INSIDE-THE-BELTWAY ESTABLISHMENTITES-- WHETHER DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN-- HAVE MORE IN COMMON WITH EACH OTHER THAN WITH ACTUAL REAL-LIFE AMERICANS

Petrified that a tell-all book from Rove-- or even a tell-part book-- would end up sparking criminal prosecutions all through the Regime, Bush is keeping Rove... near for the duration. But whichever Establishment shitheads you're talking about, the Democratic brand careerists or the (even worse) Republican ones, none have accepted the meaning of the grassroots victories last week.


And speaking of shitheads of the Democratic flavor, you're not likely to find one more treacherous and venal than ex-low-level-Clintonista Kirsten Powers-- a real Lieberman Dem. Her USATodayop-ed, straight from the Rahm Emanuel anti-grassroots propaganda shop, shows the very worst side of the Inside-the-Beltway Dinos. There is virtually no difference between the shrill and desperate screeches from Powers and the normal fare you hear 24/7 from Limbaugh, Hannity and O'Reilly.


She starts back in 1992 when anti-choice activist Bob Casey, Sr. wasn't invited to address the Democratic Convention-- "a low point in Democratic Part history" is what this imbecile calls it-- and segues into the Chuck Schumer-engineered election of his equally reactionary son, Bob, Jr., the victor over the far worse Rick Santorum. She's overjoyed and calls it "a welcome move in a party that is home to vocal and organized far-left activists and bloggers who have grown increasingly shrill and threatening toward moderate and conservative Democrats." then she's off and running with the whole Inside-the-Beltway anti-grassroots (i.e.- anti-democratic) screed: from "the jihad against Lieberman" to more of her anti-choice obsession. She inaccurately states that "more than half the new House members will join the New Democratic Coalition or the Blue Dog Coalition caucuses, known for their fiscal responsibility, business-friendly stance and generally more socially conservative views. While most criticized the war, few have called for an immediate withdrawal."


And, of course, like all of the Emanuel propagandists, this is the cue to bring on... Heath Shuler who she beams is a "born-again Christian who opposes abortion [and] pro-gun Brad Ellsworth, who opposes abortion and favors an amendment banning gay marriage." No mention of Carol Shea-Porter, Paul Hodes, Kirsten Gillibrand, John Hall, Ed Perlmutter, Chris Carney, Joe Sestak, Chris Murphy, Gabby Giffords, Patrick Murphy, Jerry McNerney... and other Democratic victors who represent the interests of actual people who voted for them, not the Establishment interests Powers shills for.

In today's Washington Post Harold Meyerson is talking about the Republican conservatives' inability to face reality, but much of what he says equally applies to the Kirsten Powerses of the world as well.

Holding conservatism blameless for last week's Republican debacle may stiffen conservative spines, but the very idea is the product of mushy conservative brains unwilling to acknowledge the obvious: that conservatism has never been more ascendant than during George Bush's presidency; that the Republican Party over the past six years moved well to the right of the American people on social, economic and foreign policy; and that on Nov. 7 the American people chose a more pragmatic course.

After all, it wasn't just the president's war that was driven by right-wing ideologues. Particularly in the past two years, Republican economics, too, was shaped by ideology. The president's proposal to privatize Social Security was the brainchild of right-wing think tanks and the financial institutions that yearned to sell all those annuities. It never penciled out, and all sober analysis concluded that its chief effect would be to imperil retirement security itself. By nonetheless making it the signature domestic issue of his second term, George Bush again stamped himself a true believer and as indifferent in economic policy as he was in foreign policy to such vulgar trivialities as facts... Finally, conservatives argue that the newly elected Democrats are really conservatives, too -- proof that the ideology is in no need of a tuneup. It's true that some of the Democrats take conservative positions on guns and abortion. But it's also true that virtually all the new Democrats look askance at free trade, want to raise the minimum wage and back a bigger role for government in making health care more affordable.

At a time when corporations abandon their employee benefits, globalization depresses wages, and individuals are compelled to shoulder more and more risk, the last thing Americans need is a government that tells them -- as it told their countrymen in New Orleans last year -- they're on their own.

Tom Schaller, unlike Powers, an actual thinker instead of a screecher-creature, has a piece in the New York Times everyone should read, "The (Fictional) Triumph of the Conservative Democrats."

