The Discerning Texan

All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
Friday, October 27, 2006

Steyn is not buying the Democratic victory buzz

Mark Steyn has his doubts about all of the Elite media hype about the upcoming "Democrat victory":

To be honest, the election campaign has felt a bit like an out-of-body experience, or an out-of-body-politic experience. I’ve never been terribly partial to that Bertolt Brecht line about how it’s time to elect a new people. Nevertheless, as Donald Rumsfeld might say, you go to the polls with the electorate you have. And, if this electorate decides to anoint the Democratic party of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Howard Dean, that’s their prerogative.

And, if that comes to pass, Republicans should at least be grown-up enough not to take refuge in what seems to be a fast metastasizing Comforting Delusion of the Month — that if the Dems do happen to take Congress, in 2008 voters will be so disgusted after two years of Speaker Pelosi et al. there’ll be a GOP landslide. I doubt it. If Democrats win even one chamber in ’06, it will position them very well for both — plus the White House — in ’08. Unless, of course, Des Moines is wiped out in a nuclear strike, and Nancy says this proves we need to get a really strong resolution in the Security Council, and that causes a decisive point-oh-oh-oh-oh-whatever swing to the Republicans in a tight Senate race in South Dakota and a critical House seat in Georgia.

But let’s not move on to the new Comforting Delusion of the Month too early.

For what it’s worth, I don’t reckon the Dems will win. The wild gains predicted for the party in November are just the usual self-insulating Democrat-media bubble bolstered by the usual dodgy polling and an even more pathetic than usual pseudo-scandal in La Cage au Foley. Republicans are a tough sell, in part because no party’s gone three-for-three with their man in the White House since FDR — and he had a much bigger margin of error: The difference between then and now is that, in 1937, 17 wasn’t the age of Mark Foley’s pen pal but the number of Republican senators. Today, in a much more finely poised electoral landscape, any slippage by the majority party in this or that corner of the map is a potential loss nationally. Nonetheless, I would still bet on Republicans’ clinging to power on the Wednesday morning after a nail-biting night before.

The question then arises: Why is it this close?

Speaking of Mark Steyn, don't miss the video of Michelle Malking interviewing Steyn. Great stuff--watch Part One here and Part Two here.
DiscerningTexan, 10/27/2006 02:57:00 PM |