A Loud Message

In The New York Times, Robin Toner
analyzes what the Democrat gains mean.

She believes that it sends "A Loud Message for Bush."

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.

Everything is different now.

The crucial difference is not how the election outcome has affected Bush. What matters is the difference that it makes for our enemies, especially those in Iraq, the place that Dems have declared a terrorist breeding ground.

Our enemies are thrilled to have the Dems in power.

For example:

"Of course Americans should vote Democrat," Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group and the infamous leader of the 2002 siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, told WND.

"This is why American Muslims will support the Democrats, because there is an atmosphere in America that encourages those who want to withdraw from Iraq. It is time that the American people support those who want to take them out of this Iraqi mud," said Jaara, speaking to WND from exile in Ireland, where he was sent as part of an internationally brokered deal that ended the church siege.

...Abu Abdullah, a leader of Hamas' military wing in the Gaza Strip, said the policy of withdrawal "proves the strategy of the resistance is the right strategy against the occupation."

"We warned the Americans that this will be their end in Iraq," said Abu Abdullah, considered one of the most important operational members of Hamas' Izzedine al-Qassam Martyrs Brigades, Hamas' declared "resistance" department. "They did not succeed in stealing Iraq's oil, at least not at a level that covers their huge expenses. They did not bring stability. Their agents in the [Iraqi] regime seem to have no chance to survive if the Americans withdraw."

...Jihad Jaara said an American withdrawal would "mark the beginning of the collapse of this tyrant empire (America)."

Terrorists wanted the Dems to be elected. They wanted Americans to back the retreat and defeat Dems.

They got what they wanted.

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.

Good news for our enemies.

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.

Bush hasn't governed with his "conservative base" in mind.

He's governed with the safety of the American people in mind.

New York Times libs don't get that, because they've politicized the War on Terror and looked at it as a political game.

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.

Unfortunately, conservative voters didn't turn out in the numbers needed.

Some sought to punish the Republicans.

Those voters have shot themselves in the foot.

Allowing radical Leftist Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker of the House and possibly handing over control to the Dems in the Senate isn't punishing Republicans as much as it punishes freedom-loving people all over the world.

Senator Olympia J. Snowe, a Maine Republican who was re-elected yesterday, said that with the election’s results, the administration’s Iraq policy “has to change.”

“It absolutely has to change,” Ms. Snowe said. “And that message should have been conveyed by the administration much sooner.”

RINO Snowe is an ally of the terrorists. Not that she wants to be, but that's the consequences of her position.

Mr. Bush’s allies could argue that history was working against Republicans, that in a president’s sixth year in office, his party was ripe for big losses. They could also argue that Congressional Republicans brought their own vulnerabilities and scandals to the table. But this was a nationalized election, and Mr. Bush and Iraq were at the center of it.

There's truth here.

Toner admits that Dems weren't elected on what they stand for. They landed in office because Americans cast anti-Bush votes.

Where does that leave us?

What's the Dem plan? What's their direction for the country, other than leaving Iraq in shame and raising taxes?

...After a campaign that only escalated the tension between Mr. Bush and Congressional Democrats, the president will now face overwhelming pressure to take a more conciliatory approach. For example, he will be under increasing pressure to re-evaluate his support for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, which he so publicly restated in the closing days of the campaign.

Rumsfeld is out.

...But much of Mr. Bush’s domestic agenda, which was not exactly gliding through the current Congress, will face even tougher prospects now. That includes any effort to overhaul entitlement programs like Social Security, already heavily shadowed by his failed effort to push through private investment accounts for Social Security in 2005, as well as any effort to extend all of his tax cuts, which Democrats say were heavily skewed to the most affluent.

Moreover, with a greater Democratic presence in the Senate, Mr. Bush will have far less latitude in his judicial nominees.

Even if Mr. Bush makes the grand gestures, Democrats heading into the 2008 presidential campaign may not be in the mood to reciprocate. Still, on Iraq, some change is almost inevitable, analysts say.

In other words, the country will be paralyzed by bitter partisan battles, and we will lose the war in Iraq.

...House Democratic leaders have already indicated that they will not cut off financing for the war; in many ways, their greatest power will be their ability to investigate, hold hearings and provide the oversight that they asserted was so lacking in recent years.

Can you say, "Impeachment"?

In short, Americans did send a loud message. It may have been meant for Bush and the Republicans, but it was received by our enemies.

Defeating the "tyrant empire" America is cause for celebration.