Two narratives have begun to emerge from the 2006 Congressional elections. The first is that Democrats didn't win so much as Republicans lost. The second is that the Republicans who lost were beaten by a bunch of conservative Democrats.

There's some truth to the first one: The election was a negative referendum on President Bush and the Republican Congress, specifically their mismanagement of Iraq, their ethical problems, and their inability to balance the federal budget or refrain from trying to distract Americans public with noisy
wedge issues rather than provide solutions to more pressing problems.

But the second narrative is a fiction. And it is puzzling that Republicans and conservatives are the ones peddling it.

The poster boy for the Democrats-won-as-conservatives theme is Heath Shuler, a 34-year-old former University of Tennessee football star from western North Carolina. Just hours after the results came in last Tuesday, The Times’s David Brooks wrote in this space: "Many moderate Republicans
survived, despite my pessimistic expectations … Furthermore, many moderate Democrats won, like Heath Shuler in North Carolina." Charles Krauthammer echoed the point in his Washington Post column on Friday: "Democratic gains included the addition of many conservative Democrats ... Hence Heath Shuler of North Carolina, anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-tax-- and now a Democratic
House member."

But take a closer look at who actually won-- and lost-- last Tuesday.

As of this writing (a few recounts are pending), Democrats captured 6 Senate seats and 28 House seats, and they are also expected to unseat Republican Representative Rob Simmons of Connecticut.

Based on the National Journal's ideological ratings of Congress, the majority of defeated House Republicans were purged from the liberal third of the G.O.P. caucus. Ten of the 28 most liberal
Republicans lost, including four of the top 12: Jim Leach of Iowa (No. 1), Nancy Johnson of Connecticut (No. 3), Simmons (No. 7), and Charlie Bass of New Hampshire (No. 12). Sherwood
Boehlert of New York, sixth on the list of most liberal Republicans, is retiring from Congress, and the
Democratic candidate won the race for his seat.

As for the new class of Congressional Democrats, sure, it includes a few self-described "pro-lifers" and opponents of gun control. But the vast majority of House candidates in competitive races ran as
Iraq war critics who support reproductive choice and embryonic stem cell research, want to raise the minimum wage, and oppose privatizing Social Security. A pack of blue-dog Zell Millers this is not.

The Senate results are similar. Much attention has been paid to the flattop haircut and heartland personality of farmer Jon Tester, Montana's Senator-elect; the way former Reagan Navy secretary and Vietnam veteran Jim Webb used his son's combat boots to kick out Virginia's George Allen; and
the anti-choice position of Bob Casey, the newly elected Catholic Democrat from Pennsylvania.

These biographical nuggets obscure the fact that these men and the other three new Democratic
senators ran as strong economic populists and thundering critics of the war. Republican Conrad Burns of Montana closed the gap during the late stages of his campaign by criticizing Tester as a
big-government tax-and-spender. Rhode Island's Sheldon Whitehouse beat the most liberal Republican
incumbent senator, Lincoln Chafee, by running to his left. And in Ohio, Republican moderate Mike DeWine fell to Sherrod Brown, who promptly was named heir to the late Paul Wellstone, the über-progressive senator from Minnesota.

What we witnessed last week was the final stage of a regional realignment, one that began four decades ago, in the wake of the civil rights movement, and slowly but steadily converted most southern Dixiecrats into Republicans. Until this year that transformation was incomplete, as many Ford- and Rockefeller-style Republicans continued to represent blue districts or blue states in the Northeast and Midwest.

The Rust Belt realignment of 2006 provided a corrective: Now (presuming Simmons is defeated), Chris Shays of Connecticut will be the sole surviving Republican among the 22 Representatives from New England. Although Maine and New Hampshire each have two Republican senators, should any of them or retire, Democrats will be poised to take their places.

The great irony of the 2006 midterms for Republicans is that the conservatives who pulled the party to the right survived, while the liberal wing was decimated. Because the Democrats who beat those liberal Republicans ran even further left, the notion that conservative Democrats carried the day is plainly absurd.

Conservative talking heads usually rush to paint Democrats as a pack of tin-eared, out-of-the-mainstream liberals. That's why it's so surprising that some of these same voices are now cherry-picking the results in an effort to perpetuate the fiction that Republicans lost, but conservatives
somehow won. It suggests that this year's defeat so stunned the conservative movement, it lost its messaging mojo, too.

For liberal Democrats, that may be the biggest victory of all.