Important Political News

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McCain calls for "common sense conservatism"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), taking the first step toward a 2008 White House bid, said on Thursday a return to principles of "common sense conservatism" could lead Republicans back to power after last week's election drubbing.

"We lost our principles and our majority. And there is no way to recover our majority without recovering our principles first," McCain told the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, in the first of two speeches kicking off his expected presidential campaign.

McCain, an early favorite in what promises to be a crowded Republican presidential field, filed papers with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday forming an exploratory committee that allows him to raise money and prepare for a White House campaign.

In speeches to the Federalist Society and the conservative political action group GOPAC, McCain laid out a framework for a presidential bid based on support for limited government and the reform of what he described as the party's big spending ways.

He said last week's Republican loss of power in Congress was punishment from voters angered the party had strayed too far from the conservative principles of leaders like former President Ronald Reagan.

"We increased the size of government in the false hope that we could bribe the public into keeping us in office," McCain said, adding Americans "still prefer common sense conservatism to the alternative."

He said common sense conservatives valued a strong defense but also strong alliances, limited government, individual rights, low taxes, free trade and open markets. McCain said Republicans should lead the fight against special interests.

"Common sense conservatives believe that the government that governs least governs best," McCain said, urging Republicans to "show Americans there are things that matter more to us than our incumbency."

McCain, who lost a bitter nomination battle to President George W. Bush in 2000 after lashing out at some religious conservative leaders, has worked hard since then to mend fences with the party establishment and build support among conservatives.

The one-time maverick campaigned for Bush in 2004, appeared at the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University earlier this year and has been one of the biggest supporters of the Iraq war in Congress.

McCain, 70, a decorated Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war, said the war could be won with a national commitment to victory and more combat troops.

"Without additional combat forces we will not win this war," McCain said. "The situation in Iraq is dire, but I believe victory is still attainable."

Public opinion polls show McCain and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who already has formed an exploratory committee, are early leaders in a crowded field of potential Republican candidates.

Other possible contenders include Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, New York Gov. George Pataki, former Bush cabinet member Tommy Thompson and Sens. Bill Frist of Tennessee and Sam Brownback of Kansas. Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter (news, bio, voting record) of California entered the race last month.

McCain laced his speech to GOPAC with references to former Republican Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Reagan and their battles to rein in special interests.

He said Reagan led the party back from a big election loss in 1976 through principled leadership.

"We must spend the next two years reacquainting the public and ourselves with the reason we came to office in the first place -- to serve a cause greater than our self-interest," he said.

McCain says he plans to confer with his family over the Christmas holidays before making a final decision on a presidential bid, although he is widely expected to run.

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Republican concedes close Ga. House race

SAVANNAH, Ga. - Republican Max Burns conceded defeat Thursday to U.S. Rep. John Barrow, accepting his 864-vote loss without requesting a recount.


Burns ended his rematch race with Barrow, and one of the nation's closest House races, with a phone call to congratulate the Democratic incumbent. Burns, a former congressman, was ousted by Barrow in 2004.

Burns' concession came a day after the Georgia secretary of state's office released its official results from the Nov. 7 election. The tally showed Barrow won a second term in eastern Georgia's 12th District by less than 1 percent of the 142,438 votes cast.

Because the margin was so close, Burns could have requested a recount under Georgia law.

"We did not feel a recount would substantially alter the results," Burns said in conference call with reporters. "We felt it was not in the best interest of the state to go through the time and expense."

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Gov. Vilsack promotes renewable energy

BOULDER, Colo. - Renewable energy has the potential to unite the country, reinvent the economy and make the country more secure, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, a 2008 presidential candidate, said Thursday.


After a speech at the University of Colorado School of Law, Vilsack said the issue will be one of the pillars of his campaign platform. He pointed to his state's leading the country in corn-based ethanol and soy-based biodiesel production.

"I think I'm the one person in this race who's doing something about it," he said. "There are a lot of people talking about it, but we've actually done something to promote renewable fuel."

The two-term governor is the first Democrat to file for the presidency, although a number of better-known candidates are presumed to be running. Vilsack planned a multistate tour beginning Nov. 30 to formally announce his bid.

He's already opened a campaign office in Des Moines, Iowa, and has a Web site and online profiles on MySpace, Facebook and YouTube.

