Bush: Vietnam Has Lessons for Iraq


The President visits the capital of his least favorite analogy. But he says a lost war shows the necessity of steadfastness in a new one.


When discussion in President Bush's White House has turned to Vietnam, it has usually been by way of what the Administration deems an inaccurate comparison to the Iraq war. Last June, in answer to a reporter's question of whether he drew a parallel between events in Iraq and the Vietnam war, he said , "this is, in many ways, religious in nature, and I don't see the parallels."


That may have changed. Not that the President now sees the quagmire alleged by war critics, of course. But asked on arrival in Vietnam for an economic summit whether this country holds any lessons for the debate over Iraq, the President answered: "Yes. One lesson is, is that we tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take a while." Bush went on to say that Iraq is part of a "great struggle" between "radicals and extremists, versus people who want to live in peace." He said overcoming "the ideology of hate" is going to take a long time. "Yet, the world that we live in today is one where they want things to happen immediately," he said.

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5 Myths About the Midterm Elections

Did the bloggers matter in the end? Are the Dems more conservative? Did Republicans lose on the war? TIME separates fact from fiction.


Liberal bloggers and their readers helped to swing the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary to anti-war candidate Ned Lamont, raising expectations that the midterms would turn this new generation of online activists into kingmakers. Yet in the midst of a Democratic wave, the netroots candidates failed to sweep, causing some pundits to claim that the netroots' influence continues to be overstated: "The Netroots Election? Not So Fast," editorialized The Nation. When Rick Perlstein tried, in The New Republic, to claim the election as a netroots triumph, Ryan Lizza replied in the magazine's blog that in addition to having the netroots' support, winning candidates also had the national Democratic party to thank, as it "dumped tons of money, strategic advice, and fundraising assistance into their races." What's the real takeaway? Of the 19 candidates that three of the biggest liberal blogs (Daily Kos, mydd.com and Swing State Project) raised money for, eight of the candidates won. This improves on the blogs' record from 2004, when Daily Kos picked out 16 campaigns to strongly support and raise money for, all of which lost. This cycle, bloggers may have been most strongly linked to Lamont, but they actually donated more money to Jim Webb of Virginia. Bloggers also made "macaca" into a scandal that helped sink Webb's opponent, George Allen. The netroots' record is probably too short to be judged definitively, but instead of looking at pure win/loss records, an examination of where the netroots put their emphasis suggests that the online community is either becoming more sophisticated in picking its candidates or is helping push long shots over the top.

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Search is On For Abducted Americans

U.S. and British forces launch an intense manhunt for Western security men seized at a checkpoint.


A massive search and rescue operation is under way in southern Iraq for five Western security contractors taken hostage on Thursday. Four Americans and an Austrian were taken on Thursday when a convoy they were guarding was hijacked. Several Iraqis and other nationals who were also kidnapped during the hijack were released within a few hours. AP reports that British ground troops and U.S. helicopters fought gunmen in an area near where the kidnappings occurred, and that the Austrian hostage was found dead and that one of the Americans was gravely wounded.


Iraqi government sources blame Shiite militias for the snatch, which took place around 20 miles south of Basra.

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Bush's Iraq-Iran-Israel Dilemma

Two visits to the White House earlier this week highlighted the key dilemma facing President Bush as he contemplates changes to his Iraq policy: One guest was former Secretary of State James Baker and the rest of the Iraq Study Group, which together with much of the "realist" establishment in U.S. foreign policy is urging the Administration to recognize that a dialogue with Iran (and Syria) is an essential component of any successful strategy to stabilize Iraq. Bush's other visitor was Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose main purpose at the White House appeared to be pressing the President to follow his own instincts and those of the hawks in his Administration by maintaining a tough line against Iran because of its nuclear program.

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Bush's Iraq-Iran-Israel Dilemma




Making nice with Iran may be key to helping the U.S. out of a mess in Iraq, but that would require compromises that Israel — and Administration hawks — will resist.

Two visits to the White House earlier this week highlighted the key dilemma facing President Bush as he contemplates changes to his Iraq policy: One guest was former Secretary of State James Baker and the rest of the Iraq Study Group, which together with much of the "realist" establishment in U.S. foreign policy is urging the Administration to recognize that a dialogue with Iran (and Syria) is an essential component of any successful strategy to stabilize Iraq. Bush's other visitor was Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose main purpose at the White House appeared to be pressing the President to follow his own instincts and those of the hawks in his Administration by maintaining a tough line against Iran because of its nuclear program.

