It's murder most foul.

Two things have happened recently to drive home the point that the Republican Party is in massive decline. The Democratic Caucus in the U.S. Senate reached sixty members and we saw three potential 2012 GOP presidential careers' unexpectedly implode. Where are they going from here?

The GOP might regain some momentum by winning the governor's races this November in either/both New Jersey and Virginia, but their prospects of picking up seats in the 2010 Senate elections look exceedingly bleak. The Democrats have very strong candidates running in Missouri, Ohio, Kentucky, and New Hampshire in what should all be open seats. The Republicans will have to stage upset victories in all four of those seats and find a way to win elections in Delaware, Colorado, or Connecticut to gain any ground. And most of the emerging races are on Republican ground. Texas could become a competitive seat once Kay Bailey Hutchison resigns to run for governor. It remains to be seen if Charlie Crist will prevail in Florida's closed GOP primary. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina is polling terribly and could become vulnerable if the Democrats find a strong challenger. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana could have difficulty weathering his diaper-wearing visits to the Cat House if Rep. Charlie Melanchon gets in the race.

The Dems have a little housecleaning to do. They will have contentious primaries in Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. But they should be favored to win all of those races. My best guess is that the Democrats will pick up a net of four to six seats, giving them 64-66 senate seats for the 112th Congress.

The House is another matter. The Dems will probably lose at least a couple of seats. There are only a handful of vulnerable Republicans left in the House, so unless they have a lot of retirements, the odds are that they'll win more contests than they lose. But, even here, it's highly doubtful that they Republicans can net even a dozen seats, and that will barely change the dynamics of Congress at all. In fact, the most vulnerable Democrats are already voting with the Republicans half the time anyway.

In short, there does not appear to be any near-term relief coming for the Grand Old Party. And, if they take another beating in 2010, their next obstacle will be the post-census redistricting which will be controlled in many states by the Democrats. A bunch of Republican seats will just get carved out of existence for the 2012 races, and a decade of deep minority status will set in.

Finally, if the party doesn't show any signs of life through 2010, then it's likely that no new leaders will emerge to challenge for the presidency. They have no one now, and there is nobody on the horizon. The last time this happened was when Eisenhower failed to recruit an ideological successor and his vice-president lost to Kennedy. The GOP tilted badly to the right and nominated Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona in 1964. Goldwater got crushed and the Democrats entered the period of their greatest dominance in the post-war period. We appear to be on a similar trajectory. Which makes this all the funnier.

The New York Times reports that Iran is obtaining false confessions of treason by utilizing torture enhanced interrogation techniques on reformers they have in custody.

The government has made it a practice to publicize confessions from political prisoners held without charge or legal representation, often subjected to pressure tactics like sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and torture, according to human rights groups and former political prisoners. Human rights groups estimate that hundreds of people have been detained.

They fear the confessions are part of a concerted effort to lay the groundwork for banning existing reformist political parties and preventing any organized reform movement in the future. “They hope with this scenario they can expunge them completely from the political process,” said Hadi Ghaemi, coordinator of International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based group. “They don’t want them to come back as part of a political party.”

Cheney and Rumsfeld were definitely a bit more subtle, but they didn't shy away from using these techniques on at least two American citizens. They also thought they could prevent the opposition party from coming back, although their approach was indirect. Wouldn't it be nice if we had any ground to stand on in protesting Iran's behavior?

Something to think about on this Independence Day.

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Use this as an open snark thread.

Josh Marshall sez:

...the idea that Gov. Palin just up and decided for no reason in particular to resign her office little more than half way through her term, with a hastily assembled press conference and a rambling and histrionic speech, is just too silly for serious consideration.

But, you know what? Who knows with these people? Dehr crazee. I mean, let's face it. Sarah Palin is not (and never was) going to be elected president of the United States. And even though the Republican Establishment is disoriented and at a low ebb, they're not suicidal enough to make her the nominee of their party. The real question for Sarah Palin was not how she should go about winning the nomination in 2012, but whether she should cash in on her fame and cult following while she's hot, or whether she should endure routine humiliation and mounting legal bills as an ineffectual, ethically-challenged, and increasingly unpopular governor of an Arctic state. That math seems easy enough that even Palin can solve for it.