In his speech, Vilsack called for a greater commitment to conservation, enhancing commitments to renewable energy and making it easier for consumers to buy renewable energy.

He said that would allow the U.S. to be energy-secure, to retain its moral leadership in the world and to generate a healthier economy with better-paid, high-skill jobs.

He acknowledged the auto industry's concern about raising fuel efficiency standards and said his goal would be to ask the automakers what needs to be done to help them meet tougher standards.

"There are times when national interests are more important than parochial interests," he said.

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Republican Leadership Challengers Press Party to Solidify Base

Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- House Republicans vote today in leadership elections that offer them a choice between staying with their current leaders or replacing them with challengers who say the party must reconnect with its base.



Representatives Mike Pence and John Shadegg, the challengers for the top two leadership posts, say Republicans must return to their traditional principles to recover from the loss of at least 29 seats in the Nov. 7 elections.

Pence of Indiana, who's challenging John Boehner of Ohio for minority leader, has criticized the party for failing to curb spending. Shadegg of Arizona, seeking to take over as the party's chief vote-counter, or whip, from Missouri's Roy Blunt, says the leaders ignored corruption and family issues.

The Republican dilemma is that most of the seats the party lost are in the Northeast, home to its most moderate members. To regain them, the party must reach out to independent voters.

``There is a lot of pressure from the rank and file for a leadership that is going to appeal to the base of the party and that is going to be able to articulate clear principles,'' said Representative Phil English of Pennsylvania. Yet the leaders must also ``offer a reform agenda that reaches beyond the Republican base, so there's going to be tension.''

Almost 40 percent of the approximately 200 Republicans in the next House will come from the South, the most conservative region, compared with 35 percent now. There's only one Republican member left in New England, Connecticut's Chris Shays.

Bush Presidency

Republicans on Nov. 7 lost two of their three seats in Connecticut and both in New Hampshire; they surrendered four of their 12 Pennsylvania seats and three of nine in New York.

``We're never going to be the majority party unless we get more seats in the Northeast,'' said Representative Peter King (news, bio, voting record), a New York Republican. ``So it's a combination of holding the base but also reaching out to show that we're a broad party.''

Allan Lichtman, a professor of political history at American University, said the most logical path for Republicans is to split their House leadership between the two viewpoints.

``It probably wouldn't make much sense to simply ratify the old leadership that represents a Congress with approval ratings lower than Death Valley,'' Lichtman said. ``On the other hand, you probably wouldn't want to throw out all of the old leaders.''

Pressure From Base

Boehner, who turns 57 today, was elected to the House in 1990 and served as Republican conference chairman, the No. 4 party job, from 1995 to 1999. He worked with Democrats to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, which increased the federal role in education, and legislation overhauling the U.S. pension system.

``We must rebuild the Republican coalition by focusing on reform ideas,'' Boehner wrote in an article this week in The Hill newspaper. Those ideas `` will not only win broad-based support among House members, but among the American people,'' he wrote.

Blunt, 56, won his seat in 1996, and after a single term was appointed chief deputy whip to then-Representative Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican who resigned his seat earlier this year after he was indicted for money laundering. Blunt became whip when DeLay was elected majority leader.

Conservative groups are pressuring members to dump both men and go with Pence, 47, and Shadegg, 57. They view the two challengers as more in line with the party base -- even though Boehner voted 100 percent of the time in line with the Alexandria, Virginia-based American Conservative Union in 2003 and Blunt voted above 90 percent.

Paul Weyrich, president of the Washington-based Free Congress Foundation, and Gary Bauer, head of American Values, an Arlington, Virginia-based group that advocates traditional marriage, are pulling for Pence. So are the American Conservative Union and the anti-tax Club for Growth, based in Washington.

`Moral Values'

Pence, who will begin his fourth term in January, said the way to reclaim the majority is by offering ``a unified message'' of ``limited government, strong defense and traditional moral values.''

``Allowing for the diversity in our party and in our conference is important, but I think we also ought to celebrate the views of the overwhelming majority of Republican voters,'' he said in an interview.

Shadegg, heading into his seventh term, says Republican leaders sacrificed their ideals. ``We ceded our reform-minded principles in exchange for a seemingly tighter grip on power,'' he said in a letter declaring his candidacy on Nov. 8.

