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U.S. ELECTIONS: BUSH'S WAR PLANS ALMOST ASSURED !!

AnAmerican | 06.11.2002 13:25

Because of 9/11, and the help of big money, the Republicans gained control of the Senate and the House, facilitating Bush's war plans. (ps. it's bad, real bad, Europe & the U.N.vote is the only hope!). (Not in this article)U.S. polls show a majority of Americans don't want to go to war without U.N. resolution. It's up to YOU, at this point!

Coleman Wins in Minnesota; Republicans Also Hold House
By ADAM NAGOURNEY


Republicans swept to victory in the United States Senate last night, assuring Republican control of the White House and Congress for the next two years, and thrusting President Bush into a commanding position for his legislative agenda.

The Republican Party also maintained — and possibly solidified — its hold on the House in an election that amounted to a major drubbing for the Democratic Party.

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The results mean that a single party, the Republicans, will once again control both houses of Congress and the White House. The party lost the Senate in June 2001, when Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont switched from the Republican Party and became an independent, though mostly voting with the Democrats.

Republicans captured high-profile Senate races from North Carolina to New Hampshire, while winning governors' races in Democratic states.

"We made history tonight," said Representative Thomas M. Davis III, chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign committee. "It was a great win for the president of the United States."

That exuberance carried over into the early hours of today, when Norm Coleman, a Republican, sent former Vice President Walter Mondale back into political retirement after beating him in the Senate race in Minnesota.

The outcome marked a break with historic patterns in which the party that controls the White House almost invariably lost, rather than gained, seats in midterm Congressional elections.

The result signaled a major change in the way Washington does business, removing what Mr. Bush had repeatedly complained in recent days was Democratic opposition that had prevented him from winning confirmation of his judicial nominations and such measures as a permanent tax cut and a homeland security bill.

It was a huge lift for Mr. Bush, who spent much of the past two weeks campaigning across the nation on behalf of Republican candidates for the House, the Senate and for governor. At the time, Democrats said that Mr. Bush was gambling his prestige on the outcome of the race. That was one bet that the president clearly appeared to have won last night.

Gov. Jeb Bush survived the fallout from his brother's disputed election in 2000 to win a second term in Florida, drawing an early-evening congratulatory call from the White House. In Maryland, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a Democrat and a daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, lost her bid for governor to Representative Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. — the first time a Republican was elected governor of that state since Spiro Agnew was elected in 1966. Voters in Massachusetts, another of the most Democratic states, elected a Republican as governor, Mitt Romney.

Democrats were able to claim a handful of victories, like the one by Frank R. Lautenberg, the retired Democratic senator who reappeared on the political stage last month after Senator Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey was forced aside by an ethics investigation. In one of the few dark moments for Republicans yesterday, Mark Pryor, the Democratic attorney general of Arkansas, toppled Senator Tim Hutchinson from office, while Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, won re-election.

The Democrats recaptured the governorships in Illinois for the first time in 26 years, Pennsylvania and Michigan, important states in that could have significant bearing in the 2004 presidential race.

Still, the evening was more than a little discouraging for Democrats. In what would amount to biggest upset in Senate races, Representative Saxby Chambliss unseated Senator Max Cleland, a celebrated war hero and a Democrat from Georgia. Elizabeth Dole, a two-time cabinet secretary and Republican candidate for president in 2000, was elected senator from North Carolina, and Representative John E. Sununu Jr. won the Senate race in New Hampshire. Both Republicans withstood spirited challenges from Democrats, assuring that those two states remained in the Republican column.

The Republicans also sent Representative Lindsey Graham to fill the South Carolina Senate seat that was being vacated by Senator Strom Thurmond, while former Gov. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a two-time presidential candidate, kept that state's Republican Senate seat.

"What a great night — what a great victory," Mr. Sununu shouted to a crowd ecstatic that he had triumphed over the state's popular governor, Jeanne Shaheen...."
New York Times

AnAmerican

Comments

Hide the following 8 comments

Has to get worse before it gets better

06.11.2002 14:07

The American general public is about to pay the full price for decades of voter apathy, unfettered greed, racial and religious intolerance, and global indifference. Only then can the pendulum swing back the other way.

Unfortunately, they'll drag the rest of the world with them.

bosworth


ELIZABETH DOLE???

06.11.2002 16:07

WASN'T IT BOB DOLE, HER HUSBAND WHO WAS THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDTE

CHRIS
mail e-mail: USING WORK


goes to show

06.11.2002 17:41

Just goes to show the long term cost of Clintonism!

