See our post below. National Review Online has some political predictions HERE. They’re not as much fun as the psychic ones but that’s the way it goes. A few of the (more serious) ones we found interesting (all of these are copied verbatim and we’re giving you the name of the person who predicted it):
- In Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum will go down to defeat at the hands of Bob Casey Jr., causing Pat Toomey to smile a tight little smile. (Dennis Boyles)
- Tom Delay will be acquitted. Grover Norquist will be indicted. Jack Abramoff will be convicted. (Jonah Goldberg)
- By Christmas 2006, George W. Bush’s approval ratings will be 57 percent. (Jonah Goldberg)
- John McCain will be widely considered the GOP frontrunner for the nomination.(Jonah Goldberg)
- There will be more revelations about right-wing pundits — most of them fairly marginal figures — being paid to write columns. But the hullabaloo will spark investigations of several liberal journalists. The results will prove sufficiently embarrassing that the issue will be less fun for Daily Kos types but spark a million thumb-sucking panels at the Columbia Journalism School.(Jonah Goldberg)
- There will be another terrorist attack on the American homeland.(Jonah Goldberg)
- Howard Dean will not finish 2006 as chairman of the DNC.(Jonah Goldberg, Victor Davis Hanson and Clifford D. May)
- Rudy Giuliani announces that he will not run for president. (Kathryn Jean Lopez)
- Republicans will pick up seats in the House. (Carrie Lukas) Republicans will not lose their majority in Congress — but it will be close. (Clifford D. May and Peter Schweizer)
- In politics: Sam Alito will be confirmed to the Supreme Court with fewer votes than John Roberts received; following Alito’s elevation, there will be a new vacancy on the court; John McCain will lead the GOP field for 2008, worrying conservatives; Republicans will lose a handful of seats in the House and either lose one seat or stay even in the Senate; President Bush will visit Iraq. (John J. Miller)
- Intelligent design, far from being dead, will become an increasingly important factor in the culture wars. (Peter Schweizer)
- 2006 is shaping up to be a tough year for the GOP with the party continuing to pay the price, in scandal, and worse, for becoming too comfortable, too complacent, and too forgetful of the lessons of 1994. Will they hold on in the midterms? Yes, but not without some nasty scares, and every nasty scare makes it more likely that McCain will be the nominee in ’08. (Andrew Stuttford)
There are many, many more, including many that are hilarious. We just gave you a cross-section of some of them. Read it all yasself..
UPDATE: Jonathan Singer, writing on My DD, is amazed by some of these predictions.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.