Moderates `Wiped Out'

If Pence wins, ``that will only confirm the obvious -- the moderates got wiped out last Tuesday night,'' said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Washington-based Stanford Washington Research.

The elections swept away as many as nine House moderates, including Jim Leach of Iowa, one of six Republicans to vote against invading Iraq; Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, who opposed her party's effort to ban same-sex marriage; and Curt Weldon, who voted against the North American Free Trade Agreement and granting the president broader latitude to pursue trade deals.

``We certainly have to convince the American people that we are the party of ethics; we are the party of change; we are the party of balanced budgets,'' said Representative Joe Barton (news, bio, voting record), a Texas Republican who backs Boehner. ``It was stunning to see that two-thirds of independents thought that the Democrats would be better at controlling spending.''

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Rape law reform roils Pakistan's Islamists

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - Putting an end to a s***mish but not to the longer battle, Pakistan's lower house of parliament voted on Wednesday to amend the Hudood Ordinances, the country's religious-based laws that govern rape and vice.

Before, women who reported rape were compelled to produce four male witnesses to the crime or face charges that they had committed adultery. If the law passes the upper house, it will replace that burden of proof, deemed both virtually impossible and misogynistic, with standard evidentiary procedures.

Wednesday's vote was a chance for lawmakers to show that secular law trumps religious edict in Pakistan. But this small victory for secularism comes only a day after provincial legislators in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), a stronghold of conservatism, passed a bill establishing an Islamic accountability bureau - a kind of vice and virtue squad with analogies to the Taliban.

The bills passed this week promise to reheat the existential debate about what Pakistan stands for and how it projects itself to the world: whether it is driven by "enlightened moderation" or the tenets of religious conservatism.

Even the national assembly's progressive sex crimes bill, officially known as the Women's Protection Bill, came with caveats. Pakistan's minority religious parties managed to squeeze in an amendment making sex between unmarried persons a criminal offense.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's treatment of the amendments to the Hudood Ordinances exposes his waning commitment to secular reform at a time when religious parties are becoming one of his pillars of support, analysts say.

"This is a major compromise on the part of the government," says Farzani Bari, director of the Women's Study Center at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad. "They want to sleep with the strange bedfellows of the mullahs. It is women who will suffer."

Rape is already a common tool of revenge and settling tribal scores in Pakistan. The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated in 2002 that a woman is raped every two hours and gang-raped every eight hours.

The Hudood Ordinances were adopted in 1979, when a clutch of Islamic clerics argued that such austere laws stem from interpretations of divine precepts in the Koran that adjudicate vice and virtue-related offenses, including rape and adultery. Pakistan's then religious-minded dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, bolstered support for the laws.

Activists and Islamic scholars have argued ever since that the Koran contains no such dictates. Their movement to repeal Hudood has driven forward in fits and spurts over the years, peaking this summer after a ground-breaking television series brought the issue before the wider public.

The series helped push the debate into parliament this summer, but once there, politics blunted its force, analysts say. Each time the bill came up for debate, a coalition of religious parties called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Ama (MMA) or United Action Front, cried foul and threatened to resign en masse from parliament. Before the new law, extramarital sex was brought before Islamic law but rarely prosecuted. By placing extra- marital sex under the penal code on Wednesday, the government kowtowed to their demands once again, analysts say.

That's because the Musharraf regime, finding itself politically isolated, looks increasingly to the MMA for support, observers say. And the MMA, which faces the same predicament, is only too happy to accept.

It's a curious reversal. There was a time when the MMA and Mr. Musharraf's ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League, defined themselves as opponents. Indeed, the MMA came to power in 2002 on pledges that it would resist Musharraf's Western-driven calls for liberal moderation. Musharraf's support base has waned the longer he has run the country as a military leader, breaking promises to step down in place of democratic government.

Activists certainly welcome the removal of the four witness rule, but they shudder at what it symbolizes: Sworn enemies are more interested in political survival than human rights.

Not that Wednesday's results please the MMA - they stormed out of the National Assembly and refused to vote.

"After this bill, we feel that government has withdrawn its duty [to create an Islamic atmosphere]," says Fareed Ahmed Paracha, a member of the National Assembly from the MMA. "They are going to create a free-sex society."

The fact the MMA succeeded in stalling the bill for so long is registering as a subtle victory for religious forces. That has many worried because a not so subtle victory came just the day before, when the MMA pushed through a highly controversial bill at the provincial level in the NWFP.

