A roundup of last night’s panel on Special Report with Brit Hume :
HUME: Chafee, Rhode Island looks a little bit better.
KONDRACKE: . . . What you got to remember is that it’s almost an iron rule that two-thirds of undecided voters split against the incumbent.
HUME: So, you think he’s a loser, OK.
KONDRACKE: I think he’s a loser, yeah, bottom line. . . .
MARA LIASSON: I was in Rhode Island last week. . . . The race up there—the Democrat’s race up there is being run in an unusual way. It’s almost solely on partisan control of the Senate . . . Lincoln Chafee votes like his state—down the road. He votes like a Democrat most of the time. It’s strictly because he has an “R” after his name. And the president is at 22 percent in Rhode Island. It is the bluest state where a Republican incumbent is up for re-election this year. So, I think, you know, it comes down whether the Chafee family name has a greater hold on the voters there or the desire to get rid of Republicans . . . Virginia is the hardest for Democrats, I think, anywhere. Allen has—there’s not a single public poll that shows Webb leading. . . .
KONDRACKE: I think they’re going to pick up one [among VA, TN, and MO], maybe.
KRAUTHAMMER,: I can’t see them winning in Virginia. That Virginia race was entirely about Allen. He had a huge lead, he had everything in his pocket, he made all kind of missteps, but now he’s righted himself and it’s a very red state. I think he carries it and I think in Rhode Island, I would agree. I think the Democrats are going to win that because there’s no difference between these two candidates in politics or in pedigree. These are two guys of the same, you know, wasp plutocracy– the fathers were roommates at Yale, it’s incredibly incestuous, but it’s about are you a Democrat or Republican and the Bush — you know, to the extent that the Democrats have nationalized this election in making it about Bush, they win. . . .
HUME: This is an ad from the Republican Party trying to help the Republican candidate Bob Corker. . . . [The response:] “Awful, despicable, offensive,” said Harold Ford. “Racist” said the NAACP and there it is. Is this, folks, is this a satirical ad that pushes the limits or is this over the top?
KONDRACKE: I think it’s satirical up to the point where it implies that Harold Ford is dating white girls . . .
HUME: It’s not about a Playboy party he attended?
KONDRACKE: . . . It’s—the implication is—they’re playing misogyny-miscegenation here, is what they’re doing—race mixing and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I think that they went over the line. You know, I don’t think that it’s the most horrible ad that’s ever been run like the NAACP ad that was run against Bush . . .
LIASSON: The part where it crosses the line is the woman at the end. Look, Corker himself asked himself that this ad be taken down and he called it “tacky and over the top.” I think that’s a very fair assessment of this ad. . . .
HUME: OK, let’s move to on this question of North Korea and the U.N. Resolution Number 1718 . . .
KONDRACKE: I think, look, I think it’s better than the situation beforehand. I mean, at least China is legally obligated to do something, namely inspect for dangerous materials, and it apparently is doing so.
KRAUTHAMMER: Look, legally obligated is meaningless. It’s legal obligations of the Security Council meant something, you wouldn’t have an armed Hezbollah, you wouldn’t—Saddam would have given up his weapons in ‘93, we wouldn’t had a war and Israel and Palestine would have been created in 1947.
Legality means nothing. Countries act in their interests. China is not going to squeeze North Korea to the point it makes a difference. Whatever the resolution says, I commend the secretary in getting it, and—on paper at the U.N., it’s a triumph, but in the real world it will not have any effect. . . .
KONDRACKE: I think — no, I think that there’s no evidence that they’re going to test again. If the Chinese can keep the North Koreans from testing again, it seems to me that we’ve gone a step toward denying them a deliverable nuclear weapon—bombs they’ve got, but they’ve got to be able to test them in order to know whether they’re small enough to be put on the tips of warheads.
KRAUTHAMMER: But look how we’re lowering the bar. At the beginning it was taking away their nukes, then just preventing a test, and now after a test has happened and they’re officially a nuclear power, in preventing a second one. So what? They are officially a nuclear entity and all that comes with it, including the ability to export it.