Steven Clemons has posted some
post-election advice for Dems. He points out that, if the Dems take the House they need to be prepared for handling post-election defections:
If the House becomes the primary driver of investigations into the abuses, corruption, and duplicity that took this nation into a war that has undermined American status and security in the world, then the spotlight on the many scandals to roll forward will actually bring over Republicans.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid need to make sure that they have space in their plans for Republican defections away from the White House -- and the Dems need to force Republicans to vote over and over again on legislation and resolutions and investigation authorizations related to the Iraq War and America's currently self-defeating foreign policy.
Then, more importantly, he has advice regarding Cheney and his minions:
But Bush will not go quietly -- and more importantly -- the allies for a better direction in foreign policy who actually do exist in hidden corners of the Bush administration are dominated by Cheney's followers throughout the national security bureaucracy.
I think that the Baker-Hamilton report, which will be issued in January 2007, will call for a new, expansive commitment to regional deal-making to solve many of the unresolved problems in the Middle East and to try and create a new equilibrium of interests in the region.
I think George Bush will find the report compelling -- and I think he will order his team to try and "operationalize" as much of the Baker-Hamilton report as possible.
But it won't happen. It will be undermined in the weeds, in the nuts and bolts details, consensus will be derailed, themes reversed after Cheney convinces Bush that parts of the report are politically naive and dangerous to American and Israeli interests. I think it will be slowly torn apart by a thousand cuts in the policy development and implementation process in the Executive Branch.
Cheney doesn't need to tell his followers -- embedded in every significant part of the nation's national security bureaucracy -- what to do. As Chalmers Johnson is fond of saying, "One doesn't need to tell geisha what to do, they know what to do." So do Cheney's people.
He later adds,
Cheney's people, if not neutralized, will derail any new opportunities or directions.
They need to be exposed as part of the broad Cheney network and pushed to the side. That is the only way to let some other policy possibilities to take root in the next two years of the Bush administration.
Dems and moderate Republicans can take credit as needed for these new changes in policy -- but without neutralizing Cheney down to the roots of his power -- policy and political anarchy lie ahead for the country.
Could this be a valid point?