Centerblue.org

While I generally agree that it is the anti-regulatory environment pushed by Republicans for the last decade that is primarily responsible for the current crisis, there is one area where that is not the case: Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Democrats, led by Barney Frank and Chuck Schumer, have consistently shielded these entities from further regulation under the argument that their business model encouraged homeownership for lower and middle income families. They did so despite being warned that the over-leveraging these companies engaged in posed precisely the systemic risk we are now seeing come to pass. Meanwhile, Bush and the GOP tried and failed to push for greater oversight (one of the few things over which I’ve agreed with them the last few years).

While this unflattering video is from Fox News, I consider the reporting accurate:

Gotta call a spade a spade.

I’m seething.

Democrats are proposing common sense additions to the mega-bailout being asked for under threat of Armageddon according to Paulson. They’re asking that executive compensation be limited (I believe to $400,000 if I remember correctly) for banks participating in the bailout, and that taxpayers be given the opportunity to purchase ownership shares in companies participating through the use of “warrants”:

Several lawmakers, including Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), an influential member of the Banking Committee, are pushing for a provision that would require participating firms to grant the government warrants to purchase stock.

Sources familiar with the Treasury’s thinking said warrants would limit participation in the program. Only failing banks would be willing to give the government stock in exchange for buying up their bad assets, these sources said. But key Democrats said the point was critical.

“If this is an investment, the taxpayer should not be treated as dumb money,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “If we’re going to buy these securities that are illiquid, toxic, we need to make sure taxpayers get an equity ride so they get to benefit on the upside.”

Another point of dispute is Democrats’ insistence that the government be given authority to cut the salaries of executives and restrict their severance packages if they take taxpayer money. Paulson has said such a move would be “punitive” and deter companies from participating in the bailout.

Here’s a message for Paulson, in language not often seen on this blog:

GO F*CK YOURSELF.

You’re trying to sell this sack of garbage to Congress and the American public while using a Sword of Damocles over our heads preaching imminent doom, and you have the unmitigated gall to say to our faces that banks might be “deterred” from participating because we insist on an equity stake and executive pay equivalent to that received by the President in order to benefit from taxpayers’ largesse?

Why don’t these banks and their executives take their business, their stock, their toxic mortgage products, their hedge funds, their six digit bonuses, and their fancy yachts and SHOVE them?

Any banks refusing to accede to these conditions make clear that they didn’t really need the bailout to save anything except their own lifestyles and the status quo. And that, my friends, is not worth my taxpayer money.

Democrats, don’t you DARE cave in on these conditions or you will suffer the consequences at the polls in just a few weeks.

The gloves have come off in South Carolina, as both Obama and Hillary know the loser of that upcoming contest will be seriously hobbled going forward to the nomination. The bickering has gotten to a point of bitterness that is so extreme that it threatens a rift in the Democratic party.

Hillary is particularly guilty of this–both by running ads quoting Obama out of context and by unleashing Bill in all his ferocity against her opponent. Now–I love Bill and always will, and I understand Hillary is backed against a corner–but do we really need to stoop to the level of Republicans? I’m particularly displeased that she is trying to paint Obama with words he didn’t say, and is being so harsh that she threatens to alienate a lot of rank-and-file Dems including her own supporters if she wins the nomination.

The only positive thing about all of this is that we’re seeing how Obama reacts under withering fire, which the Republicans are sure to unleash on him if he wins the nomination. We don’t want another candidate that’s going to wilt and let himself be defined by the opposition. Obama until now has been relatively passive in responding, though I think that has been more out of respect for Bill, the presumptive leader of the Democratic Party. He needs to get over that, though, and prove that he has the balls to fight back hard…and he seems to finally be doing that.

Overall, though, this level of mudslinging is unseemly and I’d much rather see the candidates return to a level of civility. I understand the need to win, but it’s not worth winning the battle to lose the war. Then again, the GOP is so muddled in its own nomination fight that it may not matter–time will tell.

So…Obama trounced Clinton in the Iowa caucuses (so did Edwards). Congrats, Obama!

While Edwards had much to be happy for, Obama was the real story last night as he picks up huge momentum going into New Hampshire.

As for Clinton, well, she was looking rather dejected last night. No doubt that this was a big blow to her campaign.

