/Plame thing would amount to a big ball of nothing; but Washington Republicans seem determined to prove me wrong by giving Democrats everything they want.

This is just another illustration that Republicans are hopeless at using the wheels of power in Washington to perpetuate their grip. When you control the executive and legislative branches, what possible reason do you have for ceding control of politically sensitive investigations to “neutral” investigators?

The president made the same mistake in appointing RINO former-Governor Tom Kean to head the 9-11 commission. Democrats, meanwhile, appointed former-Senator Max Cleland - a bitter Bush hater - to run their side of things.

It’s time the administration stopped caving in to Democrats on these issues and started appointing hardcore Republican partisans to every conceivable office.

-- PoliPundit

SNL does Gore-Dean.

(link via InstaPundit)

-- PoliPundit

“They are beginning to really gouge this guy. Look at Howard Dean and, as a Republican, think about the advertising we