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Political Updates John LeBoutillier Since so much is going on lately, I thought I'd cover a few of the most pressing topics. 1) Iraq War impacts domestic campaigns: August 8 in Connecticut will be the first race where the Iraq War directly influences a domestic campaign. Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat obviously (duh . . . he was the 2000 vice presidential nominee), is being challenged by staunch anti-war candidate, Ned Lamont. The polling on this race has shown a steady climb for Lamont - as the situation on the ground in Iraq sours.
The Democratic Party is worried about this race for a simple reason: If their own former veep nominee is knocked off in a Democratic primary - and then keeps running as an independent in the fall - what does the Democrat Party do? Who do they endorse? Do they support Ned Lamont - thus siding with the anti-war crowd even though most Democrats help get us into this war? Aug. 8 will be a decisive day in our politics - and have a big impact on the politics surrounding the Iraq War leading into this November's elections.
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2) Iraq itself: The situation there continues to deteriorate - so much so that U.S. troop deployments and rotations have been altered to place more soldiers on the ground in Baghdad where things are getting out of control. The Israeli-Hezbollah-Hamas conflict is distracting the media and the public from this deterioration - but it is happening nevertheless.
Leading into the fall elections here, the White House had hoped to have at least some modest, token troop withdrawals by October. Now that does not look likely; the impression of things spiraling out-of-control is not the image the Bush Team wants for the November elections. But reality is what it is - and civil war is obvious - and was always inevitable in Iraq.
The only question is this: Will it hurt the GOP in the fall? Note: Time Magazine's Mike Allen is reporting this week that the White House believes the Democrats may win the Congress back and thus wants to fortify the White House Counsel's office now to prepare for the inevitable investigations to come if the Democrats regain control of one house of the Congress.
(That doesn't show much faith in their prospects in November, does it?) 3) Bill Buckley, one of the "fathers of modern day conservatism," came out on CBS News this weekend and blasted the war in Iraq as a failure - he has said that before but not on national TV - and also said "Bush is not a true conservative."
You have read similar sentiments in this space for seven years. What type of conservative spends federal money like this, runs up our national debt to astronomical figures, expands the Department of Education, and creates a bloated Homeland Security Department, allows our borders to be run over with illegals, wants the Arabs to control our ports, and invades countries who didn't attack us at a cost - according to the Congressional Budget Office - of a whopping $432 billion? What about no nation-building? G.W. Bush made that pledge in the 2000 campaign - and yet here we are bogged down in Iraq trying to rebuild a country populated by people who want to rip it apart.
Clearly G.W. Bush is not a conservative; he is a big government Republican. And that is a prescription for disaster. 4) Katie Couric and CBS News: we are about seven weeks away from her Sept. 5 takeover of the CBS Evening News, and it is clear she will become the symbol of the left-leaning, so-called mainstream media (MSM). She is a total lefty and a pal and admirer of Hillary Clinton. She will follow Dan Rather in using the news as a subtle way to try to move the nation to the left. No wonder the ratings and profits of all these MSM shows and papers and magazines are declining: They do not connect with their audience anymore. America finally has alternatives - the Internet, talk radio, and conservative Fox News Channel.
Katie Couric will start off with a bang - spiking ratings and huge publicity - but will soon fall back to second or third place as people return to their normal viewing habits. And over time her liberalism will drive even more viewers away from CBS. They never learn, do they?
Editor's note:
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