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The Plot Thickens
“We should be able to predict, within a month or two, when we can draw down troops”
—Christopher Shays
The Lieberman-Lamont Primary result is starting to be felt in other Connecticut races. Shays, the 4th District Republican Congressman, has previously opposed a timeline for withdraw. Facing a tough re-election race against Diane Farrell, it seems that he’s trying to hedge his bets.
Oddly enough, I’m not in favor of a timeline. A software release date is usually a balance between a schedule target and a feature target. I’ve never known anyone to actually hit both. If you are lucky, then you sacrifice some features to hit your date. If you’re unlucky, then you slip your date to include the critical feature subset in the release.
I think that a timetable for withdrawal doesn’t make sense without a set of goals to be satisfied prior to each stage of the withdrawal. In software, we always have the option of a follow-up release. But we don’t have that luxury in Iraq.
Joe, It's Time to Go
“He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That puts it not unto the touch
To win or lose it all”
—James Graham – Marquis of Montrose
I’m a Connecticut centrist. You should have been my candidate. But you lost my vote when you proclaimed your willingness to run as an independent if you lost the primary.
Now you have lost the primary. It’s time to go back on your ill-conceived plan to run as an independent. No one likes to leave the big stage. But it’s time for you to go.
Hearts and Minds
I’ve been a member of the Democratic Party for less than a year, but it seems to me our big failure in 2004 was our candidate. With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, it’s plain that John Kerry’s defining characteristic was that he wasn’t George Bush.
Anybody But Bush may have been enough reason for a Democrat to vote Kerry. But with the United States in troubled times, swing voters needed more. And while Kerry was a solid campaigner for the minds of voters, he failed to reach their hearts.
My hope looking forward is that the Democrats cultivate leaders who can capture both hearts and minds. Playing to the core constituency might have been a winning tactic when the Democrats out numbered the Republicans. That time is past.
Republicans for Kerry – Controlling Spending
Please excuse the temporary diversion into politiblogdom. But to back up my previous post on fiscal irresponsibility, here’s an excerpt from Fortune Magazine (the author, Doug Bandow, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute):
But the biggest impetus for higher spending is partisan uniformity, not partisan identity. Give either party complete control of government, and the Treasury vaults are quickly emptied. Neither Congress nor the President wants to tell the other no. Both are desperate to prove they can “govern”—which means creating new programs and spending more money. But share power between parties, and out of principle or malice they check each other.
Republicans for Kerry
With the White House looking fiscally irresponsible, I’m crossing the aisle. I attended my first Kerry MeetUp last night at the Westport Library. There was a turnout of 40-50 people. As in any volunteer gathering, we were all at different stages. And unfortunately, that means a lot of milling about takes place before any organization starts to form. Hopefully we got that out of our system last night.
Things are complicated because it’s inconceivable for Kerry to lose Connecticut. I would think that the best thing we can do for Kerry is export help to other states. With Fairfield County being one of the richest counties in the US, that means fundraising. But while fundraising is incredibly important, I think that it’s hard to feel meaningfully connected while doing it.
Watching the Democrats
As a registered Republican, I usually don’t follow the Democratic primaries very closely. But this campaign has been different. Between the war in Iraq, the economic policies of Bush, and the energy of Dean; things are starting to pull me into the fray.
I consider myself a fiscally conservative Democrat – I think government needs to act to make lives better, but I don’t want to just throw money at the problem. I stereotype Republicans as thinking the free market is the solution and Democrats as thinking government spending is the solution. And since I’ve always felt that it was easier to get a Republican to do the right thing than to get a Democrat to stop spending, I found myself a registered Republican.
But I’m starting to view things differently. The Democratic Presidential candidates are starting to sound more fiscally responsible than President Bush. And having both the legislative and executive branches of government in Republican control isn’t as appealing as I thought it would be. This may be the year when I vote for a Democrat for President.