Wednesday, November 08, 2006

It didn't even take 100 hours

Well. There is one good thing that will come out of this election. The press just noticed that the Dow is up again.

Election results

Well, the election is over and results are pretty bad for the Republicans. I'll admit there have been some times in the preceding months that I have felt despondent for the future of the party, and the country too for that matter. But I'm not going to go out and start a web site apologizing to the Iraqis for letting them down. To those who say that this was a stunning loss for the hawks and a slap in the face for conservatism. You may want to check again.

Some people are trying to paint this as a referendum on the war, well explain this. How come in the race where a liberal Democrat who voted for the war faced a liberal Democrat against the war, the pro war candidate won? Why did one of the few Republicans to oppose the war lose? The war was a factor but so was corruption and fiscal responsibility.

Some folks are talking about radical reforms. Well, look at Nancy Pelosi's entry on Huffington post. Minimum wage increase, tweaks to Medicare, handouts to college students, blocking subsidies to big oil, keeping social security on the dead end track it is already on, enacting 9/11 committee recommendations and increases to stem cell research. None of this is radical. Heck much of it isn't even contrary to traditional conservatism. This election was won on the backs of some very conservative democratic candidates and those guys aren't just going to go away now that the election is over. This was an undeniable defeat of a party (Republican) but not quite so clearly the defeat of an ideal (conservatism). I'm OK with that.

In fact, I think that there is a lot to be optimistic about. I'm not one of those conservatives who hoped that the Republicans would get their heads handed to them because it would lead to a rethinking of the agenda for 2008. I think that what happens in the next two years in Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon and other hot spots is too important and will require a president with a strong hand. But now that they have been handed that defeat I have to admit that it is fortuitous timing for the party.

More disturbing Syria news. Is Aaron Klein making this stuff up?

As the title suggests, I'm more than a little bit skeptical of this report from Aaron Klein. You'll recall that He was the reporter who wrote this story about the "Front for the Liberation of the Golan", a story that I never saw verified in any other source.

Now he issues a report that the Syrian information minister told a crowd gathered on the Golan/Syrian border, "If in the next coming months there will not be a political solution, military resistance will be the only solution for Syrians". Again, this is completely undocumented anywhere else on the web (other than on Ynet which reproduced the article verbatim). At least this story sounds a little bit like statements that have been made in the past.

I can't emphasize enough how big this is. If it is true, then Syria is threatening Israel with 1) war or 2) state sponsored terrorism. Both would seem to be pretty big stories. So how come the great big collective yawn from the media. It's quite possible that Aaron Klein is making the whole thing up but if he isn't 8 months from now we may all be scratching our heads and asking "How come we didn't see this coming?"