NYT: A Loud Message for Bush

[DeepModem Mom]

News Analysis
A Loud Message for Bush
By ROBIN TONER
Published: November 8, 2006

Everything is different now for President Bush. The era of one-party Republican rule in Washington ended with a crash in yesterday’s midterm elections, putting a proudly unyielding president on notice that the voters want change, especially on the war in Iraq.

Mr. Bush now confronts the first Democratic majority in the House in 12 years and a significantly bigger Democratic caucus in the Senate that were largely elected on the promise to act as a strong check on his administration. Almost any major initiative in his final two years in office will now, like it or not, have to be bipartisan to some degree.

For six years, Mr. Bush has often governed, and almost always campaigned, with his attention focused on his conservative base. But yesterday’s voting showed the limits of those politics, as practiced — and many thought perfected — by Mr. Bush and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove.

In the bellwether states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, two Republican senators, both members of the legendary freshman class of 1994, were defeated by large margins. Across the Northeast, Republican moderates were barely surviving or, like Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, falling to Democrats who had argued that they were simply too close to a conservative president.

Most critically, perhaps, Republicans lost the political center on the Iraq war, according to national exit polls. Voters who identified themselves as independents broke strongly for the Democrats, the exit polls showed, as did those who described themselves as moderates....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/us/politics/08assess.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

[stellanoir]

1. You know

the absolute arrogance and hautiness with which the pRes and VP have repeatedly said that they, "don't pay attention to polls" always translated to me as saying that they don't care a hoot about their constituents or the will of the people.

Maybe just maybe this turnabout might compel them to pay a bit more attention, but I kinda doubt it.

May our country heal from this horrific divisiveness and deceit.

[riderinthestorm]

2. Expect Bu$h to just go past Congress and directly to Exec. Order

That's going to be my bet. He was "proudly unyielding" yesterday, and he is the same despicably shitty person today.

I don't put anything past him, he'll do ANYTHING to get his way imho - the past six years on the job have only fed his megalomania to such that extent imho.