OH Sen: Will Hackett Run against DeWine?

Sources close to former members of the campaign team for Paul Hackett say the Democratic Iraqi war vet who narrowly lost an Ohio Congressional seat in a Republican district earlier this month may run for the Senate seat currently held by Republican Mike DeWine.

As a result of the nail-biter special election against Jean Schmidt, an evil sack of Republican bones, Hackett now has a much higher national profile than DeWine. Plus, because of the myriad, on-going GOP scandals, the wind is finally at the back of the Democrats in Ohio, as Kos aptly summarizes:

DeWine is the fourth most unpopular senator in the country, clocking in at an anemic 42 percent approval rating. Bush is at 37 percent. The Ohio Republican Party is mired in a high-profile sleaze scandal. Their Republican governor just got convicted. It’s a meltdown of Biblical proportions.

And Hackett almost won the state’s most Republican district. He runs, he’s the next Senator from the great state of Ohio. And how ironic that would be — the GOP will wish he had won that OH-02 seat.

Hackett also proved he can win in the money primary. He collected $442,248 from 8,716 individual contributors in the month of July.

NY Sen: Pirro Gets Double Whammy

Associated Press:

Jeanine Pirro’s fledgling campaign for the Republican nomination to take on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton next year was hit from two sides Thursday as she lost out on a county chairman’s backing and one of her rivals trotted out a TV ad mocking her GOP credentials.

“She’s not running to beat Hillary Clinton, she [sic] running to be Hillary Clinton,” said the 30-second television spot appearing on former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer’s Web site — http://www.joinspencer.com — on Thursday.

Spencer’s ad, which strategist John McLaughlin said would begin airing next week on cable channels across the state, notes that Pirro and Clinton both support abortion and gay rights, and gun-control legislation.

Spencer and Manhattan lawyer [and Nixon son-in-law] Edward Cox, who is also seeking the GOP Senate nomination, have said that Pirro, Westchester County’s high-profile district attorney, is too liberal to win the backing of the state Conservative Party. No GOP candidate for statewide office in New York has won without Conservative Party backing since 1974.

The Future of Iraq if We ‘Stay the Course’

“The harsh reality is that if left to run its own course, a civil war in Iraq would result in a hard-line, radical Islamic mini-state in southern Iraq, with extremely close ties with Iran; a Kurdish state in the North engaged in its own internal civil war between rival factions; and Baghdad reduced to a modern-day Beirut, divided into fortified Shi’a and Sunni communities at war with one another. It would all be “governed” by a weak central authority lacking the means to effect any meaningful change.

“Worst of all, from the American perspective, is that the Sunni population of Iraq, disenfranchised and impoverished, would be compelled to embrace radical Islam, providing a perfect recruiting and training ground for the forces of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

“This is the future of Iraq should the Bush administration continue to “stay the course,” as the President recently promised to do. There is no elegant solution to offer up as an alternative. The fact is, the number-one threat faced by the United States from Iraq today is the creation of a lawless, non-state entity among the Iraqi Sunni that serves to feed a regional and global anti-American Jihad.”

Scott Ritter, whose dire predictions in 2003 for the outcome of the U.S. invasion of Iraq have proven to be preternaturally correct

Gen. Clark Makes the Case for Finishing the Mission in Iraq

Recently, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) summed up President Bush’s lack of strategy for success in Iraq by saying that “staying the course is not a policy.” Now, in an editorial for the Washington Post, retired Gen. Wesley Clark argues against pulling out of Iraq while there is still a chance for success – and offers a brief outline of steps the Bushes could (but won’t) take to turn the crisis there around.

In particular, Gen. Clark excoriates the Bush team’s hamfisted excuse for diplomacy in the Middle East and strongly urges them to bring the stakeholders to the table:

Adding a diplomatic track to the strategy is a must. The US should form a standing conference of Iraq’s neighbors, complete with committees dealing with all the regional economic and political issues, including trade, travel, cross-border infrastructure projects, and, of course, cutting off the infiltration of jihadists. Iraq’s neighbors should be asked to assist. This will also provide a better opportunity for meaningful back-door discussions of Iran’s nuclear program, Syria’s interests in Lebanon, and Turkish interaction with the Kurds in Iraq. The US should tone down its raw rhetoric for US-style democracy as an answer to all problems and instead listen more carefully to the many voices within the region. A public US declaration forswearing permanent bases in Iraq would also be helpful in engaging both regional and Iraqi support at this point.

Wes is blogging at TPM Cafe next week.

Ohio Groups on Left and Right Call for Disgraced GOP Governor to Resign

Dayton (OH) Daily News:

Two citizen advocacy groups — one conservative and the other liberal — on Thursday launched a joint Internet, e-mail and phone campaign to try to force Gov. Bob Taft to resign in the wake of his conviction last week on four misdemeanor ethics law violations.

The campaign by the Ohio Roundtable, the conservative group, and Ohio Citizen Action, its liberal partner, began as Taft disclosed that he had omitted eight gifts entries from the financial disclosure statements he is required to file with the Ohio Ethics Commission each year.

Cindy Sheehan To Change Focus from Bush to DeLay and Congress

President Bush has been too busy reading and raising money on his vacation to meet with “Peace Mom” Cindy Sheehan, so now the Iraq war protester says she will try to influence members of Congress, starting with the most powerful – and most odious – man in the House, Majority Leader Tom Delay.

“I think our first stop might be Tom DeLay’s office,” [Sheehan] said, surrounded by supporters. “I just wanted to let him know so he’ll be in his office when we get there…”

A spokeswoman for DeLay said his schedule was already set and did not plan to change it to meet with Sheehan.

The DeLay’s spokeswoman then earned her salary by using the Karl Rove-approved spin Republicans are instructed to use when discussing Cindy Sheehan:

“Mr. DeLay disagrees with those who believe we should give the terrorists the timeline they want and simply cut and run from the war in Iraq,” said DeLay spokeswoman Shannon Flaherty.