Word: specter
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...public approval, at first. This time, because of the rules agreed on in the arcane budget process, Democrats will need only a simple majority vote in the Senate. But the process could run into the same two roadblocks that caused universal health insurance to fail in the past: the specter of "socialized medicine" and the fear that the cost of the program will, like that of other entitlements, spiral out of control...
These days, Republicans have the desperate aura of an endangered species. They lost Congress, then the White House; more recently, they lost a slam-dunk House election in a conservative New York district, then Senator Arlen Specter. Polls suggest that only one-fourth of the electorate considers itself Republican, that independents are trending Democratic and that as few as five states have solid Republican pluralities. And the electorate is getting less white, less rural, less Christian - in short, less demographically Republican. GOP officials who completely controlled Washington three years ago are vowing to "regain our status as a national party...
...Census, but it ultimately produces even more shrinkage, which gives the base even more influence - and the death spiral continues. "We're excluding the young, minorities, environmentalists, pro-choice - the list goes on," says Olympia Snowe of Maine, one of two moderate Republicans left in the Senate after Specter's switch. "Ideological purity is not the ticket to the promised land...
...Some conservatives think that in the long run, the party will be better off without squishes like Specter muddling the coherence of its brand; a GOP campaign committee celebrated his departure with an e-mail headlined "Good riddance," and Limbaugh urged him to take McCain along. Inside this echo chamber, a center-right nation punished Republicans for abandoning their principles, for enabling Bush's spending sprees, for insufficient conservatism. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who has refused to accept $700 million in stimulus cash for his state despite bitter opposition from his GOP-dominated legislature, argues that Chick...
...However many eyebrows and hackles a Sherzai campaign for the Aug. 20 polls would have raised, his abrupt withdrawal invokes the specter of a lackluster election season destined to demoralize Afghans already wary of the unfulfilled promises of democracy. Sherzai was widely considered the only candidate who could mount a robust challenge against Karzai - whose popularity has plummeted after seven years of ineffective rule and allegations of corruption and nepotism. On May 2, however, Sherzai met privately with the President for four hours. After he emerged Sherzai announced that he had changed his mind and would no longer...