The New Hampshire

Issue date: 11/7/06 Section: News

Media Credit: Compiled by Emily Bracket There have been many important issues surrounding the 2006 midterm elections, including the war in Iraq and misconduct involving members of Congress.

When it comes to American politics, the stakes today could not get much higher. With the prospect of losing its politically precious majority in the House and Senate, the Republican Party is facing a midterm election that has fostered one of the most talked about and negative campaign seasons any politician or potential voter can remember.

That negative campaign has also featured Democratic ads that have helped bring the much-maligned minority party back into the national spotlight with a rare chance to win back the majority in both the House and the Senate, where they can directly affect major policy in this country and abroad, as an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq continues to rage.

The war, with its daily reports of bloody American and sectarian violence and religiously driven death squads, has dominated popular political discourse across the nation and has even given birth to a sight American voters thought they would probably never see again: a John Kerry, George W. Bush dustup right before a crucial election.

The Massachusetts senator's "botched joke" about the importance of studying in hopes of offsetting the possibility of going to Iraq grabbed national headlines and even garnered a White House rebuttal in the form of press secretary Tony Snow decrying Kerry's remarks as "insensitive."

Just how much the war in Iraq will sway voters is still to be decided, but in terms of the war hurting the Republican Party and the administration, UNH political science professor Clifford J. Wirth believes that the political damage has already been done.

"The war has hurt the administration a lot," Wirth said. "The American people will usually seek political change when they feel that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, and the American people seem to think that their president has no plan to win."

Republicans now have to face the prospect of losing both the majorities they hold over a war that most Americans supported at the start.

"This war has done a lot of damage to the Republican Party," Wirth explained. "If the House and Senate go Democratic, the country could see some more investigations onto the policies of this administration, particularly on Iraq."

Continued...

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