Inside Politics

Rummy hangover

As the dust settles from Tuesday’s demoralizing election losses, Republicans on Capitol Hill are growing increasingly angry at President Bush, reports Charles Hurt of The Washington Times. They say his low poll numbers and poor handling of the war in Iraq were the primary causes of, to use Mr. Bush’s words, the “thumpin’ ” they took.

Insult was added to injury, numerous Capitol Hill sources said yesterday, when Mr. Bush dismissed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld the day after the elections.

“Why didn’t he fire Rumsfeld before the elections?” one Republican Senate staffer asked angrily. “Like, maybe two months ago? He might have saved us a couple of seats if he had thought of that.”

Arnold’s take

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of the few Republicans to shine at the midterm elections, said yesterday that the Democratic victories were healthy for U.S. politics.

“I think it is good that there are new ideas and new blood because Washington was stuck. They could not move forward; not much was accomplished. I think it was terrible,” he told reporters on a trip to Mexico.

Mr. Schwarzenegger won re-election by a landside Tuesday after distancing himself from President Bush and adopting liberal positions on some issues. He said fellow Republicans could now learn from his change of tack and work with Democrats.

“If anyone in Washington or anyone from other states looks at that, hopefully they got the message also,” he said, according to Reuters news agency.

Warning ignored

“Tuesday’s Democratic election victory was by any measure decisive, yet in the perspective of history also unsurprising,” the Wall Street Journal says in an editorial.

“In the sixth year of a two-term Presidency, Americans rebuked Republicans on Capitol Hill who had forgotten their principles and a president who hasn’t won the Iraq war he started. While a thumping defeat for the GOP, the vote was about competence, not ideological change,” the newspaper said.

“This is not to minimize the Democrats’ victory, which they deserve to savor after several frustrating election nights. Credit in particular goes to Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer, who led the House and Senate efforts to pick candidates who could win in GOP-leaning states. Their leaders, notably Speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi, also kept in check their ideological ambitions to make Tuesday a referendum on Republican governance. It was a shrewd strategy.

“All the more so because the GOP gave them so much ammunition. By our count, at least eight GOP House seats fell largely due to scandal; campaign-finance ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff probably cost Conrad Burns his Senate seat in Montana. These columns have spent several years warning Republicans that their overspending, corrupt ‘earmarks’ and policy drift would undermine their claim as the party of reform. On Tuesday they did.”

Room to spare

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