Dafydd, man have you ever been right about the Counter-insurgency. You even said some troops would be coming home. How many and when? So, here goes! What do you honestly think about next year's elections? Do the Republicans have a chance of retaining the WH? If so, who do you think the nominee will be? Please let me know!

This one action gives me more hope than any other single thing I've heard coming out of Iraq. It shows me that at least some of those in power understand what the goal is. This is truly good news.

The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the - Web Reconnaissance for 11/16/2007 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.

Your scanning the news horizon for this story is a great example of the value of your blog. Good job.

Following up on Pam's questions: Is the stock market going back up?

Of course, this will make all the nightly newscasts from our friendly MSM, right? I mean, they can't ignore the spin that these people killed hundreds of Sunnis...
Oh wait - it's also a powerful sign we are truly winning in Iraq. Dang.
Nevermind....

Pam:

Of course troops will come home; they already are. The president's first step is to cycle 30,000 back, effectively reversing the "surge" part of the counterinsurgency.

Once that has a chance to settle, he and subsequent presidents will slowly reduce troop levels until we reach an optimal holding force... probably somewhere around 25,000 to 35,000 total, moving up or down as the facts on the ground dictate. But that will take a few years.

What do you honestly think about next year's elections? Do the Republicans have a chance of retaining the WH? If so, who do you think the nominee will be?

Both Republicans and Democrats always have "a chance" in an election; it's never a foregone conclusion. It all depends upon how well both sides campaign.

The only thing I'm reasonably sure about is that Fred Thompson isn't going anywhere. But the GOP nominee could be any one of the big three: Giuliani, McCain, or Romney (in alphabetical order).

(Unlike Hugh Hewitt, I don't think McCain's campaign is necessarily dead; he's so right on the war that it might overshadow McCain-Feingold and the Gang of Fourteen... not likely, but neither is it politically impossible.)

It looks more and more like Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. The guy I was predicting, Al Gore, decided for his own reasons not to get into the race; and the remaining competitors to Hillary are even worse at campaigning than she.

In the general presidential election, voters generally vote for president according to the following issues, more or less in this order:

1. Political party. Most voters vote strictly according to political party. For the rest, the following criteria are considered:
2. Security. Which candidate will keep my family safe?
3. Stability. Who will maintain business more or less as usual? (Voters tend to be change-averse; even in a "change" election, voters want change back to some fondly remembered previous state of things -- whether reality or fantasy -- not to some new and different state.)
4. Economics. Who will cause my family's finances to improve?
5. Scandal. Which party has the least amount of very recent scandal attached to its name? Is the main scandal about sex or money? The latter trumps the former, unless the sex involves perversity: Simple adultery rarely moves any votes.
6. Foreign affairs. Who sounds stronger and more certain about his position on foreigners and all that stuff? This category includes immigration, whether the voter is pro or con any particular issue.
7. Ideology. Who says the right talking points on My Favorite Ideological Issue?

Note: For Senate and House elections, different and much more district-specific issues dominate; so don't try to use this to predict who will win the Senate race in Louisiana, for example.

More important than turning independents, these criteria drive turnout, and turnout decides elections. This will be a high-turnout election to begin with, with a polarizing figure like Hillary Clinton running; so the question is, which candidate wins on enough of these issues to galvanize more of his or her party loyalists and independent leaners?

A handful of voters will focus on one or the other of these criteria to the exclusion of all others -- Second-Amendment or abortion absolutists, for example, who are stuck on criterion 7. But they're much more a factor in fund raising than the actual vote.

I like the Republican nominee, whoever it is, on criteria 2, 3, and 6; Democrats have an advantage on 1 (their fanatics are more fanatical than our fanatics) and on 5 and possibly 4; neither has an advantage on 7.

Since neither party has a real "sweep" of important criteria, the election will depend upon the actual degree of advantage: How much of an edge in party affiliation do the Democrats have? Will the Abramoff scandal still have legs a whole cycle later, when only one Republican seat (I think) is currently held by someone tainted by this issue? And will the William Jefferson scandal and other Democratic scandals end up neutralizing this issue altogether?

Can the Democrats rally and put up a credible claim to care about national security? Or will they continue their feckless quest to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, even as our victory in Iraq becomes clearer? And will the Republican nominee latch onto some deep economic issue that grabs voters' attention, as Reagan did with his tax cuts and regulatory reform?

None of these questions can even be accurately guessed at today, a year out from the election. Nor do polls particularly matter yet; the bulk of voters simply aren't paying any serious attention to the election yet.

As my Magic 8-Ball keeps saying lately, "Ask again later."

Marcus:

Following up on Pam's questions: Is the stock market going back up?

Of course it will. It always does... eventually. Are you asking "how long is eventually?" See my 8-Ball's repetitive answer above.

Dafydd

Dafydd, thanks for your response. I was hoping for more from Fred! I do hope you're right about McCain since he's my second choice. I'll vote for Rudy if it comes to that, but I don't want it to come to that. I just don't know about Mitt; he's such a flip flopper. I mean a Republican version of John Kerry, ya know!

Pam:

I just don't know about Mitt; he's such a flip flopper. I mean a Republican version of John Kerry, ya know!

Actually, that's a bum rap; you're repeating a Democratic talking point that Giuliani started using.

The distinction between Kerry and Romney is that Kerry would flip one way, flop the other, and then flip back, depending on his audience. He would do this in the same campaign, the same Senate session... sometimes on the same bill, as when he was against the $87 billion before he was for it, before he was against it again.

Romeny's changes of mind, however, occur over the course of years... and all in the same direction: to the right. Romney's pattern is consistent with the usual one that people tend to grow more conservative as they grow older.

In that sense, Romney didn't flip-flop; he wised up. That is a very big distinction.

Too, some of the supposed Romney "flip-flops" simply comprise him saying nice things about Democrats who worked with him on various projects... instead of, say, spitting in their faces. But Ronald Reagan was well known for magnanimity in praising liberals who collaborated with him on crafting bipartisan solutions to serious problems. Should we call Ronald Reagan a flip-flopper, too?

You should never attack your own for arriving later than you: That's a good way to discourage liberals and moderates from mending their ways. Free-marketarians, such as myself, welcome Mitt Romney to the fold like the prodigal son.

I don't care what he thought about capitalism and same-sex marriage back when he ran for the Massachusetts Senate against Ted Kennedy; I care what he thinks about them now, as he runs for president, after rescuing the Olympics, making hundreds of millions of dollars, serving as governor of a state, and desperately trying to stop the judicial imposition of same-sex marriage.

Conversion from dark to light is a good thing, not something to be used as a bludgeon against the converted.

Dafydd

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