President Bush will soon discover what Baker and Olmert probably already know: That it won't be possible to do both.

Both Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have begun publicly raising the prospect of talking to Iran, but only if Tehran mends its ways and suspends uranium enrichment. Otherwise, both men say, Iran will be isolated. But there's something almost comical about Blair and Bush setting preconditions for a conversation in which, however they might spin it, they're asking for help. Tehran ultimately shares an interest in preventing a breakup of Iraq, but the mayhem currently unfolding there hurts the U.S. and Britain a lot more than it does Iran. On balance, it hardly makes sense to Iran to help the U.S. and Britain in Iraq without getting anything in return.

Nor does Iran fear the "isolation" threatened by Bush and Blair. Its insouciant defiance of two U.N. deadlines to suspend enrichment suggests that Tehran doubts that the U.S. and its allies can muster serious sanctions or similar diplomatic pressure. And, indeed, Washington's effort to convince the Security Council to impose sanctions appears to have stalled in the face of resistance from Russia and China. Moscow and Beijing backed symbolic sanctions against North Korea only after that country had actually tested a nuclear device, and even then they made clear that their intention was not to isolate North Korea but instead to bring it back to the negotiating table (which they appear to have succeeded in doing).

Now both countries, which have strong commercial interests in Iran, are using the contrast between North Korea and Iran to argue against taking any kind of punitive action against Tehran. Unlike North Korea, after all, Iran continues to accept the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty — and even though it has expressed concerns over transparency and unanswered questions, and has challenged Iran to do a lot more to reassure the world over its intentions, the IAEA says it has found no evidence that Tehran actually has a nuclear weapons program. So Moscow and Beijing are pushing back against the sanctions option and warning that it could ruin prospects for a negotiated solution.

Until now, the U.S. has insisted that any uranium enrichment on Iranian soil is unacceptable, because this would give Iran the know-how that could potentially be used to create weapons. That's a position the Israelis strongly back, and it's the reason they tend to paint the current moment — when Iran is conducting enrichment experiments but is assumed to be as much as a decade away from having the capacity to assemble a bomb — as a life-threatening emergency not only to Israel, but ultimately to the entire West.

The problem is that while the U.S. and Britain tend to share an absolutist view of enrichment, their allies in Europe tend to be more ambivalent, and there's little support for that position beyond Western Europe. The UN consensus is that Iran should be required to satisfy concerns over its program, but not that it be prevented from ever exercising its right as a signatory to the NPT to enrich uranium under IAEA scrutiny.

If and when the U.S. comes knocking to talk about Iraq, Iran will see an opportunity to discuss a range of concerns — most notably to push for a compromise that would require the U.S. to retreat from its red line over enrichment. That, of course, would not sit at all well with the Israeli leadership and their backers on Capitol Hill, as well as the likeminded hawks within and outside the Administration.

The realists might counter that the North Korea experience and the current diplomatic landscape suggests that the hard line is unlikely to achieve the desired results with Iran anyway. Refusing to engage unless Iran concedes on enrichment runs the risk of doubling the diplomatic defeats for the U.S. — by adding successful Iranian defiance to the ongoing debacle of Iraq.

So the question of what the Bush Administration will do to reverse its fortunes in Iraq will necessarily become an internal referendum on its entire Middle East policy. And the battle to shape that policy may produce a long, hot winter ahead in the corridors of power on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Taking Aim at Immigration in Texas




In control of every statewide office, Republicans are targeting illegal immigrants by proposing to cut their benefits and even deny citizenship to their U.S.-born children
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With the Democrats in charge in Washington, conservatives in Texas are wasting no time on a pity party. Republicans, after all, are still in the majority here, controlling every statewide office and the Legislature as well as the top courts. To press that advantage, conservatives plan to put their imprint next year on a variety of issues ranging from abortion to school vouchers. Their biggest push by far, however, will be passage of a host of bills dealing with illegal immigrants, including one that just might challenge the 14th Amendment, which defines citizenship and requires states to provide civil rights to anyone born on U.S. soil.

