If there's no ‘wave,’ can Dems win the House?

Liberal label?
But it would be wrong to assume that in Boehlert, voters for the past 23 years have been electing a liberal along the lines of Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee.

Boehlert has voted to ban partial birth abortion. In roll call votes in 2005, he backed Bush 61 percent of the time.

When asked on the partial birth abortion ban, whether he supports providing an exception for the pregnant woman’s mental health as well as her physical health, Arcuri hesitated, then said, “I’m going to leave it at ‘the health and safety of the mother.’”

GOP candidate runs against Bush
Given the polling data showing disaffection with Bush and the House GOP, Meier is running against them as well as against Arcuri.

He makes a self-serving but undeniable point: “When voters walk into the voting booth, it is not going to say ‘Republican Congress’ or ‘Democrat Congress. It is going to say ‘Ray Meier’ and my opponent.”

House Republicans haven’t been fiscally prudent, Meier says, haven’t addressed the relentless growth of entitlement spending.

“That’s an area where I think both the president and the Republican House have departed from a traditional, mainstream Republican point of view,” he said.

And he held a press conference this week to criticize Bush over proposed changes in veteran benefits. “We need to reject an ill-advised proposal made by the administration to impose a $250 enrollment fee for veterans entering the Veterans Administration health care system and to raise co-pays” on prescription drugs, he told reporters.

The next day, as Meier took a break from campaigning in heavily Republican Tioga County, he discussed Iraq, telling me, “Where I would fault the president is: he needs to explain to the American people what the goal is, and to talk about the commitment needed to do it. That has been one of the problems. If the American people get the feeling there’s no plan to end this,” then their frustration will grow, he said. “I have not heard that (plan) clearly articulated” by Bush. People “are sort of flummoxed as to how we’re going to get there.”

For his part Arcuri said, “I think we’re there for all the wrong reasons and it’s time to bring our troops home.”

But Iraq also illustrates that Arcuri is still not as sure-footed as a veteran campaigner would be.

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Asked what he thought of a resolution sponsored by 17 House Democrats to cut off funding for the Iraq deployment, only allowing funds needed for “the safe and orderly withdrawal” of U.S. troops, Arcuri at first cautioned that troops must be given the supplies they need, but then added, “I would seriously consider a resolution of that nature.”

But after the text of the resolution, H.Res. 4232, was e-mailed to him, Arcuri said, in an e-mailed response, “Any bill that limits funding for our troops, I would oppose. We need a realistic plan for phased withdrawal that continues funding for our troops as we begin to bring them home.”

Meier pounced on the idea that Arcuri would even have considered — if only for a moment — the 17 House Democrats’ funding cut-off proposal. “I don’t see how he could consider this seriously,” Meier said.

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