In keeping with what happened, my stance is going back to neutral on the race. I had previously declared preference for Hillary–while my doubts about her were many and growing I viewed her as the most electable candidate. But Obama pulled off his win in a state that has mostly white rural voters, showing that his candidacy is possible.

Yet still, I worry. The 800 pound gorilla in the room remains: is this country ready for a black president? I hear a lot of people say yes, but what lies in wait behind the scenes? Two recent events come to mind.

First was Harold Ford last year in Tennessee, who everyone thought for a while would win a Senate seat. He was doing well until his opponent started running ads featuring scantily clad white women blowing kisses at him, strongly playing into people’s prejudices about black men’s sexual power with white women. His candidacy tanked and his opponent won the race. Maybe he lost because of other reasons, but can we really say that race wasn’t the cause of his defeat in a fairly conservative southern state?

Second was something much more personal and closer to home for me. When I visited with family over the holidays, an older relative of mine and I had a discussion about politics and the likely candidates. When talk turned to Obama, this relative who normally votes Democratic and who normally acts in a non-prejudiced way, said to me: “I don’t want that n****r as president” (or its rough equivalent in Spanish). I was mortified. And while the resulting lecture by me ensued, the back of my mind raced as to the implications. If here in front of me was a fairly rock-solid Democratic voter protesting Obama’s candidacy on the basis of his race, what else awaits Obama elsewhere?

Is this country full of people who put on a veneer of being non-discriminatory but whose real prejudices will come out at the voting booth? We may soon find out.

It’s not that I think someone like Obama shouldn’t risk it. Of course he should. America should remain the country of equal opportunity, and we shouldn’t even be having to ask these questions. But we’re also at a crossroads as a nation, sorely limping in the wake of 7 years of Bush’s despotism and 12 years of GOP Congressional rule. From the economy, to global warming, to our energy dependence, to our international reputation, to the deficit, to poverty, to health insurance, and to a myriad other issues, America seems to have entered a steep decline. We need strong visionary leadership, preferably from a Democrat, to start fixing the mess. As Democrats and as a country we collectively cannot risk anyone but the strongest most electable candidate. Anyone less simply will not do.

We can’t afford to lose again to yet another witless oaf like Huckabee.

My mind is open that Obama could be such a candidate. He is clearly visionary, an amazing speaker, and wildly popular. It may be that he breaks through the glass ceiling of his race and pulls off a spectacular victory, demonstrating that America is finally ready to move forward from its ugly racial past to a new day where the words “equal opportunity” aren’t just empty truisms.

Prove it to me, Obama. Prove to me that you can appeal to more than just the liberal Democratic base–that you can talk with people past their lingering prejudices and straight to their hearts. I would love to see you as President–but you have to prove to me that you have what it takes to win the hearts and minds of a majority of people in this country, including in the South.

I desperately want to believe. I’m just not there yet.

What an outrageous disappointment the Democrats have been in serving as the will of the people in ending the futile Iraq conflict. The “compromise” recently announced was no compromise at all so much as a capitulation in the face of the very difficult decisions that have to be made. Dem’s, get your f’ing act together before you get returned to the minority from whence you came if for no other reason than for lack of support from your own rank and file–like me.

Nobody says it better than Keith Olbermann, as he did last night:

SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann

A Special Comment about the Democrats’ deal with President Bush to continue financing this unspeakable war in Iraq—and to do so on his terms:

This is, in fact, a comment about… betrayal.

Few men or women elected in our history—whether executive or legislative, state or national—have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear: Get us out of Iraq.

Yet after six months of preparation and execution—half a year gathering the strands of public support; translating into action, the collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this War of Lies, the Democrats have managed only this:

* The Democratic leadership has surrendered to a president—if not the worst president, then easily the most selfish, in our history—who happily blackmails his own people, and uses his own military personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that the Democrats “give the troops their money”;

* The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans;

* The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.

* The Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the only things truly compromised, are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq.

You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions—Stop The War—have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.

You may trot out every political cliché from the soft-soap, inside-the-beltway dictionary of boilerplate sound bites, about how this is the “beginning of the end” of Mr. Bush’s “carte blanche” in Iraq, about how this is a “first step.”

Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning… is our collective hope that you and your colleagues would do what is right, what is essential, what you were each elected and re-elected to do.

