Possumblog

Finally!

The votes have been cast, the people have spoken, the Republic survives, and we can at last have some relief from wall-to-wall political ads everywhere we look, from the annoying recorded phone calls, from the ticky-tacky flotsam of ugly campaign signs. And what to discuss now?

Oh, that’s easy.

MORE POLITICS!!

We bring you the Political Postmortem Edition of the Axis of Weevil Thursday Three, because as we all know, too much of a good thing is just about right! SO, play along with us now as we ask you some probing, uncomfortable questions about the results of the immediately past election.

Everyone is free to play along, even if you’re not even from America! What a country! Anyway, just leave your answers in the comments below, or a link to your own blog. Okay, here we go--

1) Now that the balance of power in the House and Senate has changed (due in large part to Democratic Party gains brought about by running more centrist candidates than they have in the past), will they surprise everyone and purge their fringe elements and actually try to lead from the center, or will they continue to pander to the tinfoil-hat folks with impeachment/frog marches and putting all the filthy Christianists into reeducation camps?

2) When you cast your ballot, do you do so with at least some desire in the back of your mind to make a decision that the international community would be pleased with?

3) Now that this little exercise has passed, everyone is now ready to talk about the REAL race, that of President in ’08. Who’s it going to be?

So, there you go. Please take a pencil and mark your choices and place them into the machine.

As for my answers:

1) Well, they don’t have a large enough majority to override a veto along party lines, so I don’t think they can go too far afield with their more lunatic pronouncements. And they ran on a platform that at least paid lip service to fiscal conservatism, although I don’t expect much of a change to smaller government or cheaper government or more efficient government. It would behoove them to cull their nuts right now, though, because although they won, it wasn’t because the general public is really that enamored of the idea of punishing President Bush for whatever fever-dream offenses he might have committed. For the most part, Americans still don’t think he’s Hitler, and don’t think the U.S. military are storm-troopers, despite the howlings of the Democratic Underground/Kos crowd. Giving in to these folks would be a sure recipe for disaster in ’08.

2) No. And neither do I expect the world to vote with me in mind, no more than I expect a Frenchman to worry too much about what the Irish might think. I’m all for us all voting based on our own personal interests, then living with the result, whether it went our way or not. But I could not care less whether other folks are happy or sad with our election results, other than I would feel a lot better if the people who consider themselves our enemies weren’t quite so chipper.

3) Despite everyone trying to read the goat entrails on this one, two years in the middle of a hot war is a very long time. It’s really impossible to say what will happen, and much of it depends on how the Congress reacts to the challenges it will face. I do think you’ll see at least one female presidential candidate, and possibly two. And it could be that Hillary will be neither one of them. I do predict that both candidates will be politicians, which means that you and I won’t get exactly what we want.

So there you are.

NOW--no more political talk! Unless it just happens to come up.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at November 9, 2006 08:19 AM