Politix II: Bubba Tells It Like It Is . . .

Bill Clinton is nobody's fool (except his own, as the record shows) and hit a very big nail on the head in stating that the Republican Party has been "jammed into an ideological corner" by conservative Republicans and the result is likely to be a power shift in the November 7 election.

Said Clinton at a Democratic fundraiser in Las Vegas:

"This is an election unlike any other I have ever participated in. For six years this country has been totally dominated - not by the Republican Party, this is not fair to the Republican Party - by a narrow sliver of the Republican Party, its more right-wing and its most ideological element. When the chips are down, this country has been jammed to the right, jammed into an ideological corner, alienated from its allies, and we're in a lot of trouble . . .

"The Democratic Party has become the liberal and conservative party in America. If you want to be fiscally conservative, you've got to be for us. If you want to conserve natural resources, you've got to be for us," he said. "If you want a change of course in Iraq ... you've got to be for us."

More here.

. . . AND SO DOES DICK ARMEY

Dick Smarmy, er . . . Armey, the conservative Republican, is hearing footsteps:

"Freedom is a gift from God Almighty, and we have a responsibility to protect it. Christians face a temptation to power when we are fortunate enough to have a majority of support in Congress. But government can never advance a faith that is freely given, and it is corrosive to even try. . . . And so America's Christian conservative movement is confronted with this divide: small government advocates who want to practice their faith independent of heavy-handed government versus big government sympathizers who want to impose their version of 'righteousness' on others through the hammer of law."

Gee, and I thought that Tom DeLay was The Hammer.

More here.

THE EMPIRE STATE STRIKES BACK

For reasons that only incidentally overlap with the dynamic that Bill Clinton describes, the once vibrant New York State Republican Party -- the party of Rockefeller, D'Amato and Pataki -- is a basket case.

No, it's not because New Yorkers are all a bunch of salon liberals. In fact, once you get outside of Manhattan into what is called Upstate New York, voters tend toward the moderate and conservative side.

E.J. Dionne explains in The Washington Post why what has happened to the GOP in the Empire State should be a wake-up call to Republicans everywhere.