Because this “first step”… is a step right off a cliff.

And this President!

How shameful it would be to watch an adult… hold his breath, and threaten to continue to do so, until he turned blue. But how horrifying it is… to watch a President hold his breath and threaten to continue to do so, until innocent and patriotic Americans in harm’s way, are bled white.

You lead this country, sir? You claim to defend it?

And yet when faced with the prospect of someone calling you on your stubbornness—your stubbornness which has cost 3,431 Americans their lives and thousands more their limbs—you, Mr. Bush, imply that if the Democrats don’t give you the money and give it to you entirely on your terms, the troops in Iraq will be stranded, or forced to serve longer, or have to throw bullets at the enemy with their bare hands.

How transcendentally, how historically, pathetic.

Any other president from any other moment in the panorama of our history would have, at the outset of this tawdry game of political chicken, declared that no matter what the other political side did, he would insure personally—first, last and always—that the troops would not suffer.

A President, Mr. Bush, uses the carte blanche he has already, not to manipulate an overlap of arriving and departing Brigades into a ‘second surge,’ but to say in unequivocal terms that if it takes every last dime of the monies already allocated, if it takes reneging on government contracts with Halliburton, he will make sure the troops are safe—even if the only safety to be found, is in getting them the hell out of there.

Well, any true President would have done that, Sir. You instead, used our troops as political pawns, then blamed the Democrats when you did so.

Not that these Democrats, who had this country’s support and sympathy up until 48 hours ago, have not since earned all the blame they can carry home.

“We seem to be very near the bleak choice between war and shame,” Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne in the days after the British signed the Munich accords with Germany in 1938. “My feeling is that we shall choose shame, and then have war thrown in, a little later…”

That’s what this is for the Democrats, isn’t it?

Their “Neville Chamberlain moment” before the Second World War. All that’s missing is the landing at the airport, with the blinkered leader waving a piece of paper which he naively thought would guarantee “peace in our time,” but which his opponent would ignore with deceit.

The Democrats have merely streamlined the process. Their piece of paper already says Mr. Bush can ignore it, with impugnity.

And where are the Democratic presidential hopefuls this evening? See they not, that to which the Senate and House leadership has blinded itself?

Judging these candidates based on how they voted on the original Iraq authorization, or waiting for apologies for those votes, is ancient history now. The Democratic nomination is likely to be decided… tomorrow.

The talk of practical politics, the buying into of the President’s dishonest construction “fund-the-troops-or-they-will-be-in-jeopardy,” the promise of tougher action in September, is falling not on deaf ears, but rather falling on Americans who already told you what to do, and now perceive your ears as closed to practical politics.

Those who seek the Democratic nomination need to—for their own political futures and, with a thousand times more solemnity and importance, for the individual futures of our troops—denounce this betrayal, vote against it, and, if need be, unseat Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi if they continue down this path of guilty, fatal acquiescence to the tragically misguided will of a monomaniacal president.

For, ultimately, at this hour, the entire government has failed us.

* Mr. Reid, Mr. Hoyer, and the other Democrats… have failed us. They negotiated away that which they did not own, but had only been entrusted by us to protect: our collective will as the citizens of this country, that this brazen War of Lies be ended as rapidly and safely as possible.

* Mr. Bush and his government… have failed us. They have behaved venomously and without dignity—of course. That is all at which Mr. Bush is gifted. We are the ones providing any element of surprise or shock here.

With the exception of Senator Dodd and Senator Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidates have (so far at least) failed us. They must now speak, and make plain how they view what has been given away to Mr. Bush, and what is yet to be given away tomorrow, and in the thousand tomorrows to come.

Because for the next fourteen months, the Democratic nominating process—indeed the whole of our political discourse until further notice—has, with the stroke of a cursed pen, become about one thing, and one thing alone.

The electorate figured this out, six months ago. The President and the Republicans have not—doubtless will not. The Democrats will figure it out, during the Memorial Day recess, when they go home and many of those who elected them will politely suggest they stay there—and permanently.

Because, on the subject of Iraq…The people have been ahead of the media….Ahead of the government…Ahead of the politicians…for the last year, or two years, or maybe three.

Our politics… is now about the answer to one briefly-worded question.