The Democrats, just like New Labour, run away from any position that might be controversial. They run scared of issues like the war, desparately trying to prove that they're just as pro-war and 'patriotic' as Bush.

Okay, in the short run, this approach may have helped Clinton win elections. But longer term, this happens! Because the Democrats have given up on making a stand on any actual principle, all they can really do is argue that they're better at defending the status quo than the Republicans. And ultimately how convincing is that?

The best hope for the Democrats now is a major swing to more radical politics; especially opposing the war. That would lose them most conservative mainstream voters, but hey, they just all voted Republican anyway. It could win them a whole new, young, diverse constituency who currently hardly vote at all.

-


oh my!

06.11.2002 18:25

... its a hard rain gonna fall ...
Please amerikans, be nice to yourselves, you are in for a hell of a ride!
In a way you've had it comeing, but its still a terrirble shame - the states I know are beautiful in land and people, but now the ugly amerikan death sucker has you in his cold clamy hands ... get out get out while you still can!

jackslucid
mail e-mail: jackslucid@hotmail.com


we should please, instead

06.11.2002 21:25

Republicans won, so what?
How many didn't vote?
We should please with ourselves if the majority of people do not bother to vote. It depends on us to make these people mature and making them realize that taking care of their own responsibilities as individuals and social beings are more important if they want to live as humans; otherwise like some posters suggest we are going to be some kind of puppet in giving away our responsibilities.
To vote is not the problem, revolution is the only problem to be considered.

mackno


STOP BLAIR

06.11.2002 22:09

At this point, only the British can stop Bush & Co. ONLY Blair supports the American/Israeli effort to have (what they hope will be only) a regional WAR. ONLY BLAIR!! If Blair were to be stopped, Bush would either have to do it alone or desist. Blair is the "fig-leaf" of international respectability, that hides the REAL motivations for this WAR (which IS about oil, but even more so ((though never-spoken)) about Israel). All American polls show that the American public dosn't want to be in this war alone, and evenly divided as to whether they want war at all. The U.S. anti-war movement is already mobilized and making big inroads on campuses across the country (and not just on campuses, but they need support and TIME. Support for this war in America is "paper thin" (when it exists at all). At this point, the English CAN make an important difference. If Blair can be stopped, Bush & Co. stands alone. But there isn't much time.

From-America


I am an American

07.11.2002 07:18


I am an American who went out and voted against
all Republican candidates.

Yet what good did it do? In my state, only
Republicans won.

In the US as a whole, we had only 35 per cent
of eligible voters turn out to vote.

This meant that Bush and his followers got
the support of about 18 per cent of the total
electorate, yet still managed to gain two
seats in the Senate, and three in the House
of Representatives, due to apathy.

Americans are apathetic because their votes
mean so little. Most democrats are worthless.

Floridian working class voters, and especially
black voters just gave up.

They believe, not without reason, that the whole
thing is rigged.

Lots of Americans believe Senator Paul Wellstone
did not die by accident in that plane crash
last month, but that he was assassinated. However,
our media does not even raise that possibility.

I urge Europeans to to do all they can to put the
brake on the US. Bush wants to go to war, and
so do almost all the members of his inner circle.

We try to stop him. We have had record numbers
of people demonstrating (since Vietnam), and
huge letter writing campaigns. But the media
just ignores the protests, and does not report
on the flood of mail that Congressmen receive.
(Letters against war outnumber those for by about
one hundred to one; Senators and Representatives
just throw them in the garbage can).

Anti war direct actions, like those which occurred
years ago at Greenham Common, are also ignored
by the media. Several were arrested last week;
no paper would touch the story.

Our media are owned by groups that have interlocking
interests with huge arms companies, or in some
cases are directly owned by arms makers, like
General Electric and Westinghouse, which own
our two biggest commercial networks.

They systematically ignore any anti war story.

I know things are bad in Europe too, but not as
bad there yet. The Guardian can print stories
which we would never even see in the US, were
it not for the internet.

I hope to goodness the British and the French,
or the Russians or the Chinese have the fortitude
to veto a US resolution that mandates force.


Good luck to you fellows; we are running out of
options on this side of the Atlantic.

D.L.


Its time ...

07.11.2002 12:03

It is time to express your displeasure with your lying cheating triva obsessed media. They do not represent you or the facts.
It is time to challange them directly, from the lowest rung of gophers and tea makers to the highest paid scary-looking talking heads that mouth the words of their masters.
Seek them out and demand that they pay it all back.
Or else forget it ...

jackslucid
mail e-mail: jackslucid@hotmail.com