2007: Year of Threats, Year of Promise

The Democrats are back, and their return to power in both the House and Senate is sure to dominate the headlines in 2007. As first woman Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi is already making history, but she's also promising an historic first hundred hours of legislation, passing favored Democrat items such as a higher minimum wage. But don't expect Pelosi-liberals to suddenly take the country way left. They may be able to pass liberal laws in the House, but the Democrats only have a one-vote majority in the Senate, where it takes 60 votes to get anything passed a filibuster threat. Still, President Bush may have to learn a new way to govern since for the first time during his presidency he'll face a Congress controlled by the other party. Many among those Democrats would like to see America start to disentangle itself from the Iraq war this year. They don't have ways to force the President to do that except for the blunt tool of cutting the funding, so they'll turn to very public forms of persuasion. "They're going to fight him with hearings, they're going to fight him with resolutions, they're going to fight him with speeches, they're going to fight him with press conferences. Their emphasis is going to be 'this is not working -- let's get out,'" said Mort Kondracke, co-host of Fox's "The Beltway Boys." But a hasty retreat from Iraq means dangerous enemies such as Iran will just get more aggressive, causing more trouble for Israel and other beleaguered Middle East nations. "Iran is causing mischief in Gaza. It's causing mischief in Lebanon. Hezbollah is ascendant," said Kondracke. And this stirring up of the Middle East powder keg means more threats of terrorist strikes on Israel's main ally, America. Kondracke said, "That's what happens when the leading stabilizing power in the world is on its heels." Although 2008 is the actual year we'll elect a new president, 2007 may be the one where the field of candidates is narrowed down considerably. This is likely to be the first $1 billion presidential election, and those who can't raise some $50 million dollars this year will likely find themselves bumped out of the way by the big money candidates. That could mean Hillary Clinton with her huge network of deep-pocket donors will continue to dominate. The only other two Democrats who can probably pay the toll are Barack Obama and John Edwards. But just as 2006 ended, there were a couple of nasty surprises for Hillary. A new poll in Iowa showed her falling to fourth place, and a New Hampshire poll showed her still in the lead, but just one point ahead of Obama. On the Republican side, Rudy Giuliani continues to run neck-and-neck with John McCain in polls. But that doesn't mean Giuliani can pass conservative Republicans in the primaries "having been three times married and pro-gay rights and pro-gun control and pro-abortion," said Kondracke. And a fascinating question is whether Mitt Romney's Mormonism will be accepted by the GOP's many evangelicals. Kondracke thinks so. He said, "The evangelicals I do know say it's a doctrinal thing, if he accepts Jesus Christ as his savior." Meanwhile in the weather, after a year where no killer hurricanes hit the U.S., the question is whether or not they'll return this year. "We're in a weather pattern that we saw back in the '30s, '40s, and '50s. And that was a time that we did have a number of storm systems that did hit the United States and we believe that we're in this pattern at least for the next several years," said AccuWeather's meteorologist Bernei Rayno. There's a good chance the U.S. will continue to see the same kinds of weird weather that have afflicted the nation in the last couple of years. That's because of that same volatile pattern hit during the '30s, '40s and '50s. "And that was a time of a lot of extreme weather across the country, and we do believe that over the next several years we will have to deal with that," said Rayno. As for the economy, Kondracke wonders whether factors like the housing slump will continue this year and finally start dragging down the rest of the economy, because Americans won't be building up the kind of wealth in their homes they were during the housing boom. "If they don't have this equity wealth anymore, they will stop consuming, and consumer spending is the fuel of the American economy. You don't know what's going to happen to energy prices. If we lose in Iraq, energy prices will probably soar," he said. 2007 will be like any other year: one of threats, but one of promise, too.