Michael Barone has a nice column on why the facts that favored Democrats in 2006 don't necessarily do so now.
During the Democratic primary season, all the party's candidates veered hardly a jot or tittle from the narrative that helped the Democrats sweep the November 2006 elections. Iraq is spiraling into civil war, we invaded unwisely and have botched things ever since, no good outcome is possible, and it is time to get out of there as fast as we can.
In January 2007, when George W. Bush ordered the surge strategy, which John McCain had advocated since the summer of 2003, Barack Obama informed us that the surge couldn't work. The only thing to do was to get out as soon as possible.
That stance proved to be a good move toward winning the presidential nomination -- but it was poor prophecy. It is beyond doubt now that the surge has been hugely successful, beyond even the hopes of its strongest advocates, like Frederick and Kimberly Kagan.
Obama can't admit that the surge has worked, violence is down, and the Maliki-led government has passed most of the benchmarks demanded by Democrats because to do so would anger its base. it is a core belief of moonbats that the war was wrong, we were lied to about why we went there, and that it has been a quagmire ever since. To these true believers, the only way out is to get out. Now. And nothing less will satisfy them.
But the war is only one of the issue where the facts have changed and do not favor Democrats.
And the fact of $4 gasoline has undermined the narrative that alternative forms of energy can painlessly supply our needs. Public opinion has switched sharply and now favors drilling offshore and, by inference, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Democrats are scrambling to argue that drilling wouldn't make any difference -- and that anyway the oil companies aren't drilling enough on federal land they currently lease.
Americans realize that we are not going to painlessly shift from oil to some other form of energy, nor is our lifestyle flexible enough for people to seamlessly move from cars to public transportation. This is a big country and in many parts of it--like where I live--there isn't any public transportation, and it doesn't make sense to drive 30 minutes downtown to the train station to spend an hour on a train to Dallas, then have to take a bus another 30 minutes to get somewhere close to where you want to go.
As Barone points out, Democrats won in 2006 because Republicans seemed so incompentent. The war wasn't going well, scandals blossomed, and the Republican Congress had morphed into every argument made against the Democrats (insular, lobbyist-lovin', spend crazy). But two years of Democrats running Congress hasn't helped their image. They've maged to get little or none of their agenda passed and they've fumbled on the very issues the far left elected them for (think surrender and FISA). Those groups aren't likely to vote for Republicans in November, but Republicans need to remind the voters what Democrats promised and why the facts are different now.
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