And if she isn't going anywhere politically, and her star is starting to dim, the best thing to do is to get out now. As embarrassing as it is to quit her job with eighteen months to go, she could hardly have selected a better time to make her announcement. Other Republicans are in the spotlight for much bigger failures, most people are traveling and preparing for their Holiday weekend, and Michael Jackson will continue to dominate the news through at least Tuesday when his memorial service takes place in Los Angeles' Staples Center.

Sure, there may be some scandals bubbling beneath the surface that helped her make this decision, but that doesn't change that she's going out on top, in a position to make millions. Why risk that by staying in office and taking a daily beating?

Palin admitted it was about money in her speech.

Every one - all 15 of the ethics complaints have been dismissed. We've won! But it hasn't been cheap - the State has wasted THOUSANDS of hours of YOUR time and shelled out some two million of YOUR dollars to respond to "opposition research" - that's money NOT going to fund teachers or troopers - or safer roads. And this political absurdity, the "politics of personal destruction" ... Todd and I are looking at more than half a million dollars in legal bills in order to set the record straight. And what about the people who offer up these silly accusations? It doesn't cost them a dime so they're not going to stop draining public resources - spending other peoples' money in their game.

It's pretty insane - my staff and I spend most of our day dealing with THIS instead of progressing our state now. I know I promised no more "politics as usual," but THIS isn't what anyone had in mind for ALASKA.

She isn't going to go away. Far from it. She'll be cashing in the same way Mike Huckabee is cashing in, but with more success. Godspeed Sarah Palin. I'm winking right back atcha.

Sarah Palin is Obi-Wan Kenobi.

I can't decide which is worse, the endless news coverage of Michael Jackson's grandiose funeral plans, Father's Day's on the Appalachian Trail, or Sarah Palin's latest run-in with waterfowl.

Vote here, and tell me why in the comments.

Sources on my teevee inform me that Sarah Palin will announce shortly that she is resigning as governor of Alaska. Obviously, she will not seek reelection. And, I'm just guessing here, I believe this means there is no chance that she will compete for Lisa Murkowski's senate seat in 2010. It is not clear yet what her reasons are for stepping down. It could be that Todd Purdum's Vanity Fair hit piece just left too much of a mark. Or, it could be internal Alaskan politics, including perhaps ethical lapses reaching critical mass. I can't say for sure, but I'm guessing she's emotionally spent and needs some time out of the limelight to decompress and focus on her family and marriage.

In any case, I think her national ambitions are shot. It would be one thing to not seek reelection in order to focus on building a 2012 presidential campaign. Resigning, however, leaves a fatal taint.

Update [2009-7-3 16:1:13 by BooMan]: She's resigning on July 25th. It sounded almost as if she might still be harboring national ambitions. Her speech was totally incoherent and made more odd by the loud ducks in the background.

I never liked that the Republicans renamed National Airport as Ronald Reagan National Airport. I guess we got a measure of revenge by naming the Baltimore-Washington Airport after Thurgood Marshall. But, if it's true that Congress might strip Reagan's name off, they should go one further. Name it after Jimmy Carter.

It's sad that I have to check with Marcy before responding to anything the Washington Post publishes on national security. What's impressive is that it is rare that Marcy hasn't already analyzed the Post's work by the time I get to it. And today, per usual, she takes apart R. Jeffrey Smith's work with ease. Mixing up Dan Bartlett and Ari Fleischer is an amateur mistake.

This particular mistake isn't of much consequence, but it's telling that it occurred at all. But then, the Post's coverage of the Plame Affair was always second-rate, biased, and an institutional embarrassment when compared to Marcy's reporting. Jeffrey Smith packages non-news as new-news in today's article. The real story is that the Obama administration is arguing in court against disclosing Dick Cheney's conversations with prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, when no such understanding of non-disclosure was agreed to at the time of the interviews. If Dick Cheney wanted his conversations with Fitzgerald to remain secret he could have simply agreed to appear before a grand jury.