Known as the Hasba bill, it calls for a kind of accountability bureau, headed by a religious cleric, to ensure that - in terms many find troublingly vague - Islamic virtues and doctrines are adhered to in public in the NWFP.

Taken together, the criminalization of extra-marital sex and the Hasba bill highlight why it is troubling for the ruling government to back the MMA, analysts say.

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John Boehner to Be Republican Leader in Next Congress

Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- House Republicans elected Representative John Boehner (news, bio, voting record) of Ohio to be their minority leader in the new Congress.


Boehner won election 168-27 over Representative Mike Pence (news, bio, voting record) of Indiana, chairman of the 107-member caucus of self-described conservatives called the Republican Study Committee. Representative Joe Barton (news, bio, voting record) of Texas, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, got one vote even though he withdrew from the race Nov. 15, saying he was supporting Boehner.

Boehner, who turned 57 today, has been the House majority leader in the current Republican-controlled Congress since February, replacing Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, who resigned the post.

Boehner's talent at building support among coalitions in the party and his incumbency as the House's No. 2 Republican behind Speaker Dennis Hastert helped him win, said Stephen Wayne, a government professor at Georgetown University in Washington.

``He's a skillful political operator,'' he said. ``He had a lead and played it well.''

As minority leader, Boehner is more articulate and charismatic than Hastert, Wayne said.

``He's going to be a pretty good spokesman for Republicans,'' he said.

Boehner sought the minority leader job by telling lawmakers that he is best-equipped to keep the party focused on its traditional issues, including cutting spending and taxes.

Elected 1990

He was once the No. 4 House Republican leader and was voted out in 1998 after Republicans suffered losses at the polls. He won a three-way race for majority leader earlier this year against Representatives Roy Blunt of Missouri and John Shadegg of Arizona. Boehner has served as chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee.

First elected to Congress in 1990, Boehner gained prominence as a member of the ``Gang of Seven'' freshmen Republicans who pushed to expose abuses of the House bank and post office. The scandals helped push Democrats from power in 1994, and he reminded his colleagues of that role in the days leading up to the leadership elections.

Boehner is one of the House's most prolific donors to fellow lawmakers. In the two years leading up to last week's elections, he raised almost $2 million for his political action committee and $3 million more for his own campaign war chest. Most of the money was used to help elect Republican House candidates.

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Boehner, Blunt re-elected as House leaders

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in the House of Representatives re-elected two top leaders on Friday, 10 days after angry American voters turned over control of the legislative body to Democrats.


Despite internal complaints that the Republican Party had veered off its conservative course and lost some of its longtime supporters in the November 7 elections, House Republicans stuck with John Boehner of Ohio to head their group in the House and Roy Blunt of Missouri remaining his deputy as party whip.

But leaving the stage was Rep. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, who has been speaker of the House since 1998. Hastert, who decided not to seek a Republican leadership spot in the new Congress that convenes in January with Democrats in control, was a loyal supporter of President George W. Bush's agenda.

Some Republicans complained Hastert was too loyal to the Republican president, whose approval ratings tumbled this year largely because of popular discontent with the Iraq war.

Standing before reporters after closed-door voting, Boehner said he had promised colleagues "to do everything I could to bring our team together and to work hard so that we can earn our way back into the majority."

Boehner and Blunt survived challenges by Mike Pence of Indiana and John Shadegg of Arizona, who had charged the party had lost its way in a year that saw it battered by the Iraq war, continued federal deficits and congressional scandals.

Boehner and Blunt said the party needs to focus on its core principles of limited government and personal responsibility.

Boehner was first elected Republican leader 10 months ago to replace Tom DeLay of Texas, who stepped down after being indicted on campaign finance charges.

Boehner was re-elected in a secret ballot, 168-27. Blunt won in a 147-57 vote.

Of five others elected Republican leaders, nearly all were new faces to the inner circle, including Tom Cole of Oklahoma replacing Tom Reynolds of New York as head of the committee that will work to elect more House Republicans in 2008.

Friday's contests were held a day after House Democrats defied speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi and elected Steny Hoyer, a Maryland moderate, their majority leader over Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania, a leading opponent of the Iraq war. Pelosi backed Murtha but Hoyer won overwhelmingly, 149-86.