Mr. Bush has failed. Mr. Warner has failed. Mr. Reid has failed.

So, who among us will stop this war—this War of Lies? To he or she, fall the figurative keys to the nation. To all the others—presidents and majority leaders and candidates and rank-and-file Congressmen and Senators of either party—there is only blame… for this shameful, and bi-partisan, betrayal.

Lou Dobbs says exactly what has been on my mind over the attorney general flap the last few days:

‘Showdown’ really a battle of partisan buffoons

NEW YORK (CNN) — An incompetent attorney general, who says he wasn’t fully aware that nearly 10 percent of the U.S. attorneys who work for him throughout the country were being fired and permitted the 110,000-person Justice Department that he leads to give inaccurate information at best, or simply lie about it at worst, to the Congress and the American people, has the full confidence of the president who’s lost the confidence of most people.

And this is what passes for a big-time, dramatic, historic constitutional crisis in 21st century America? You’ve got to be kidding. This is the most partisan, politically driven administration in history, and we’re all supposed to be surprised by its conduct and motivation in the firing of these U.S. attorneys? Please.

Now the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law has voted to approve subpoenas that would force chief policy adviser Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers and other top presidential aides to testify publicly and under oath about their involvement in the firings.

Guess what? That little ol’ subcommittee can’t do much of anything to force executive branch employees to testify without the help of the very man and department at the center of this altogether silly and over-baked controversy. That’s right; Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or one of his U.S. attorneys would have to enforce any subpoenas refused by any of the president’s aides.

This is the same Democratic-controlled Congress that millions of voters thought would be so vastly different from the last gaggle of partisan buffoons in the Republican-led 109th Congress. With almost 30,000 young Americans killed or wounded in Iraq, with a half-trillion dollars spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this Congress can do no better than publicly fulminate in futility and bray endlessly without effect on the course and conduct of the war in Iraq. Is there no sense of proportion and higher purpose anywhere in Washington?

While this president’s so-called free trade policies continue to bleed the nation and the economy of millions of jobs and add to a $5 trillion mountain of trade debt, and while our public schools continue to fail a generation of young Americans, this Congress chooses to invest its energy and time in pure partisan blather and cheap political theatrics.

Is there not one decent, honest man or woman in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, in either party’s leadership, who possesses the courage and the honesty to say, “Enough. The people who elected us deserve better”? So far the answer is no. Is there really any wonder that public opinion polls demonstrate that the president and this Congress share equally low approval ratings in poll after poll?

The White House is behaving with utter contempt for Congress and Congress is acting without respect or regard for this president. Could it be that, at long last, they’re both right?

A new Gallup Organization report demonstrates that the Republican brand name has been severely damaged as a result of Iraq and scandals over the last six years.

For 2001 through 2005, the party identification balance in Gallup polling — before independents are asked which way they lean — remained within 2 points of each other.

In 2001, Democrats had an edge of eight-tenths of a percent; in 2002 the GOP was up by nine-tenths of a percent, then in 2003, Republicans were 1.9 points ahead.

That GOP lead shrank to six-tenths of a point in 2004, then Democrats pulled within the error margin, with just four-tenths of a point separating the parties.

But for 2006, Democrats pulled away, leading Republicans by 3.9 points, with 34.3 percent identifying themselves as Democrats, 30.4 percent as Republicans and 33.9 percent as independents.

This represents a swing of 5.8 points in just three years, from a GOP lead of 1.9 points to a deficit of 3.9 points.

Much more startling, though, was about the identification of “leaners”–people who categorize themselves as independents but who tend to “lean” or “identify with” one party or the other and who in fact often end up voting for that party.

In this category of leaners, Democrats had an advantage of 1.3 points in 2001. The parties were within the margin of error in 2002, when four-tenths of a point separated them and in 2003, when there was just a one-tenth of a point difference.

In 2004, Democrats had a 2.7 point advantage, and it grew to 4.4 points in 2005.

But in 2006, this category exploded to a 10.2-point advantage for Democrats: 50.4 percent for Democrats, 40.2 percent for Republicans. The remaining 9.4 percent did not lean toward either party.

This 10.2-point advantage is the biggest lead either party has had since Gallup began tracking the leaners in 1991.

