"Values Voters" Have Most At Stake

Allegedly --not sure I believe it-- it's the Republican base --the values voters-- who are most fed up with Bush and Congress and least likely to show up at the polls. Bill Kristol gets to the heart of the matter in this Weekly Standard piece about what's at stake in the election.

A Republican Senate would confirm the next Roberts or Alito. A Democratic Senate might well not. And furthermore, facing a Democratic Senate, President Bush, or a Republican successor, might preemptively compromise and pick a Kennedy rather than a Roberts or an Alito.
What's more, right now, 16 of the 179 authorized judicial slots on the federal courts of appeal are vacant. So are 33 of the 678 district court positions. With a Republican Senate, President Bush could continue to reshape the federal judiciary over the next two years. Facing a Democratic Senate, he would make much less progress on the constitutionalist agenda at the heart of today's conservatism.
So which party controls the Senate for the next two years matters a lot.

Kristol makes the point I've been making --that the Republicans aren't running on their best issues for some reason:

There is still time to remind voters of Virginia and Tennessee, of Missouri and Montana, all reasonably conservative states, of what is at stake as they cast their Senate votes. There is still time to remind the voters of Pennsylvania and Ohio, also reasonably conservative states, of what is at stake. There is still time to remind the voters of New Jersey that Robert Menendez's first vote upon being elevated to the Senate was to filibuster their own Samuel Alito.

Now let me shift tracks and disagree with Kristol a bit. This morning I heard him on Laura Ingraham giving the "if-the-Dems-take-the-House-it-will-sharpen-us-for-2008" spiel. I don't think so. Especially if Rick Santorum loses, the hacks and yakkers (in both parties and the MSM) will take the lesson they take from every lost election, evidence notwithstanding: that it's all the Christians' fault, and the key to winning is running away from cultural issues. That will not help us get good judges; it will weaken us in the looming battle over marriage; and it will forestall the progress we've been making on the life issues. If in fact we do lose the House, I predict the first substantive thing the House will do is not impeach the President or anything at all to do with Iraq. The first thing they'll do is pass embryonic stem cell research --with a veto-proof majority.