Pelosi and Reid Blew It

By Andrew Cline.

The most fascinating political development of the summer has occurred with little notice. Republicans are respected again. Wait, what?

Believe it or not, entering the final quarter of the eighth year of the George W. Bush presidency, Republicans are ascending in popularity, Politico.com reported yesterday. Half of registered voters and half of independent voters have a favorable opinion of the GOP, according to a new poll from the Pew Center for the People and the Press. Democrats hold a slight edge in favorability among registered voters (55 percent to 50 percent), but they are statistically tied with Republicans among independent voters (Republicans 50 percent, Democrats 49 percent.)

How could this happen? Anyone half-paying attention for the past eight years can rattle off the list of reasons voters are supposed to be fleeing the GOP: Iraq, Katrina, Wall Street, Abramoff, DeLay, Bridge to Nowhere, bin Laden at large, gas prices, and home mortgages. When Democratic presidential candidates dream, they dream of election years like this one.

And yet since August the Republicans have closed an 18 point gap with Democrats among independent voters. A new Gallup poll finds that Democrats have only a three-point edge (within the margin of error) when people are asked which party they want to control Congress.

I think the answer is pretty clear: The Democratic leadership in Congress took the golden opportunity it was given in 2006 and pissed it away on petty partisanship -- just like the Republicans who preceded them did.

A Gallup poll out this week is revealing. It found that only 47 percent of Americans say they have trust in the legislative branch of the federal government. That's the first time that number has dipped below 50 percent since Gallup began asking that question in 1972. The same poll found that only 18 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing vs. 31 percent who approve of the job President Bush is doing.

There is good reason for those low ratings. When voters swept Democrats into power two years ago, they expected that the party would deliver on its promises. It hasn't. Instead of leadership and statesmanship, we got gamesmanship. Instead of governing, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid embarked on a two-year political campaign.

The Democrats opposed the troop surge in Iraq. When the surge turned a raging insurgency into a slinking retreat and the Democrats ridiculously proclaimed that it wasn't working, an average American listening to both sides could only shrug his shoulders and wonder what in the world the Democrats were smoking.

When Democrats opposed every measure to increase domestic oil production, they angered millions of Americans. And when they finally tried to claim they were for new drilling by producing two bills that allowed new drilling only where there was little or no oil, Americans quickly picked up on the scam.

On all of the major issues of the past two years, the Democrats chose to play political gotcha instead of actually govern. The public, it turns out, seems to have seen through the charade. It's kind of hard to convince Americans that you feel their pain when, for example, you are doing everything in your power to keep gas prices high through the election. By being Democrats first and public representatives second, Democrats have lost the enormous advantage in goodwill the Republicans handed them on a silver platter two years ago.

This election year should have produced a Democratic sweep of historic proportions, delivering the White House and massive majorities in the House and Senate. But thanks to the incompetence of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, Republicans might pull a respectable showing.

The Irresponsible Congress

From The Washington Times.

Congress returns today for an abbreviated session, with energy being the number one issue on the agenda. Republicans, led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner, spent the August recess pushing for Congress to enact an "all of the above" package to increase energy supplies and lower gasoline prices, and they will continue to do so. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, clearly thrown off balance by public opinion polls showing that a decisive majority of the electorate agrees with the Republicans on drilling, have a different, irresponsible agenda: running out the clock and preventing a straight up-or-down vote on drilling. But to do this successfully, they will have to continue their strategy of pretending to support compromise, while loading up energy legislation with poison pills that will make expanded drilling impossible.

Before leaving town five weeks ago, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, Wisconsin Democrat, realized that his panel was likely to approve Republican-proposed amendments to the Interior Department and Labor-HHS appropriations bills that would have permitted drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf. So, he adjourned his committee to spare the Democratic leadership several embarrassing defeats. Mrs. Pelosi and company have also embraced "use it or lose it" language that would prevent the government from issuing new exploration or production leases unless the applicant could certify (to the satisfaction of lawyers, judges and bureaucrats) that every lease currently held is being "diligently developed." The problem is that no company can certify that because exploration is a difficult, time-consuming task in which success follows years of expensive, time-consuming failures. Forcing oil companies to drill immediately or lose the leases based on some arbitrary political dictate will make exploration prohibitively expensive.

In the House, the Democratic leadership will offer a "compromise" plan to allow drilling more than 100 miles from shore. (Which presumably means that if the next Prudhoe Bay is discovered 25 miles off the coast of Virginia or 50 miles from North Carolina, consumers should just shut up and be happy with oil from Mexico, Saudi Arabia or Venezuela instead.) The House Democrats' bill is also expected to include tax increases and royalty increases for oil companies - actions that will decrease rather than increase production - which would pay for alternative energy research, among other things. It also mandates that companies use some government-dictated percentage of "renewable energy sources." Some "alternative energy" research could prove useful; in other cases, it can squander taxpayer dollars like the infamous Synthetic Fuels Corporation did in the early 1980s. But the most irresponsible course of action of all is the course that congressional Democratic leaders are taking, which is to demagogue against oil companies and punish producers with higher taxes and new mandates.

Democrats are talking about a $50 billion "economic stimulus" package that provide largess to state and local governments and fund highway projects. On top of that, the Big Three automakers are seeking government loans to help them retool their plants and build fuel-efficient cars. The car companies want $50 billion in government loans, while lawmakers seem to be suggesting a smaller amount that would be folded into the stimulus package. As for the Big Three, while ill-considered regulations bear some of the blame for their current problems, it would be difficult to imagine an industry responsible for so many self-inflicted wounds. The woes of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae should be a cautionary note to politicians who think it is a good idea to put taxpayers on the hook to bail out private enterprises that make bad decisions and fail in the marketplace.

You Go Dennis!

Robocop's Comment:

I can't believe that I used to dislike Dennis Miller. I am now a fan.