Said Blunt: "149 Democrats demonstrated yesterday that they are willing to buck Nancy Pelosi. We'll work each day to give those Democrats a viable alternative to her liberal, San Francisco agenda."

Hastert rejected calls to step down as speaker in October amid complaints he had failed to adequately respond to warnings about Mark Foley, a Republican congressman from Florida who resigned after it was disclosed he sent sexually explicit e-mails to former interns.

Hastert has denied any knowledge of the messages until they were disclosed by ABC News. A House ethics panel has been investigating who knew what about the matter, when they knew it and what they did about it.

The House leadership elections were a disappointment to some of the most conservative Republicans.

"People expected a little more of a wake-up call," said Rep. Jeff Flake (news, bio, voting record) of Arizona, adding he thought new leaders were required to get the party back on track.

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Ohio House race outcome further delayed

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A conflict over Ohio's new voter identification rule has further delayed the outcome of a closely watched congressional race, now expected to be resolved no earlier than Nov. 27.


The extra time is needed to comply with an agreement over provisional ballot counting that was reached Tuesday between Attorney General Jim Petro and organizations that challenged the voter ID law, said Franklin County Elections Director Matthew Damschroder.

The organizations had argued that the county elections boards were inconsistently applying the law and disenfranchising voters.

In the still undecided House race, incumbent U.S. Rep. Deborah Pryce (news, bio, voting record), a member of the House Republican leadership, led Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy by about 3,500 votes in the tally of ballots counted on Election Day last week. About 19,500 absentee and provisional ballots remained uncounted.

Ballot counting in the race, which was to start Saturday, had already been delayed to Sunday, in deference to the Ohio State-Michigan football game Saturday.

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Hoffa says organized labor will rebuild

WASHINGTON - James P. Hoffa, headed to another 5-year term as general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said Friday the congressional elections will aid the rebuilding of organized labor.


Hoffa, who first became Teamsters president in 1998 and was elected to a full term in 2001, said the midterm elections that put Democrats in charge of the House and Senate should help labor achieve its goals.

"Now that we have the House and the Senate, that will have major effects on the way this country is run," said Hoffa, who was a labor lawyer in Detroit before moving up the ranks to head the 1.4-million-member transportation union.

Teamsters campaigned for Democratic candidates, committing millions or dollars and knocking on thousands of doors. along with other unions in the Change to Win federation.

The Teamsters want Congress to pass a law raising the minimum wage, block trade agreements that don't address labor concerns, seek better health care coverage for millions of uninsured people and pass legislation that would make it easier to form a union if a majority of workers want one, Hoffa said.

But he acknowledged that President Bush might veto pro-labor legislation passed by Congress.

"The Employee Free Choice Act certainly would help unions organize," said the 65-year-old Hoffa. "We have been hamstrung by the Bush NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) which tries to thwart the organizing of unions. Right-wing judges have done everything they can to thwart the American labor movement."

Hoffa said that congressional passage of such legislation would put the president on the spot.

"We're certainly going to embarrass him," Hoffa said. "Can you imagine him vetoing a minimum wage bill? He will look so bad if he does that."

More importantly, Hoffa said, Democrats will have the power to block right-wing nominees for judgeships and other government posts.

With about two-thirds of the vote totaled, Hoffa held almost a 2-1 lead over his opponent, Oregon Teamsters official Tom Leedham. Calls to Leedham's headquarters were not returned Friday.

Hoffa's opponent had claimed the incumbent was not strong enough to protect worker benefits and rebuild the flagging labor movement.

When the AFL-CIO merged in the 1950s, one of every three private-sector workers belonged to a labor union. Now, only about 8 percent of private-sector workers are unionized.

The Teamsters and a half-dozen other unions broke free of the AFL-CIO starting in the summer of 2005 and formed the Change to Win federation. The breakaway unions cited the need to focus more of their money and time on organizing.

Hoffa pointed to several Teamster organizing efforts recently. Among those are organizing 15,000 workers at UPS Freight, 5,000 bus drivers and as many as 100,000 port truck drivers.

And he said the Teamsters work together with the other unions in the Change to Win federation.

"We help each other in each battle," Hoffa said. "That wasn't there during the AFL-CIO days."

He said that going to the AFL-CIO "was like going to the United Nations. You had a diversity of dozens and dozens of unions with no common goal."

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