The public deserves to know the whole truth about the Plame Affair. That's the story the Post should be reporting.

The Senate is a weird place with strange rules. One of the key features of the Senate is that it requires unanimous consent from all 100 members to move from one piece of business to another. If even one senator objects to the Senate's agenda, the majority leader has to file for cloture, wait a couple of days, and then muster 60 votes to override the lack of unanimous consent. One result of this is that one obstructive senator can slow down the calender considerably just by denying their consent for anything that is introduced. Even a Senate with ninety-nine Democrats and one Republican could get tied in knots if the one Republican always refused to consent to the next order of business.

This is what has been happening all year. Harry Reid tries to schedule a vote on Obama's nominees and some Republican refuses to consent. What should have taken one day takes three or four days. Pretty soon, there aren't enough legislative days left on the calendar to address Obama's full agenda, and things begin to slip. This is a problem even if the Democrats have sixty ready votes to override a filibuster, because it chews up debate time anyway. But, now that the Democratic caucus will have sixty members, we will probably see less of this kind of rote obstruction. Or, maybe not. Maybe the Republicans will become even less inclined to offer unanimous consent since that will be the only arrow left in their quiver. Slowing down the Democrats could be their most effective way of resisting their agenda.

Even so, we should see at the very least an improvement in how often the Democrats prevail on these cloture votes on nominees. But major legislation on health care and climate change is another matter. On those issues, there are Democrats that don't want to see Obama's agenda pass into law. And they might very well join the Republicans in filibustering Harry Reid's calendar.

“We have 60 votes on paper,” Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, said Wednesday in an interview. “But we cannot bulldoze anybody; it doesn’t work that way. My caucus doesn’t allow it. And we have a very diverse group of senators philosophically. I am not this morning suddenly flexing my muscles.”

I agree with Harry Reid, but I have a piece of advice. He should get very tough with his caucus on the issue of allowing for an up-or-down-vote on both the health care bill and the cap-and-trade energy bill. These are the two top priorities of this Congress, and they should not be filibustered by Democrats. Harry Reid should tell the caucus that voting against cloture on those two bills will result in a loss of seniority, including committee and subcommittee chairs. Members can vote anyway they want on final passage of these two bills, but they cannot filibuster them and remain Democrats in good standing.

If he does that, he will guarantee the passage of Obama's health and energy agendas and earn the praise of all Democrats. If he doesn't, he'll be held up as a punk who must be run out of Washington on a rail.

Why haven't we invaded Honduras yet? No oil?

Oh, this is rich (emphasis mine):

Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran, according to declassified accounts of the interviews released yesterday. The former Iraqi president also denounced Osama bin Laden as "a zealot" and said he had no dealings with al-Qaeda.

Hussein, in fact, said he felt so vulnerable to the perceived threat from "fanatic" leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a "security agreement with the United States to protect [Iraq] from threats in the region."

Former president George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq six years ago on the grounds that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to international security. Administration officials at the time also strongly suggested Iraq had significant links to al-Qaeda, which carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

I'm not for a moment suggesting that we should have entered into some security pact with Saddam Hussein, but it would have been a hell of a lot cheaper to do that than invade his country and occupy it for ten years. I'm just saying.

The main point is that Saddam was no threat to the United States and the threat derived from our containment policy was manageable in other ways than invading under false pretenses.

I generally admire Helen Thomas and I grant her the right to be cantankerous. But she's acting like a whiny-ass-titty-baby with her carrying on about Nico Pitney. Let me remind her of something. The White House didn't call Pitney the night before the press conference and tell him to be prepared to ask a question about Iran the next day. They called him and asked him to ask a question on the behalf of Iranians. They did this because they were reading Nico's streaming reporting of the goings on in Iran and they knew he had contacts on the ground in Tehran. They didn't tell him what kind of question to ask or even tell him to ask his own question. They wanted a question from the Iranian reformers on the ground in Tehran who were being shot at and beaten with truncheons.

If Helen Thomas wants to ask a question, that's fine. But did she have contacts on the ground in Tehran? Was she doing a stellar job of reporting on that conflict?

As much as I admire her, she needs to take a step back and get with the times.