The opening salvo in the fight was made this week by Farmers Branch, a suburb of Dallas which is nearly 40% Hispanic. Despite protests in the streets and threats of lawsuits and boycotts, the city council voted to make English the official language and fine landlords who rent to illegal immigrants. In Austin, meanwhile, Republicans began trooping into the state Capitol with stacks of bills aimed at cutting off benefits to illegal aliens, taxing their remittances south of the border, and requiring proof of citizenship at the voting booth. The harshest bill would deny welfare and other benefits even to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens — rights supposedly given them under the 14th Amendment. Latino groups, who were only recently being wooed by Republican candidates, were left aghast at the onslaught, calling it "a hate campaign" against immigrants and "anti-human being" to boot.

John Colyandro, director of the Texas Conservative Coalition, told TIME that he expects "quite a bit of legislation" on illegal immigration to pop up in 2007 — and not just in Texas. "Because Congress did not pass a comprehensive reform bill on immigration, more and more states are going to step in like Arizona," he says. Arizona voters last month passed measures denying illegal immigrants access to state-subsidized benefits like child care as well as the right to bail and punitive damages in lawsuits. In the Texas Legislature, Colyandro expects a broad array of legislation targeting benefits to illegals, as well as voter verification of citizenship, employer sanctions for hiring illegal aliens, and additional funding for border security. He says the two extremes of the current immigration debate — deporting all illegals or granting amnesty to all — are "unworkable and frankly intolerable." He adds: "Somewhere between the two are workable solutions and that's where our focus will be in the Texas Legislature in January."

Just how far are conservatives willing to go? Far, according to a bill pre-filled this week by Republican state Rep. Leo Berman, who serves a onservative constituency in the east Texas town of Tyler, "the rose capital of the nation." Under Berman's bill, children born in Texas to illegal aliens would be denied state unemployment or public assistance benefits like food stamps as well as professional licenses. In Texas alone, he argues, there are an estimated two million illegal aliens whose U.S.-born children get these benefits, which go largely un-reimbursed by the federal government. "This is costing us a fortune," Berman argues. Although he had to back down on plans to deny education and health care (the feds require it), the central tenet of his bill remains: to challenge the automatic birthright of citizenship given to children of illegal aliens — all the way up to the Supreme Court, if necessary.

How could Texas deny benefits to U.S. citizens, even if they were born to illegals? Berman notes that the 14th Amendment was a late edition to the constitution, written after the Civil War to assure citizenship for the children of slaves. The courts later extended the amendment to include the children of illegal immigrants. But times have changed, he says. "There are 20 million illegal aliens in the U.S. who have benefits that most U.S. citizens don't have," says Berman. "One of the most lucrative benefits is that pregnant illegal aliens can give birth in a U.S. hospital free of charge and be rewarded with citizenship while breaking the most basic of U.S. laws." To pay for all that free hospital care, he wants to tax all money transferred south of the border by individuals at 8 % (citizens could apply for reimbursement). The fee could raise $240 million a year, he estimates.

The larger issue for both Berman and Colyandro is carrying on with the conservative agenda now that Washington is in Democratic hands. "The American people expressed extreme disappointment in the Republican Congress but they certainly did not make a turn to the left," argues Colyandro, pointing to conservative-oriented ballot issues on property rights, gay marriage and quota elimination that survived even as the South Dakota abortion ban went down in defeat. In Texas, three new abortion bills have already been filed, including one that would immediately invalidate state law permitting abortions if Roe v. Wade were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. "The Republicans didn't fare badly in Texas so we have to preserve the Republican and conservative message," says Berman. "We'll be carrying the banner, probably for most of the U.S."

Hispanics in Texas plan to challenge the Farmers Branch ordinance in the courts and will battle bills like Berman's on every front. "This is a dark time for Latinos," says Rosa Rosales, a San Antonio resident and newly elected president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). "Can you imagine blaming children, trying to deny them medical care?" LULAC's former president, Hector Flores, who lives in the Dallas area, claims such conservative measures are "DOA on arrival" with the winds of change blowing through Washington. "These odious types of ordinances target Hispanics because of our growth. It is a hate campaign. That's not the American dream that we learned about in school," says Flores. What's need instead, he says, is comprehensive immigration reform to regulate the flow of people, not just from Mexico but other countries. "Bottom line: this is up to federal government not the state legislature."

