NRO blogger Tim Graham has a stunning piece of news: FoxNews isn’t the jingoistic party-line conduit for pro-administration spin that you think it is, because Judge Napolitano gave a positive blurb to a non-interventionist book.  (The book actually looks pretty good.) 

Yes, that sure throws me for a loop.  After all, what are years of shameless warmongering and administration loyalism compared with a book blurb?  The premise of Graham’s “observation” is silly.  Judge Napolitano, author of The Constitution in Exile(not exactly Cheney’s bedtime reading), is probably one of the last people still associated with FNC who speaks publicly about civil liberties in defense of them (rather than seeing them as obstacles on the path to Victory), so he is not exactly representative of the network’s news and commentary.  FoxNews also still employs Alan Colmes, which must similarly prove that there is no pro-war, pro-administration bias at the network generally. 

P.S. By Graham’s standard of political analysis-by-book-blurb, Sean Hannity’s blurb for Napolitano’s book would represent some actual sympathy with the argument that the federal government has overreached in the PATRIOT Act and detaining citizens without charge, when we all know that this is absurd.  Hannity’s blurb, meanwhile, is just two blurbs away from Alan Colmes’ blurb.  A product of media consolidation or an elaborate ideological web that unites both Hannity and Colmes?  You decide.

Turkey’s strategic interests are much more dependent on good relations with the United States than vice versa. If we tolerate Turkey’s blackmail, we actually weaken our position in the strategic relationship and embolden others in the region to blackmail us. ~Roxanne Makasdjian

This is pretty much my view of the matter as well.

Like many failed regimes dependent on foreign aid and playing one power off against another, Georgian politicians learned to pre-echo what Uncle Sam and the Eurocrats think. Some of it they meant. Our knee-jerk Cold War suspicion of the Kremlin made their Russophobia seem natural. But playing up nationalism even when it has a real emotional basis is not the way to stabilize a society, not [sic] to stabilize its regional relations. 

Anti-Armenian and anti-Azeri rhetoric worried the near neighbors. Saakashvili demolished both the neo-classical building that had housed the Imperial Russian gendarmerie and a district of Armenian houses to make way for his new palace.

Georgians noted the contrast with his claims in 2003 that he only needed a “three room apartment,” but the neighboring nations heard his apologists say that the new government’s massive re-ordering of old Tbilisi only “affect Armenians, Azeris, Kurds and foreigners.”

Whereas the authoritarian Aliev clan running neighboring Azerbaijan has enough oil revenue to fund a stable state system and many Azeris have jobs, Georgia’s much-praised reforms have boosted unemployment and mass migration. The only surviving industry from Soviet days seems to be massaging the statistics.

The oil pipeline across Georgia to Turkey from the Azeri oil fields in the Caspian has been a nice cash cow for the Georgian government and its appointees, but it hasn’t provided any boost to the rest of the economy. In fact, now that the Baku-Ceyhan project is finished, lay-offs – not new jobs – are the result. Part of the political infighting in Tbilisi is to control the transit fees. ~Mark Almond

Almond’s basic message is that we should stop meddling in Georgia’s affairs.  I couldn’t agree more.

The remaining thirteen seats are Republican opportunities ‘that will not fall easily.’ Add in the non-Freshman Democrats that the GOP may target (which now appears to include just a handful of seats), and the potential is there again to flip control of the House. That’s provided that Republicans hold most or all of the vulnerable open seats they have.

It would be foolish to predict a great Republican year based on the political climate today, but Rothenberg provides a helpful reality check for those inclined to the opposite extreme. If the cards fall the right way, it’s entirely possible a Republican will be sworn in as Speaker in January, 2009. ~Brian Faughnan

So if a dozen improbable things happen, something even more improbable might very well happen.   

