I know a lot of you don't like Robert Novak. I don't either. But I also think he's got excellent sources and can be a solid, hard-nosed analyst when he wants to be. Anyway, in his latest Evans-Novak Political Report newsletter, Novak predicts a possible government shutdown:
The multiple vetoes of appropriations bills -- seven or more -- threatened by President Bush may never come to pass. No appropriations bill has yet passed the Senate, and it looks more likely that he will be faced with an omnibus spending bill. That enhances the prospect of a government shutdown to determine whether Bush can outlast the Democratic Congress (as President Bill Clinton did to the Republican Congress a decade ago).
Well, isn't that just thrilling? Republicans block everything to the point that the government can no longer function - while the country is at WAR, no less? Unbelievable.
In other news, Novak writes that President Bush "must begin withdrawal by September to avoid a bipartisan resolution in Congress."
And Novak declares Hillary Clinton the clear winner of Monday's "YouTube debate," with Barack Obama "deliver[ing] a gaffe on a foreign policy question that highlighted his lack of experience and could cost him the state of Florida if he does end up getting the nomination."
With regard to John Edwards, Novak argues that the former Senator from North Carolina "was impaled on a question about same-sex marriage, in which he also made a tortured argument that essentially concluded that one's faith should have no place in affecting the way one thinks or votes."
Finally, Novak writes that "limits to how long [Fred Thompson] can wait" to announce his candidacy, that "he will need a campaign sometime soon to make the cut in time."
Take this analysis for what it's worth, but I think that it's interesting - from a Republican perspective, of course.
If Mark runs for Governor, that would throw water on Brian Moran & Creigh Deeds' plans. I think Deeds should run for U.S. Senate in that event.
"Tom DeLay recounts the event in his book, No Retreat, No Surrender, that Gingrich "made the mistake of his life" and says the following of Gingrich's mis-step of the shutdown[21]:
'He told a room full of reporters that he forced the shutdown because Clinton had rudely made him and Bob Dole sit at the back of Air Force One...Newt had been careless to say such a thing, and now the whole morat tone of the shutdown had been lost. What had been a noble battle for fiscal sanity began to look like the tirade of a spoiled child..The revolution, I can tell you, was never the same.'"
On the debate, I don't know how he would declare a winner of any of these "debates." I was not under the impression that a Q&A session constituted a debate. It is just a collection of brief, repetitive statements that have the collective depth of a rain puddle. I'm afraid that putting people behind podiums does not a debate make.
OR is Novak doing their dirty work and trying to put fear in the minds of the Democrats?