Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.
This piece from today’s New York Daily News on the midterm elections has an unusually high quotient of great quotes, showcasing Republican anxieties and bluster in roughly equal measure. A sampling.
- “‘The security issue trumps everything,’ a senior Bush official said last week. ‘That’s why even though they’re really mad at us, in the end they’re going to give us another two years.'”
- “‘We’ll lose the House,’ one of the party’s most prominent officials flatly predicted, ‘and the President will be dead in the water for two years.'”
- “This cake is baked,” predicted Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report newsletter. “You just don’t have a wave of this magnitude and not see 15 seats turn over.”
- Americans have “decided the personal characteristics that kept him afloat for a long time aren’t that appealing anymore,” an influential Bushie told the Daily News. “They also think Iraq is a failure.”
- “We enjoy a severalfold strategic advantage on the ground,” said a confident top Bush strategist. “A well-executed mediocre plan will beat a poorly executed brilliant plan every day.”
Now, admittedly, what I’ve called bluster might be quiet confidence that Democrats will find a way to squander their advantage. But that just goes to show that where the House is concerned it’s the Democrats’ election to lose.