There are some districts, particularly TX-22 (DeLay’s district) and FL-16 (Foley’s district), that will be difficult for Democrats to hold, assuming that Republicans turn out for their candidates.  That’s one area where the GOP is going to run into a lot of problems.  Democratic turnout in a presidential year is typically higher than it is at midterm and off-year elections anyway, and we are already seeing gaps opening up in party ID, fundraising and candidate recruitment.  If Republican voters are as demoralised as they seem to be, turnout may also be unusually low for Republicans, which could combine with an energised Democratic base to create more gains for the Dems on top of holding what they already have.  (For instance, NM-01 is a realistic pick-up for the Dems.)  Depending on the GOP ticket, the base’s morale may get worse rather than better.  A major third party challenge from the right could actually help the GOP in Congressional races by bringing conservatives to the polls who might otherwise have stayed home, but such a challenge is unlikely to materialise. 

Some Democrats have the fear, and I think it is probably an over-hyped fear, that a Clinton nomination would imperil closely-split districts and jeopardise the majority in the House.  There is a bizarre idea out there that a winning presidential candidate can have a kind of reverse coattail effect in every “purple” and “red” state.  This assumes that there will be a lot of split-ballot voters in “purple” states who elect Clinton but vote out the Democrats in the House, while there are few or no split-ballot voters in the “red” states who vote for the GOP candidate and select Democrats for Congress.  This is probably not how it will happen. 

The logic of this seems to be: Democratic presidential victory is very likely, in part because of the deep dissatisfaction with the GOP in many formerly red, now purple, states, but a particular Democratic nominee will actually help the GOP in these same states where they are becoming less popular (e.g., Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc.).  I suppose if enough people believed Clinton to be the left-wing gorgon conservatives see when they look at her, that might inspire them to vote for divided government and switch control of House again.  However, I know of no instance when a party won the presidential election and lost control of the House on Election Day.  In fact, I don’t know of any instance when a party won the White House and even suffered a net loss of seats in the House.  (Actually, as shown in the comments, there were six seven elections in the twentieth century where the presidential winner’s party lost seats, so I was wrong in assuming that it hadn’t happened.)   The “coattails” phenomenon may have become much weaker in recent cycles, but it seems implausible that the GOP can gain much ground in the House next year unless it wins or at least runs extremely competitively in the presidential election.  All signs indicate that this will not happen, which makes predictions of a GOP comeback in the House even more far-fetched. 

Update: So my claims about there being no cases of the winner’s party losing seats were quite wrong.  What about the exceptional cases?  Does 2008 seem likely to be another exception?  1908 and 1988 appear to be examples of voter fatigue with the ruling party that had been in the White House for eight years or more, while 1960 and 2000 stand out for being fairly close presidential elections and in one case the declared winner received less of the popular vote.  1992 was complicated by Perot’s run, but the combination of Bush and many Perot voters would help explain the GOP gains in that year.  What the Republicans have to hope happens is that next year will be like 1960, in which they may narrowly lose the White House but come storming back in the House after a midterm debacle.  However, this scenario seems unlikely because of the nature of next year’s election.  Wartime or  post-war elections (1920, 1952 and 1968 are the examples I have in mind) coming at the end of multiple terms of the same party in power tend to result in big gains for the other party in the House, even if the other party has already made gains in the previous midterm elections (as happened in 1918, 1950 and 1966).  So I was badly wrong about that initial claim, but I think the argument I am advancing here still makes sense.

So, if I follow Krauthammer’s thinking here, a politician must be unaware of an associate’s criminal connections if he continues to promote that associate for higher and higher posts on the assumption that the politician “is not an idiot.”  That assumption might need some examination. 

In short, trying to promote someone tied to the mafia is automatically self-exonerating so long as you claim that you didn’t know about the mafia ties (in spite of evidence that you did know).  If only we had known the rules were so simple.

Not even Kondracke is willing to swallow that tripe.