It should come as no surprise that fewer and fewer people want to be associated in any way with the party that brought us the Iraq disaster and Mark Foley. Time will tell, but I wonder whether the mid 2000’s will end up being a turning point in American politics. Just like the early 80’s under Reagan brought an end to decades of liberal thinking and progressive government, 2006 may be the time that brought the brand of conservatism espoused by the GOP to an end as a viable governing philosophy. Or maybe not..it depends on how well Democrats handle their new majorities.

It’s official: Obama is running for the White House.

He is the personification of the American dream–rising from the humblest of roots to obtain an Ivy League education and then launch a political career that could culminate with the ultimate prize. He also has a facility with words that make him remarkably eloquent. These qualities have combined to make him a media sensation and a cultural phenomenon.

But is being a cultural phenomenon enough to win the White House? Does he have what it takes? Some have accused him of being silver-tongued, that he says what he thinks people want to hear–and that diametrically opposed individuals who listen to him each come away convinced that Obama is on their side. Maybe that’s true, maybe not–surely the harsh spotlight of a presidential campaign will soon pin him down on his positions and test his political acumen.

There’s also the 800 pound gorilla in the room that nobody seems to want to discuss: is America ready for a black president? It’s a sensitive question, but it simply must be asked.

I sure hope the answer is yes, that we’ve come far enough along that a person’s skin color (or gender) is not an impediment to reaching the White House. The shenanigans that surrounded Harold Ford’s Senate race in Tennessee (which he lost) gives me pause, however. It was a race replete with racism and innuendo, including a commercial featuring a scantily-clad white woman asking Ford to call her, obviously playing into people’s stereotypes and fears about black men with white women. Will we see more of the same with Obama? It’s an obnoxious truth that many people still hold racist feelings, whether they say so aloud or not–and it is unknown how powerfully this will play into a presidential vote.

All he can do is try, and in that I wish him success. Whether the race goes his way or someone else’s, I’ll be watching and ready to help the Democratic winner take Virginia in November 2008. Virginia has now twice elected a Democratic governor and more recently a Democratic senator. It has become a quintessential battleground state, one that can be delivered to the Democrats in the electoral vote. What a sweet upset that would be…and I intend to help make it happen.

The ink is barely dry on the Democratic majority in Congress and already both the far Left and the Right are spinning the numbers, statistics, and what it all means into a dizzying array of contradictory “facts.”

On the Right, you have the so-called “Architect” Karl Rove saying that the election landslide was really just “typical” for an election six years into a President’s term….and that other than a few relatively “minor” factors like Iraq the conservative movement remains on track to cementing a permanent majority. After all, he says, if just a few thousand votes had gone the other way the Republicans would still be in control. He foresees the resumption of Republican dominance in two years.

On the Left, you have folks like Atrios trying to claim that there is no “Center” in politics, and that what people have been hoodwinked into calling “the Center” is in fact the Left. He can’t think of anything that belongs to a “radical left” agenda that isn’t considered “centrist” by the pundits who say that centrism ruled the day in the election.

What a bunch of spin.

To Karl Rove: you can twist and massage numbers all you like. Don’t forget that the backbone of your “Republican hegemony,” Bush himself, was elected by a mere 300 or so votes in Florida. The fact is that this country is not interested in your twisted, bigoted brand of conservatism–and the last six years have demonstrated the Republican party’s incompetence in adhering to its own ideals of limited government, balanced budgets, and a strong and sensible national defense.

To Atrios and the Kos folks claiming a Left-driven mandate in Tuesday’s election: I can think of PLENTY of liberal ideas that if done by this Congress would cause voters from all those conservative and moderate districts we won to send their freshmen Democratic congressmen packing in two years:

• Tax increases on anyone except the most wealthy, especially if coupled with any spending increases.
• Over-regulation of business on issues that don’t affect the life and health of consumers.
• Unconditional granting of citizenship to illegal immigrants.
• Codifying gay marriage into law or re-opening the gays in the military debate.
• Immediate full withdrawal of troops from Iraq, as some liberals are demanding.
• Messing with the death penalty.
• A complete gutting of the Patriot Act instead of balancing the liberty compromised in each provision of the Act with the security benefit obtained (a balancing exercise never contemplated in the current version that consists merely of rights-limiting mandates.)
• Nationalization of health care with an accompanying tax increase (at least without a very clear explanation of how people would actually pay less than they do under the current system.)
• Outlawing the Pledge of Allegiance (or striking its references to God) in schools or any other such nonsense, as advocated by some liberals.
• Making abortion substantially easier to get than it already is.
• Radical environmental reforms (at least without a strong justification of how it relates to global warming, a fact which I think people of all political persuasions are beginning to accept.)

