Bogeyman gone
“Diebold, one of the biggest manufacturers of computerized voting machines was until recently headed by a CEO who happened to be a vocal supporter of President Bush. So suspicious minds inquire: What if Republicans are rigging the machines?” National Review magazine says in an editorial.
“Writing in the New York Times in 2003, Paul Krugman sought to blow the lid off: ‘You don’t have to believe in a central conspiracy to worry that partisans will take advantage of an insecure, unverifiable voting system to manipulate election results. … The credibility of U.S. democracy may be at stake.’ That theme was rolled out again this election season on left-wing blogs and in the print media. There was even an HBO documentary, ‘Hacking Democracy,’ which emphasized the danger of Diebold disenfranchisement,” the magazine said.
“But then, just as the paranoia reached its peak, a funny thing happened: The Democrats won on Election Day. As suddenly as they had blared to life, the alarm bells fell silent. The critics paused for a moment, then burst out in a new refrain: The people have spoken! The realignment is here! Democracy works! And so the Diebold villain has retreated to the shadows — for the next two years, at least.”
In the states
“When the ‘blue wave’ that swept America November 7 crashed into the Colorado Statehouse, it gave Democrats the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature for the first time since John Kennedy was in the White House,” John Nichols writes in the Nation magazine.
“Gov.-elect Bill Ritter accepted the vote as a mandate to implement his party’s ‘Colorado Promise’ to make basic health care available to all Coloradans, strengthen public education, bridge the digital divide and make Colorado the nation’s leader in the development of renewable energy using sustainable resources,” Mr. Nichols said.
“The Colorado shift was not unique. In 15 states, Democrats now control the governor’s mansion and both legislative chambers, up from six before the election. In another 25, Democrats control either the governorship or one or more legislative chambers. In all, they have six more governors and more than 300 new legislators nationwide, along with a new crop of activist attorneys general and secretaries of state.
“With their return to the dominant position they held in the states before the 1994 ‘Republican revolution’ election, the Democrats are positioned to check the Bush administration from below, reassert their role in the redistricting process, assist a 2008 Democratic presidential candidate in battleground states and implement a radically different vision of government’s priorities and potential.”
Ominous sign
Pennsylvania Rep. John P. Murtha’s lopsided defeat in his bid to unseat Maryland Rep. Steny H. Hoyer in a vote for House majority leader, despite the backing of future Speaker Nancy Pelosi, “may be a sign that the unified Democratic caucus on which Pelosi built her reputation could quickly become a thing of the past,” Matthew Continetti writes in the Weekly Standard.
“The speaker-designate won the respect of many of her colleagues during the fight over [President] Bush’s Medicare prescription-drug entitlement, when her ability to round up Democratic votes almost derailed passage of the legislation, and during the fight over Bush’s proposal to reform Social Security, when she successfully prevented all House Democrats but one from working with Republicans. A major worry for Pelosi and her supporters is that those strengths may vanish once the Democrats are in the majority,” Mr. Continetti said.
” ‘People saw that the Pelosi-Hoyer leadership team had been effective,’ says Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who supported Hoyer. ‘There was no good reason to jettison one member of the team. It’s a team that unifies.’ Which is true — for now.”
A dilemma
Rep. John Shadegg, Arizona Republican, thinks newly elected House Democrats from the Midwest and South who ran as conservatives will face a dilemma.
“When they get here, they either are going to have to break faith with the people who they campaigned to with those conservatives values,” Mr. Shadegg told Human Events, “or they are going to be available, or amenable to, an approach by us to say, ‘Look, you may be a Democrat, but you are not a Nancy Pelosi Democrat, and therefore you need to stand with us on critical issues, like, for example, not allowing all the tax relief that has been enacted during the past three years to simply go away.’ ”
Echoes of Wallace
“Michigan voters struck a blow for equality this month, when 58 percent of them approved an amendment to the state constitution banning racial discrimination in public universities and contracting,” John Fund writes at www.OpinionJournal.com.
“Almost identical measures have previously passed by similar majorities in California and Washington state. That means the original meaning of the 1964 Civil Rights Act — that racial discrimination of any kind is illegal — has won reaffirmation in three liberal states, none of which have voted for a Republican for president since 1988. Supporters now plan to carry the fight to other states,” Mr. Fund said.
“From the outraged cries of affirmative action diehards, you would think the dark night of fascism was descending with the passage of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. Mary Sue Coleman is president of the University of Michigan, which has already spent millions of taxpayers’ dollars defending its racial preferences in courts.
“She addressed what Tom Bray of the Detroit News called ‘a howling mob of hundreds of student and faculty protesters’ last week. ‘Diversity matters at Michigan,’ she declared. ‘It matters today, and it will matter tomorrow.’ Echoes of George Wallace, who in 1963 declared from the steps of Alabama’s Capitol: ‘I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.’ ”
A new look
“The conservative American Enterprise Institute has scrapped its magazine and replaced it with a new glossy, The American,” Paul Bedard writes in the Washington Whispers column of U.S. News & World Report.
“Unlike the think tank’s old political rag, the jazzy new one is all business and economics, six times per year. ‘Our perspective,’ says editor James Glassman, ‘is not partisan, but it is rooted in liberal, free-market economics.’
“There are no editorials and foreign-policy manifestos. Instead, Reaganite Michael Ledeen writes about why Naples became the center of men’s high fashion. It’s an old model: The lively conservative American Spectator tried the same thing before finally switching back to politics.”
Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washingtontimes.com.
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