Bill Manzi.com

With Joe Lieberman calling for airstrikes against Iranian nuclear targets and the U.S. military accusing the Iranians of arming the Taliban the threat of a hot war with Iran seems to be rising. Pat Buchanan has written a column with his assesment of the situation, including some choice comments from Lieberman.

“If there’s any hope of … stopping their nuclear weapons development,” Lieberman said, “we can’t just talk to them.”

Buchanan speculates that the verbal bellicosity is advance justification for the strikes to come.

“What is going on? The most logical explanation is that the White House is providing advance justification for air strikes on camps of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that are allegedly providing training for and transferring weapons to Afghan and Iraqi insurgents.”

Further speculation by Buchanan that after an Iranian military response to such strikes the President will escalate.

President Bush will then have his casus belli to take out Natanz and all the other Iranian nuclear facilities, as the Israelis and the neocons have been demanding that he do.

While Buchanan has been a consistent opponent from the right of the Iraq war he has been sounding the alarm on the Iranian situation for months. It is a fact that the Bush Middle Eastern policy has strengthened the Iranians politically. Their proxies are now in Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq, with traditional U.S. allies on the defensive. Is this what Condi Rice meant when she talked of the “new Middle East”? Read the Buchanan column at this link.

With all of the hits I have been taking from our Republican friends it is time to say some nice things about a Republican. It has been reported that both Rudy Guiliani and John McCain have withdrawn from the August straw poll in Iowa. Such an announcement brings us to the obvious. Both expected an old fashion whipping from Mitt Romney in that straw poll, and Rudy does not want such a beating to tarnish his frontrunner status. McCain recognized that with Rudy out he would be mano y mano with Mitt, and choose to cut and run rather than face the defeat. Romney has been quietly and efficiently picking up steam. He has been methodical, and has simply outworked and out-hustled his two major rivals in Iowa. Say what you want about Mitt, but he has put together a great field operation. An Iowa win, followed by a New Hapshire triumph for the Mittster, and that momentum train might be hard to stop. By the time Fred Thompson realizes what hit him he will have train marks on his back. While he ponders Mitt works. Can Mitt be stopped?

With all of the debate about the collapsed immigration bill in Washington there has been little attention paid to the wider political ramifications of this failed compromise. Todays New York Times talks about the growing clout of Hispanics in the primaries of both parties, and the perceived political effect of the failed immigration bill.

Roughly two-thirds of the nation’s Hispanic residents live in nine of the states holding Democratic primaries or caucuses on or before Feb. 5.

The potential backlash against the Republican Party is substantial, and could be long lasting.

The bill’s setback — a major defeat for President Bush — could complicate Republican efforts to win over the fast-growing Hispanic electorate and help Democrats solidify their hold on these voters, an electoral prize expected to increase in importance in coming decades.

I would point to former California Governor Pete Wilson’s anti-immigrant stand as helping to create a strongly Democratic California as a prime example. The Republican division is deep on this issue, with President Bush and the business wing of the G.O.P. for the immigration bill, and the balance of the right wing vehemently against it. These divisions are so deep that the deeply conservative National Review has issued a challenge to the Wall Street Journal editorial page to debate the issue. There is no question that President Bush and Karl Rove hoped to leverage a “progressive” immigration policy to help create the “permanent Republican majority”. That political outreach to the Hispanic community had produced real results for the Republicans. Those results are now being rolled back.

While Mr. Bush’s popularity with Hispanics had been a factor in drawing large numbers of them to the Republican Party, many Hispanics appear to be returning to the Democratic fold as conservative efforts gained momentum last year to restrict immigration and build a wall along the Mexican border.

Republican political problems are without a doubt centered on the war in Iraq, but the problems run far deeper than that. With members of his own Party calling for his political hide over this issue the President will likely lead the Party to another poor round of results in 2008.