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Dems Tell Pelosi She Needs to Follow, Not Just Lead



KAREN TUMULTY


The new House Speaker tried to assert her authority in backing John Murtha for Majority Leader. But Murtha's loss and Steny Hoyer's victory have taught her a hard lesson.

Nancy Pelosi showed us something important about herself this week. If Tip O'Neill thought that all politics was local, Pelosi's view is that it's personal. But what may have more significance in the long run is what her caucus showed her — that, unlike the Republicans they are replacing, they will not march lockstep at every dictate from their leaders. And if there is any good news for the Democrats from the entire episode, that is it.

Congressman Steny Hoyer, the man what had waited in line for the job, gave Pelosi's candidate John Murtha a thumpin', as the President might have put it. That there was even a fight at all, however, is because of Pelosi. Against all precedent and good sense, she stepped into the election with not only an endorsement of her longtime ally, but a shocking strongarm campaign to win the job for him. She all but told incoming freshmen: "That's a nice little committee assignment you're asking for. It would be a shame if anything happened to it."

The moderate Hoyer won in part because he had the support of the committee chairmen, who are the liberal old guard. They put practicality over ideology, which is just what voters asked them to do on November 7. And Hoyer also held the support of those freshmen. They appreciated the time and money that Hoyer had put into getting them elected in 2006, and understand that unless they are independent, they won't get re-elected in 2008. As the Brookings Institution's Tom Mann, who is one of the smartest scholars of Congress, put it: "The Democrats today saved Pelosi from a disastrous start to her leadership."

Modern politics have been hard on House Speakers. O'Neill was the last one to give up the office under circumstances of his choosing; all four since him have been ousted from it, under one set of circumstances or another. If Pelosi is to avoid that fate, she must learn now to control the impulses and instincts that those around her say define her character. She will have to broaden her circle, trust her colleagues and take to heart the words of the man who managed to hold the job longer than anyone else in history. "You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you," Sam Rayburn once said, "unless you know how to follow, too."

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Bush: Vietnam Has Lessons for Iraq




The President visits the capital of his least favorite analogy. But he says a lost war shows the necessity of steadfastness in a new one.

When discussion in President Bush's White House has turned to Vietnam, it has usually been by way of what the Administration deems an inaccurate comparison to the Iraq war. Last June, in answer to a reporter's question of whether he drew a parallel between events in Iraq and the Vietnam war, he said , "this is, in many ways, religious in nature, and I don't see the parallels."

That may have changed. Not that the President now sees the quagmire alleged by war critics, of course. But asked on arrival in Vietnam for an economic summit whether this country holds any lessons for the debate over Iraq, the President answered: "Yes. One lesson is, is that we tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take a while." Bush went on to say that Iraq is part of a "great struggle" between "radicals and extremists, versus people who want to live in peace." He said overcoming "the ideology of hate" is going to take a long time. "Yet, the world that we live in today is one where they want things to happen immediately," he said.

The President said at a later appearance that he has been "reading and studying" about the country. "One of the most poignant moments of the drive in," he said at the Sheraton Hanoi, "was passing the lake where John McCain got pulled out of the lake. And he's a friend of ours; he suffered a lot as a result of his imprisonment, and yet, we passed the place where he was, literally, saved, in one way, by the people pulling him out." The Arizona Senator paid a visit in 2000 to Truc Bach Lake where, as a Navy lieutenant commander, he had ejected after being hit by a Soviet-made surface-to-air missile during his 23rd bombing run over North Vietnam. He was taken to the detention facility known as the "Hanoi Hilton" and was a prisoner of war for five years, two of them in solitary confinement. The downing of his aircraft is now commemorated with a stone marker emblazoned "U.S." that was visible from the presidential motorcade.

From Bush's window, he could also see bicycles and motorcycles laden with precisely balanced baskets, buckets and bundles that would tax some small cars. Even Vietnam's capital city remains relatively primitive, with hundreds of individual power lines running along the street like great skeins of spaghetti.

Within hours of his arrival, Bush was photographed at the palace in front of a huge bust of Ho Chi Minh, the revolutionary Communist leader. Bush planned a meeting with the Secretary General of the Communist Party, at party headquarters. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said the meeting was being held because Vietnam is a Communist state. Snow told reporters aboard Air Force One that the Iraq and Vietnam wars are "not comparable" situations, and said he had not heard any concerns from Republicans about the President appearing with trappings of the Communist Party. "Vietnam is now making a transition, we're certainly encouraging that reform in many ways," Snow said, noting that the President will be discussing his "freedom agenda" for encouraging democracy abroad. It was that agenda that got the President into Iraq. Bush plans a breezy, aggressive schedule for the new few days, eager to show he can salute progress in Vietnam without getting bogged down in suggestions that he may be stuck in one of his own.