Via Sullivan

I confess that I am probably more surprised than most that the National Right to Life Committee is set to endorse Fred Thompson.  It’s good news for Thompson, obviously, but a bit remarkable given his Meet the Press appearance that was supposed to alienate so many pro-lifers.  It’s also remarkable since the man couldn’t even be bothered to show up at the NRLC annual convention this summer, sending in a video message instead.  He was otherwise occupied that week–he was busy giving a bad foreign policy speech in Britain.  It seems to me that this endorsement is an announcement that the NRLC finds all of the other leading candidates so unappealing that they will settle for the one who is least objectionable.

How are the mighty fallen! President George Bush, the crusader king who would draw the sword against the forces of Darkness and Evil, he who said there was only “them or us”, who would carry on, he claimed, an eternal conflict against “world terror” on our behalf; he turns out, well, to be a wimp. A clutch of Turkish generals and a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign on behalf of Turkish Holocaust deniers have transformed the lion into a lamb. No, not even a lamb – for this animal is, by its nature, a symbol of innocence – but into a household mouse, a little diminutive creature which, seen from afar, can even be confused with a rat. ~Robert Fisk

It is still a little strange to find myself agreeing with Robert Fisk as often as I have in recent years, but on the subject of the Armenian genocide he has been absolutely right.  Fisk makes many of the points that I did in my column on the genocide last month (10/22 issue).  We have all heard the arguments claiming that “no one denies” that what happened to the Armenians was genocide (I have heard another one of these today), when there is a small industry dedicated to just this kind of denial and our government evidently cowers in fear of them.  Some people, who have gotten their history from some of the denialist historians, come to the debate misinformed and so react very strongly against charges of denialism, since they think (erroneously) there is some legitimate doubt about what happened.  There really isn’t.  Some who are better-informed, but apparently still unaware of the denialists, think it is redundant to say yet again what they believe everyone already acknowledges.  Yet the absurdity of the situation is clear: if “no one” denied the genocide, there would be no controversy over acknowledging it as genocide, since no one would have any stake in preventing recognition.  Clearly, some interested parties are very intent on preventing that recognition, or else there should scarcely have been much attention paid to a House non-binding resolution. 

Speaking of the Turkish threats against our supply lines, Fisk correctly notes: “In the real world, this is called blackmail…”  Exactly so.  And the administration yielded to it without hesitation.

But we will not do it under anyone’s instruction. I want to tell both our friends and ill-wishers – I will not take orders from anyone. Because I have responsibility not towards a foreign minister of any foreign country, but I have responsibility for the country’s future historical legacy for the next thousand years [bold mine-DL]. ~Mikhail Saakashvili

It’s tough out there for a egomaniacal demagogue.

Update: Here is some loyalist propaganda for the glorious leader, emphasising his courage!

But McCain-Lieberman, Thompson-Lieberman, Romney-Lieberman, Huckabee-Lieberman–those sound like winning tickets to us [bold mine-DL]. It’s true, given the behavior of the congressional Democrats, the GOP nominee might well win with a more conventional running mate. But why settle for a victory if you can have a realignment? ~Bill Kristol

This seems unhinged to me.  Realignment?  Because of Joe Lieberman?  In the context of a presidential election, realignment implies a landslide with 40+ states lining up behind a ticket, a dramatic, sudden shift in the balance of power from one party to another.  1932, 1968, 1980 are often given as the elections where major realignments occurred, which involved the building of broad electoral coalitions.  What Kristol proposes is that nominating Lieberman would create the conditions for such a massive victory for the Republicans, when the woes of the latter are closely tied to the foreign policy decisions that constitute the chief reason why Kristol admires Lieberman and thinks he should be a VP nominee.  In short, the very things that make Lieberman attractive to interventionists in the GOP are the things that make the rest of us want to run screaming from the room.  Adding Lieberman to a ticket that already included a candidate who blathers about “Islamofascism” or takes an ueber-hawkish line on Iran would be the closest thing to a deliberate act of self-destruction by a party that we would have ever seen.