This paragraph from a Washington Post article on the GOPs election victories should give any right-thinking person the screaming heebies...
>
> Suddenly, items that had been bottled up in the
> Democratic Senate have new life. President
> Bush has new hopes for action on his
> conservative slate of judges, his energy plan
> calling for drilling in Alaska's wildlife refuge,
> and the policies he favors on topics such as
> homeland security, terrorism insurance and
> prescription drug coverage. With Democrats
> losing their ability to set the Senate schedule
> and launch probes of the administration,
> chances improve for Bush's hopes to extend
> last year's tax cuts, curtail jury awards, cut
> business regulations and overhaul Medicare.
>
These elections in the US (with the exception of the gubernatorial races - which i accept are primarily about local issues) are basically an endorsement of Dubya's policies. If the US public did not like the way this man was pushing their nation, they could have returned a Democratic majority in both houses as - at the very least - a symbol of their discontent.
As it is, the results of the elections are a clear indication that Dubya's agenda is popular enough to warrant accelerating.
Critics would argue that the low turn-out contradicts that assessment. Usually i'd agree... but in this case i'm not so sure. After the farce of Florida 2000 - when a couple of spoilt ballots in one state put Dubya's oily war machine into the White House despite polling half a million fewer votes nationwide - it was clear that Bush Jr.'s mandate rested on a knife-edge. The US media could not have hyped these elections much more than they did (albeit with a general pro-Dubya slant... according to someone i know who works in a US media conglomerate). The majority of Americans were aware that it'd only take a handful of "won't voters" to change their minds and vote Democrat in order to throw a spanner in the works for Bush.
That said, i've abstained from almost every election i've been eligible to vote in because i felt none of the candidates adequately represented my views. A person in Oregon who genuinely opposes Dubya has little incentive for voting in a Democrat Senator given the shocking acquiesence of the Democratic Party during the past 2 years. So it's hard to really criticise them...
All the same; re-read that Washington Post paragraph... the segment of the US public who expressed an opinion... expressed that one.
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