2002 Election

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

*1*

Beth Henary's Things Go Right in Texas does a great job of capturing what happened here in Texas during the 2002 election. As for that "latent Democratic base" of voters, I think they may be in more trouble than just having lost all the state wide races, and control of the legislature.

A BIG THING HAPPENED in the elections that you won't read about much in the papers, and the fact that you won't be reading about it is one of the reasons it did. The big story is that the pro-choice extremists took a widespread whipping, which is the one thing the press doesn't want to acknowledge, much less trumpet abroad to the troops. Nevertheless, the big-picture facts are astounding. NARAL, the nation's premier abortion-rights lobby, won 2 of its 11 targeted runs in the Senate, and went 6 for 26 in the House.

NEW YORK
DOMINICAN BUSINESSMAN Fernando Mateo spent Election Day driving around New York City, getting out the vote for George Pataki. The Dominican community is among the poorest in New York, and it has traditionally been one of the nation's most reliably left-leaning. Still, Mateo is convinced that it is up for grabs politically. He is building his political future among the smallest of small-time entrepreneurs: the Dominicans who own and drive most of the city's non-medallion taxis.

THE ELECTION RETURNS are in, and the high priest of American liberalism has spoken. "If you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture," warned Bill Moyers in his post-election PBS commentary. And not only will George Bush, right-wing radical, now attempt to impose a theocracy, he is preparing, among other depredations, "to force pregnant women to give up control over their own lives . . . to transfer wealth from working people to the rich . . . [and] to eviscerate the environment."

Odd.

CONSERVATIVES COMPLAIN constantly (and rightly) about the liberal bias of the major media. What they don't realize, however, is that this bias probably hurts liberals more than it helps them. The Republican victory this fall is a case in point.

One way media bias hurts liberals is by giving them a false sense of security. There is a tendency for those in public office to judge their performance on the basis of day-to-day press coverage.

HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER Dick Armey has become all the things people like about politicians but seldom get. He's candid, even downright revealing. He admits mistakes. He's forthright about the lessons he's learned in Washington after 18 years as a House member from Texas. He's clear about what he got done (welfare reform) and what he didn't (Social Security reform). And he's fun to listen to. Too bad he's retiring after 9 terms and clearing out of town.

Armey is part of a troika of influential conservative Republicans who are leaving Congress at the end of the year.

THE EXPECTED ASCENSION of Democratic whip Nancy Pelosi to House minority leader has become a surprisingly important issue in another leadership race to be decided today. Pelosi's likely win has helped make the case for Robert Menendez of New Jersey to fill the opening for Democratic caucus chairman. Early odds had seemed to favor Connecticut's Rosa Delauro--like Pelosi, a female Dem with an almost perfect liberal voting record--to fill the number three leadership position.

TO READ Bill Moyers's latest rant about the 2002 election results, one might conclude that the biggest threat America faces is the Republican party. To wit:

"And for the first time in the memory of anyone alive, the entire federal government--the Congress, the Executive, the Judiciary--is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush now believes he has a mandate. That mandate includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to give up control over their own lives. It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich.

THE SENSIBLE PEOPLE of Oregon last week voted down a universal health care scheme by 79 percent to 21 percent. But while Measure 23 deserved defeat, it shouldn't be allowed to sink quietly into oblivion. It wasn't some fringe initiative, after all: It had the endorsement of the Oregon Democratic party. Before it drops entirely from view, we should register just how ill-conceived it was.

The tradeoff is a familiar one: that tantalizing chimera, free health care for all, in exchange for unfree, centralized control of the practice of medicine.

Measure 23 was too good to be true.

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

*1*

To me, a 25 year USAF veteran and recent retiree, the most significant aspect of the offensive use of the Predator detailed in Christian Lowe's article (A New Breed of Predator) is that it was initiated not by any of the U.S. armed services, but by the CIA.

CHALK UP A BIG ONE for Priscilla Owen, an unsung winner of last Tuesday's election, and a partial architect of the Republican victory. Owen is the Texas judge who was a Bush nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She was described by the American Bar Association as "highly qualified," but her nomination never made it to the Senate floor.

San Francisco
SOMETHING went terribly wrong on the way to last week's Republican revolution: California. While the White House, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives were lining up Republican, Sacramento was looking like Washington, D.C., in reverse: The governor's mansion, the state Senate, and the Assembly will remain firmly in the hands of Democrats, who also may have captured every statewide office (not all vote counts are final at this writing). Soon there won't be anyone to greet President Bush when he gets off the plane to visit California.