Now folks like Atrios and my friend Boztopia can claim that the Center is gone if they like, and that it’s really just part of a “sea of blue” that was theirs all along. Or they can claim that the Center simply moved Left. More likely, it’s the Left realizing the futility of some of its more radical ideas and understanding that in order to govern in this country they’re going to have to lurch somewhat to the Right whether they like it or not. The Center hasn’t gone anywhere–the Left has.

Look at other topics that were once considered conservative or centrist and are now all the rage among the Left: a strong national defense, a phased solution in Iraq, a balanced budget, cutting taxes such as the Alternative Minimum Tax, cracking down on employers who hire illegal aliens.

Folks, you can claim these were your ideas all along if you like, if they will help the new Congress govern from the “sensible middle.” (I personally don’t believe that’s the case, although I’m delighted that the Left finally got serious about the realities of what it takes to become a majority.) But it would be a sad and highly incorrect conclusion to assume that because people chose the ideas espoused by this “new Left,” if you will…that they by transitive property also signed on to all of the radical, batty, or even idealistic but unrealistic ideas that come from the far Left. It just isn’t so.

The Left can govern on a platform of sensible ideas that span the political Center, or they can go back to being an impotent minority. They can’t have both in a country that leaned Right after 9/11 without a lot of gentle nudging back to the Left that will take place only in small steps over time. Push too hard and too fast, and all those new Democratic districts will go right back to being Red in two years.

As Republicans retreat like beaten curs in the face of their implosion last night, to lick their wounds and fret about a future under Nancy Pelosi, they would do well to reflect on what brought them to such a sorry juncture.

The Party of Lincoln was supposed to be one of limited government, fiscal prudence and a balanced budget, a belief in the power of the markets, transparent governance, and a strong and sensible foreign policy. These principles were embodied in the Republicans’ Contract with America that helped usher them into power for twelve years. Notably absent from the Contract was any mention of divisive social issues like abortion or gay rights.

Shortly after their ascension to power, and increasingly so after Bush II came into office, Republicans threw the Contract away and most of their core principles along with it, adopting instead a scorched-earth policy based on delusions of having secured a permanent majority:

• Instead of focusing on dollars and cents, they resorted to socially divisive issues like gay marriage and Terry Schiavo to rally their base while leaving the rest of America cold.
• Their “win at all costs” mentality caused them to impeach a popular sitting president over a sexual indiscretion, severely poisoning the atmosphere in Washington and nearly eliminating the possibility of bipartisanship on any issues ever since.
• After 9/11, they squandered not just the goodwill of the world in the aftermath of the attack but also the nation’s prestige and ability to lead or pressure other nations through their pig-headed and misguided determination to invade Iraq without a plan or a clear set of goals.
• They became a rubber-stamp for a President with total disregard for basic constitutional rights.
• They engaged in fear-mongering tactics to win elections, raising the specter of terrorists on every street corner just waiting to pounce on Americans should Democrats ever come to power.
• Instead of nurturing the federal surplus handed to them after the Clinton years, they wasted it all and turned the surplus into humongous deficits, spending like drunken sailors while Bush failed to use his veto pen on anything except a stem cell research bill.
• They insisted on greatly worsening the federal budget by handing out tax cuts to those who needed them the least.
• They threw transparency in government out the window, letting their votes be bought by lobbyists and operations such as the “K Street Project.”

Many of the ideas of the Revolution itself were really good. What failed was Republicans’ ability to execute on them because of their self-entitled sense of having obtained permanent hegemony and the concomitant feeling that they no longer needed to be brought to account for their actions. It became sufficient for them to keep rallying their base, keep pushing wedge issues on the public, keep painting their Democratic opponents as weak on terrorism and wanting to coddle terrorists.

The Republican Revolution came to power because of an idea. It ended when the only idea left was how to keep power. As Democrats return to enjoy their own time in the sun, they would do well not to forget that lesson.