GOD BLESS AMERICA! VOTERS PUT BUSH ON A TIGHT LEASH
Americans Shout a Resounding 'No!' to Continued One-Party Rule and 'Staying the Course' on Iraq; Rumsfeld Gets the Boot 24 Hours Later
THURSDAY POST-ELECTION SPECIAL
By Skeeter Sanders
As this blogger watched the election returns Tuesday night, which saw the Democrats end a dozen years of Republican control of the House -- and break six years of one-party GOP rule overall -- I wanted to climb onto my rooftop and sing "God Bless America" at the top of my lungs.
God Bless America!
Americans by the millions exercised their constitutional right to vote and delivered a resounding repudiation of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and the multiple scandals that have rocked the Republicans on Capitol Hill. They swept the Republicans out of legislative power on Capitol Hill by turning control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats.
Frozen out of power for 12 long years in the House, the Democrats took back control of the lower chamber by capturing more than 25 seats held by Republicans. But it wasn't until late Wednesday night when it became clear that the Democrats would also take control of the Senate, albeit with the bare majority of 51 seats.
The new majority will include two New England independents who will caucus with the Democrats: Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who will move to the Senate after 16 years in the House, and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, re-elected as an independent after losing the August Democratic primary to Ned Lamont.
Peter Welch, a Democrat, will succeed Sanders in the House. He'll be the first Democrat to hold Vermont's lone seat in the House of Representatives in 20 years.
Although neither of the incumbent Republican senators in the two remaining officially undecided contests, Conrad Burns of Montana and George Allen of Virginia, have conceded defeat to their Democratic opponents, Jon Tester and Jim Webb, respectively, both senators trail by enough votes to make recounts moot, according to The Associated Press.
Allen has scheduled a news conference for today (Thursday), when county-by-county canvassing of the electronic voting machines is due to be completed. There were unconfirmed reports that Allen, who has the right under Virgina law to ask for a recount, plans instead to formally concede to Webb.
Democrats Also Gain Majority of Governorships, State Legislatures
In addition to their congressional victory, Democrats also took 20 of 36 governors' races to give them a majority of state chief executives — 28 — for the first time since 1994. Arkansas, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Ohio went into the Democratic column. Deval Patrick made history with his election as Massachusetts' first African-American governor.
Democrats also gained a decisive edge in state legislatures, taking control of several and solidifying their hold on others. With the wins, Democrats will be in a better position to shape state policy agendas and will play a key role in drawing congressional districts.
Iraq War Main Cause of GOP's Defeat -- And of Rumsfeld's Ouster
Within 24 hours after their Capitol Hill victory, the Democrats claimed their first Bush administration casualty as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced his resignation. The president reached back to his father's administration to tap Robert Gates, a former CIA director, to replace Rumsfeld.
The Iraq war was the central issue of Rumsfeld's often-contentious tenure and the public's growing unhappiness with the lack of progress with the war was the primary reason for the Democrats' electoral victory Tuesday — and the main impetus for his departure. Even some GOP lawmakers became critical of Rumsfeld's handling of the war, with growing numbers of Republicans urging Bush to replace Rumsfeld.
The final straw may have come in the form of a blistering editorial published in the Military Times newspapers which serve the nation's rank-and-file armed forces personnel demanding that Rumsfeld be dismissed.
Bush Now Knows How Bill Clinton Felt on Day After '94 Election
What goes around, comes around. Now Bush knows what President Bill Clinton felt on the day after the Republicans won control of Congress in 1994. But Bush faces a much more daunting political reality than Clinton did, primarily because unlike Clinton, Bush is in his final term in office and thus is already a lame duck, a full two years early.
And whereas the so-called "Republican Revolution" of 1994 was against 40 years of Democratic control of Congress, the "Democratic Counterrevolution" of 2006 -- if it can be called that --was squarely against the president.
For Republicans, a Nationwide Fall From Power, Greased By Scandals
Republicans -- even their last remaining liberal in the Senate, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island -- fell from power in every region of the country, as well as in every type of district — urban, rural and suburban. Exit polls showed middle-class independent voters who defected from the Democrats to the GOP in 1994 returned to the Democrats by a two-to-one margin.
The 2006 House results were an eerie reversal of the 1994 Republican sweep, when the GOP captured 54 seats in the House without losing any seats. With 12 House seats still undecided as of early Thursday morning, Democrats ousted 28 Republicans without losing a single incumbent. If all 12 remaining contests go the Democrats' way, they will have picked up a total of 40 House seats, their biggest gain since the post-Watergate landslide of 1974.
Exit polls by CNN and the AP showed that a series of scandals that have dogged Republicans for months -- topped by Mark Foley's sexually-explicit e-mails to teenage Capitol Hill pages -- hurt Republican incumbents even more than the president's low job-approval ratings and the increasing unpopularity of the three-and-a-half-year-old war in Iraq.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats defeated Representative Curt Weldon in the fallout from a federal corruption investigation and in upstate New York, voters tossed out Representative Don Sherwood, who admitted to a five-year extramarital affair with a much younger woman who says he choked her in a $5.5 million lawsuit against him.
The GOP lost the Texas seat of former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who resigned from the House in disgrace after being indicted in a campaign finance scheme; the Ohio seat held by Bob Ney, who resigned only last Friday after pleading guilty in a lobbying scandal, and the Florida seat of Foley.
The Foley scandal, more than any other, is largely to blame for a significant decline in GOP support from conservative Christians, many of whom stayed home, according to the exit polls. Even in states where ballot measures banning same-sex marriage drew conservative Christians to the polls, as much as a third of those voters cast ballots for Democratic candidates. who stepped down after the disclosure that he sent sexually explicit messages to male congressional pages.
End to a "Rubber-Stamp" GOP Congress -- And a Drift to a One-Party State
More importantly to this blogger, the election decisively brings to an end a "rubber-stamp" Republican Congress -- and the threat of the nation drifting toward a China-like one-party regime, with Republicans in permanent control of all three branches of government.
I don't use the term "China-like" lightly. For the past six years -- and especially since 2004, the federal government has been sliding dangerously toward a right-wing, one-party dictatorship, with hard-line conservative Republicans -- already in control of the White House and the Congress -- coming to within one seat of taking control of the Supreme Court, with the appointment by Bush of conservatives John Roberts as chief justice and Samuel Alito as associate justice.
Combine that with Bush's warrantless electronic surveillance program -- which, despite White House assertions to the contrary, clearly violate the Fourth Amendment; the USA Patriot Act, several of its provisions are also constitutionally suspect; and now the new law governing the treatment of terrorism suspects, which blatantly violate the Constitution by denying habeas corpus and empowering the president to arrest anyone -- even U.S. citizens -- on the merest suspicion of being terrorists and hold them for months, even years, without charge or trial, and you have the recipe for an authoritarian dictatorship.
Thank God this blogger isn't the only American who believes this. And I thank God that the American people, whether consciously or unconsciously, put a stop to this dangerous drift toward dictatorship by breaking the one-party regime in Washington and restoring the constitutional system of checks and balances established by our nation's Founding Fathers.
Thank you, America! Thank you for restoring our democracy!
God Bless America!
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Volume I, Number 53
Copyright 2006, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.