Mitt Romney is finally having a good week. A new Des Moines Register poll has found him ahead of Sen. John McCain and Rudy Giuliani in the key state of Iowa, where Romney is diligently plotting for victory at the Aug. 11 straw poll in Ames to pave his way for victory in the caucuses. By the way, he is ahead by a LOT — he is at 30 percent to McCain’s 18 percent and Rudy’s 17 percent.

With this momentum Romney should probably stop attacking McCain and set his sights on the solid lead Giuliani still holds. Even after the drama at the debates, sparked because Rudy dared to state his real position on abortion, he remains the frontrunner and a new Pew research poll shows social conservatives willing to abide Giuliani’s heretic social views because they think he is a winner. Read more...

How liberating it must be to not have to face another election!

President Bush is calling them as he sees them. And as he sees it, the conservative critics of his immigration bill are way out of bounds.

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

I support the immigration bill. I think it is important to get something done and get it done this year, for our nation’s economy and security. I also think it could be good politically for the Republican Party. We need to get to be able to compete for the Hispanic vote if we want to be the majority party in the long term, and getting this bill done could help us.

But the president needs to engage the critics of the bill in a constructive way. Saying that they haven’t read the bill insults their intelligence and is easily disprovable. Calling concerns “empty political rhetoric” and critics “fear-mongers” doesn’t help. And it certainly won’t help get the bill done in the House. Read more...

So Cindy Sheehan has decided to “throw in the towel.” She is emotionally exhausted and politically frustrated at congressional Democrats for continuing to fund the Iraq war. She no longer wants to be seen as a leader of the anti-war movement and feels betrayed by the Democratic Party and other organizations that rallied behind her two years ago.

The Democratic-controlled House and Senate recently approved fresh billions for the Iraq war on Thursday, minus the troop withdrawal timeline that drew President Bush’s earlier veto. What Cindy is now beginning to understand is the Democrats do not want this war to end. To Sheehan, her crusade against this war was a matter of “right and wrong,” not “right or left.” As she stated, “I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a ‘tool’ of the Democratic Party. However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the ‘left’ started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used.” Read more...

Now we read in the Boston Globe how John Kerry, preparing to campaign to be commander in chief, voted in 2002 for the Iraq war after his political consultants informed the would-be leader of the free world that he would not be "politically viable" unless he voted yes.

This followed the disclosure that Bob Shrum advised John Edwards to send young men and women to die as a way of  improving his weak national-security resume in 2002.

Why Democratic officials listen to this is beyond me.

Here are the presidential campaigns that Bob Shrum lost: 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004.

Here are the presidential campaigns Mr. Shrum won: none.

Nice work, if you can get it. Read more...

The conservative right is in full fury opposing the deal cooked up by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) for immigration reform. The full impact of the storm is likely to be felt by McCain as he offers himself as a candidate for the GOP nomination. The deal, of course, is good precisely because it pleases nobody. The right hates the idea that 12 million people who came here illegally can stay and work. The Hispanics hate that they have to pay $5,000 each, can't become citizens until they return to their country of origin, and cannot bring their famlies in. The left hates that the border fence and increased guards are prerequisites for the bill's implementation. The Democrats hate that the 12 million illegals won't be able to vote for a decade more. The Republicans hate that they will be able to vote eventually.

It’s a deal only a congressional insider could love. But Bush, Kennedy, Kyl, Graham and the other Senate supporters don't have to run in Republican primaries. McCain does, and he will not be lightly forgiven his apostasy in crafting this hodgepodge. Remember in evaluating this bill that a camel is a horse designed by a committee.

The president’s victory on Iraq war funding may prove to be an important turning point for the administration and for its Republican allies on the Hill. It sharply divided Democrats and gave Republicans some sorely needed momentum going into the Memorial Day recess.

The White House has also signaled that it is willing to be more flexible and creative when it comes to the battle for Iraq and the bigger war on terror.

Opening up a dialogue with Iran is a good thing. In order to stabilize Iraq, an agreement needs to be reached with Iran. Undoubtedly, just having the dialogue with the Iranians will cause some heartburn, especially with some of the president’s staunchest supporters. But dialogue is better than the status quo in Iraq.

The White House is finally making a compelling case for battling al Qaeda in Iraq, and getting some help in the storyline with the major media outlets. When the sheiks have had enough of al Qaeda and it is reported in the New York Times, that is positive news for this White House. Read more...

Not to divulge my age unnecessarily, but I do remember Richard Nixon’s “Secret Plan to End the War.” That was 1968. Of course, we are still searching for that plan, but I do have a bit of déjà vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would say.

I sense a secret (well, maybe not-so-secret) plan being cooked up inside the Bush White House. First, Bush lets it fly in a Rose Garden press briefing that if the Iraqis want us to leave, we will. Huh? As my occasional sparring partner Tucker Carlson so aptly put it, that is a real change in strategy. The justification for this war was that we were spreading democracy, overthrowing dictators and “combating terrorists over there so we wouldn’t have to over here.” Now it seems that if we are given the pink slip, we’re gone.

Second, Bush is now willing to accept benchmarks and more conditions. If they are not met, well, we may just be ready to begin “Plan B,” whatever that may be. Read more...

In the early weeks of this new Democratic majority in Congress, the press releases coming out of the House Republican conference on most days were, to put it frankly, desperation wrapped in drama. Things started smoothly for the new kids in town and Republicans, still smarting from their loss of power, stopped just short of accusing Democrats of burning down the Capitol.

More than half a year later the Democrats are having a tough time in the majority, as any party does, and Republicans are finally feeling some relief. Their breathless press releases are beginning to sound true. From the sidelines Republicans find satisfaction watching as the majority struggles without a veto-proof vote block to change the war in Iraq, the anti-war left roughs them up, the much touted ethical clean-up crew gets hanged out to dry by their own Earmarker-in-Chief Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), and bills the house passed stall in the Senate or at the White House driveway under veto threat. Republicans are comforted too by their new liberation as they untether themselves from years of unconditionally granting the wishes of President Bush and paying the political price. Read more...

In the coming days I will write about various portions of the Reagan diaries and will also recommend that everyone look up Douglas Brinkley’s discussion over the weekend on C-SPAN.

Note: I worked for the House Democratic leadership during the much of the period discussed, including the period when Tip O’Neill was Speaker, and there was wide bipartisan consultation on matters such as Lebanon.

For now, I raise a few points about Reagan and the Middle East.

Reagan was opposed for reasons of policy and principle to sending large numbers of American troops into Middle Eastern conflicts. Read more...