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Search is On For Abducted Americans



APARISIM GHOSH


U.S. and British forces launch an intense manhunt for Western security men seized at a checkpoint.

A massive search and rescue operation is under way in southern Iraq for five Western security contractors taken hostage on Thursday. Four Americans and an Austrian were taken on Thursday when a convoy they were guarding was hijacked. Several Iraqis and other nationals who were also kidnapped during the hijack were released within a few hours. AP reports that British ground troops and U.S. helicopters fought gunmen in an area near where the kidnappings occurred, and that the Austrian hostage was found dead and that one of the Americans was gravely wounded.

Iraqi government sources blame Shiite militias for the snatch, which took place around 20 miles south of Basra.

Hijackings and kidnappings are commonplace in much of Iraq, especially in Baghdad and the southern provinces, which are governed by Shiite parties. Armed militias maintained by these parties often conduct criminal activities under the immunity provided by their political patrons. Thousands of Iraqis have been kidnapped by the militias; many hostages are brutally tortured and murdered.

But unlike the Sunni insurgent and jihadi groups that operate in Western Iraq, the Shi'ite militias rarely kidnap foreigners. Most of the Americans and Europeans who have been captured by such militias have been released within a few days. However, anti-American sentiment has been mounting among the Shiites, who accuse the U.S. of bias toward the Sunnis and of actively undermining the government of Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

In recent months, there has also been widespread anger at the actions of foreign private security firms, some of which have been known to mistreat Iraqis. Last week police in Nassiriya province arrested four foreign security men working for a British contractor after they fired on a police checkpoint.

The convoy hijacked today was on its way to Nassiriyah from Kuwait, on a route usually used by U.S. military convoys. It had got only 15 miles into Iraq when the hijackers struck, near the town of Safwan at 1pm local time. Some reports say the convoy was stopped at a fake checkpoint set up by the hijackers, who were wearing police uniforms. There are conflicting reports on the number of attackers, but it would appear that there was an exchange of fire between the hijackers and the security personnel guarding the convoy. Several of the trucks in the convoy were also taken.

After the hijacking, British forces in Basra stepped up security operations in the city, suggesting the kidnappers may have taken their hostages there. On Friday, British and U.S. ground troops and helicopters searched an area south of Basra for gunmen who had in previous days attacked coalition forces. There was at least one major firefight between gunmen and the troops, in which five of the gunmen were killed. It is not clear if the gunmen were connected to the hijacking of the convoy.

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5 Myths About the Midterm Elections


PERRY BACON JR., ANA MARIE COX AND KAREN TUMULTY


Did the bloggers matter in the end? Are the Dems more conservative? Did Republicans lose on the war? TIME separates fact from fiction.

Liberal bloggers and their readers helped to swing the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary to anti-war candidate Ned Lamont, raising expectations that the midterms would turn this new generation of online activists into kingmakers. Yet in the midst of a Democratic wave, the netroots candidates failed to sweep, causing some pundits to claim that the netroots' influence continues to be overstated: "The Netroots Election? Not So Fast," editorialized The Nation. When Rick Perlstein tried, in The New Republic, to claim the election as a netroots triumph, Ryan Lizza replied in the magazine's blog that in addition to having the netroots' support, winning candidates also had the national Democratic party to thank, as it "dumped tons of money, strategic advice, and fundraising assistance into their races." What's the real takeaway? Of the 19 candidates that three of the biggest liberal blogs (Daily Kos, mydd.com and Swing State Project) raised money for, eight of the candidates won. This improves on the blogs' record from 2004, when Daily Kos picked out 16 campaigns to strongly support and raise money for, all of which lost. This cycle, bloggers may have been most strongly linked to Lamont, but they actually donated more money to Jim Webb of Virginia. Bloggers also made "macaca" into a scandal that helped sink Webb's opponent, George Allen. The netroots' record is probably too short to be judged definitively, but instead of looking at pure win/loss records, an examination of where the netroots put their emphasis suggests that the online community is either becoming more sophisticated in picking its candidates or is helping push long shots over the top.

