Down in the Mud

Captain Ed takes issue with a NYT piece on Bush's role as stealth campaigner:

"The basic premise of the Times is that Bush will only go to where his presence can't do any more damage to electoral hopes of floundering Republicans. A president appearance, according to Sheryl Gay Stolberg, amounts to something of the last gasp for desperate candidates. It once again paints Bush as an enormous liability, a theme we saw in 2004 and one proven wrong by the results, where the GOP widened its Senate majority considerably. It also serves as an excuse to provide an omnibus scandal sheet of various accusations against Republicans around the nation, as the desperation theme gets tied to these allegations rather neatly.

"Stolberg undermines her own thesis, although readers have to press several paragraphs into the piece to figure that out. First, Bush has raised a lot of money in the areas where he has campaigned; the Sarasota visit raised $375,000 for a Congressional campaign, a rather impressive showing; the average cost of an entire Congressional campaign hovers around $2 million as of 2004. Bush raised 20% of that in one showing. He has also campaigned for George Allen, who now leads James Webb, as well as incumbents likely to win re-election such as Richard Pombo in California -- hardly a place where a Republican albatross would show up. Once again, Bush seems to have confounded political analysts."

Another liberal media conspiracy! Except the Washington Times has run the same story.

Is Hillaryland worried about a possible new 2008 rival? Absolutely, says Newsweek's Jonathan Alter :

"The latest iteration of the Barack Obama boomlet: Hillary Clinton's folks are quaking about the possibility of his running in 2008. There's even speculation an Obama race might preclude her getting in. Here's why: Hillary's game plan is to raise enough money and generate enough momentum to survive a loss in Iowa (perhaps to John Edwards, who is well-organized there) or New Hampshire (to the flavor of the moment), but then secure the nomination by running the table on Super Tuesday. The reason she thought she could do that is that Super Tuesday primaries in the Democratic Party are dominated by African-American voters, who generally love the Clintons. But there's someone they would love even more, namely a certain senator from Illinois.

"To make matters even tougher for any other Democrat, an Obama adviser told me that if he runs, he would launch a huge voter registration drive in the South. The aim would be to so expand black registration that Southern states would no longer be gimmees for the GOP. At a minimum, it would pin down Republicans defending their base in the South. The little-known clincher is that Obama has personal experience in voter registration. Before entering the state Senate in 1996, he ran a registration drive that registered more than 100,000 new black voters in Chicago alone."

Kevin Drum looks forward to a new Democratic era:

"Conservatives have been lecturing liberals for the past few years about the fact that George Bush will be our president for the next few years whether we like it or not, so for the good of the country we ought to be supporting him instead of gleefully hoping for a failure that just hurts all of us. The stakes are high, war of civilizations, madmen with nuclear bombs, etc. etc.

"So if Democrats win control of Congress this year, I expect we'll see plenty of sober, thoughtful support for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid from conservatives, right? Gotta do what's right for the country, after all.

"Right?"

Even some conservatives are slamming Rush over his skewering of one of the country's favorite actors, including Rightwing Nuthouse man Rick Moran :