The Obama Swoon

" . . . As Democrats have gained in the polls, Republicans are predicting that a Democratic majority will mean a frenzy of political witch hunts directed at them by newly installed chairmen like Dingell. 'You can expect two years of all-out investigations and attacks and anything they can bring to bear,' Newt Gingrich warned on Fox News last March. Clearly aiming to calm the hysteria, George H.W. Bush recently warned it would be a 'ghastly thing' for the United States if 'wild Democrats' were put in charge of congressional committees. A Washington Times article fretted that 'key administration officials will be so busy preparing for testimony that they will not be able to do their jobs.' "

Does anyone here remember Whitewater ?

" . . . But the curious thing about Dingell's little list is that it targets policies--not people. While some Democrats may dream of hauling Karl Rove to the Hill to discuss Plamegate or forcing Dan Bartlett to testify about Dick Cheney's hunting accident, Dingell is one of a number of future Democratic chairs who plan to focus on substance, not sideshows. And, as strange as it sounds, this may not come as a relief to Republicans. The GOP would love nothing more than for Democrats to go off on half-cocked, mean-spirited inquisitions that generate sympathy for the hapless Bushies. Alas, the GOP's conduct during the Clinton years has provided Democrats with a near-perfect what-not-to-do manual."

George Will is getting increasingly tough on the administration over Iraq:

"Many months ago it became obvious to all but the most ideologically blinkered that America is losing the war launched to deal with a chimeric problem (an arsenal of WMD) and to achieve a delusory goal (a democracy that would inspire emulation, transforming the region) . . .

"A surreal and ultimately disgusting facet of the Iraq fiasco is the lag between when a fact becomes obvious and when the fiasco's architects acknowledge that fact. Iraq's civil war has been raging for more than a year; so has the Washington debate about whether it is what it is.

"In a recent interview with Vice President Cheney, Time magazine asked, 'If you had to take back any one thing you'd said about Iraq, what would it be?' Selecting from what one hopes is a very long list, Cheney replied: 'I thought that the elections that we went through in '05 would have had a bigger impact on the level of violence than they have . . . I thought we were over the hump in terms of violence. I think that was premature.'

"He thinks so? Clearly, and weirdly, he implies that the elections had some positive impact on the level of violence . . . what Cheney actually said 17 months ago was that the insurgency was in its "last throes." That was much stronger than saying we were 'over the hump' regarding violence. Beware of people who misquote themselves while purporting to display candor."

Kevin Drum picks up a post from Dan Drezner , who thinks the national security debate has fundamentally changed in the past couple of weeks:

" For the past five years, Democrats have been vulnerable on national security issues. Bush and the Republicans projected a clear image of taking the war to the enemy, and never yielding in their drive to defeat radical Islamists. The Democrats, in contrast, projected either an antiwar position or a 'yes, but' position. The former looked out of step with the American people, the latter looked like Republican lite. No matter how you sliced it, the Republicans held the upper hand.

"The recent rhetorical shift on Iraq, however, has flipped this phenomenon on its head. If Bush acknowledges that 'stay the course' is no longer a [satisfying] status quo, he's acknowledging that the Republican position for the past few years has not worked out too well. If that's the case, then Republicans are forced to offer alternatives with benchmarks or timetables or whatever. The administration has had these plans before, but politically, it looks like the GOP is gravitating towards the Democratic position rather than vice versa.

"If this is what the political optics look like, then the Republicans will find themselves in the awkward position of being labeled as 'Democrat lite' in their positions on Iraq. And in elections, lite never tastes as good as the real thing .