MYTH: Democrats won because they carefully recruited more conservative candidates.
REALITY: Democrats won because their candidates were conservative about their message.

Moderate Democrats have celebrated the midterms as a victory for their brand of fiscal conservatism, foreign policy "realism" and a version of "traditional values." Certainly, Washington will see an influx of unorthodox Democrats: congressmen-elect Heath Shuler in North Carolina and Brad Ellsworth in Indiana are pro-life and pro-gun. But liberals won in some relatively conservative areas as well, and often after being largely ignored by national Democratic strategists. In the House, they include Kentucky's John Yarmuth (who supports universal health care and affirmative action), New Hampshire's Carol Shea-Porter (she was once escorted out of a Bush event for wearing an anti-Bush t-shirt) and Dave Loebsack (an anti-war liberal academic) in Iowa. The same is true of the Senate, where the new Democratic members include Vermont's Bernie Sanders, a socialist.

The fact is, voters by and large had little sense of where many of the candidates they elected stood on the issues. Democrats told voters far more about what they were against — the Republicans who run Washington — than what they were for. "This is a campaign that was run explicitly to be devoid of issues," says Amy Walter, an analyst with the non-partisan Cook Political Report. "They never had to outline their own positions on the issues, which makes it very hard to know exactly where these folks are coming from."

MYTH: The losses Republicans sufferend this election were no different than what you usually see in a President's sixth year in office.
REALITY: Redistricting minimized what might have been a truly historic shellacking.

The numbers alone do look like a typical midterm loss for the presidential party: 28 House seats, with 10 races still undecided. Republicans have clung to this math hard in recent days, with even Karl Rove pointing to electoral history to prove that things could have been worse. But Republicans spent most of the year boasting about how the redistricting of the past decade had made them all but bulletproof. Absent those new district lines, says the American Enterprise Institute's Norm Ornstein, "it could easily have been 45 or more." And there are other results that break with past patterns, Ornstein adds. Democrats did not lose a single seat — a feat the party had not accomplished since 1922. Even in the Republican sweep of 1994, the G.O.P. lost four of its open seats to Democrats. What's more, the wave swept all the way down the ballot — for instance, handing the New Hampshire House to the Democrats for the first time since 1922.

MYTH: The election was all about the war.
REALITY: It's the dishonesty, stupid.

Against traditional political wisdom, national themes did matter more than local loyalties and personalities in 2006. George Bush was far more likely to show up in a Democratic candidate's ad than a Republican's. Many Democrats have translated their victory into a mandate for change in Iraq; the day after the midterms, Sen. Harry Reid called for a bipartisan summit on the issue, saying "The President must listen and work with Democrats to fix his failed policy." But in the end, what appears to have mattered most was Congress' own behavior. Fully 74% of voters surveyed in exit polls ranked corruption and ethics as important in determining their votes; by comparison, 67% said that about Iraq. The lack of progress in Iraq helped nationalize the elections, but multiple scandals (Abramoff, Foley) appear to have driven home an urge for massive change. Mattis Goldman, who coordinated the campaign advertising for Democrat Sherrod Brown's successful Ohio Senate run, says that they chose to emphasize economic populism, change and fighting corruption. "If we had run a one-dimensional campaign just about the war," says Goldman, "I don't know how this election would have turned out."

MYTH: Republicans lost their base.
REALITY: The base turned out, they just got beat.

Right-wing pundits and some conservative politicians have argued that the midterms were, in the words of Rush Limbaugh, a "loss for Republicanism, not conservatism," and that genuine conservatives stayed away from the polls (or cast protest votes) to show their displeasure with a party that had strayed from first principles. Rep. Mike Pence (R-In.) is running for minority leader with a statement that posits, "I believe that we did not just lose our Majority — we lost our way. We are in the wilderness because we walked away from the limited government principles." But, says the White House's political director Sara Taylor, the difference between base turnout in 2002 and 2006 is within the margin of error. And independent exit polls show the same percentages of voters who called themselves "evangelicals," "white born-again Christians," "weekly church-goers," "Republicans" and "conservatives" as in 2006 as in 2004. "The base turned out," says Taylor, "but independents made up a larger share of the electorate and they broke very heavily Democratic."

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