Democrats prepare their cowardly "PLEASE DON'T HURT ME, Karl!" campaign of 2006 - TPM
Josh M. Marshall of the famous TalkingPointsMemo.com hits the nail on the head: the Democrats are already preparing, and in the process of carrying out, their COWARDLY "don't hurt me!" CAMPAIGN of 2006.
Which, in a word, is a CONTINUATION of their, the Democrat's, "hear no corruption, see no fraud, for god's sake SPEAK NO OUTRAGE" of the continued FRAUDS, CORRUPTIONS, CRIMES, and ATROCITIES that is the George W. Bush presidency and Republican Congress in its 6th year.
As CowardlyDemocrats.blogspot.com has tried to document, the Democrats have a 5 year history of infamy, continually whitewashing the outrages emanating from the Bush White House and Republican Party, up to and including crimes of corruption, deceiving the nation into war using FALSIFIED "intel" and choreographed scare tactics (lies-to-war; specifically lies about Iraq's non-existant WMD program).
The list of Bush crimes, frauds, and lies that the Cowardly Democrats sell Democratic voters and the American public DOWN THE RIVER is too long to rewrite at the head of every editorial or op-ed about campaign 2006, but TALKING POINTS MEMO details how this abject RETREAT from CONFRONTING Republican crimes is no more or less than a CONTINUATION of the PATHETIC CAMPAIGNS of Al Gore and Joe Lieberman in 2000, Tom Daschle and Joe Lieberman guiding the Democrats to losses in the 2002 midterms, and John Kerry's pathetic "rip Van Winkle", stand there and be smacked by Swift Boat Liars" campaign of 2004.
WE DEMOCRATIC VOTERS ARE BEING ROBBED by the 'centrist,' establishment, belly-of-the-beast, corportized DLC Democrat hierarchy, who, for a total of about $100 million in total campaign funding (much of it from big donors) are perfectly willing to sign of on BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars of Republican spending of taxpayer monies, on programs including wars, torture, incompetence and abject corruption in the New Orleans recovery process, and of course continued sale of federal lands and resources to crony, well-connected buyers for pennies on the dollar.
And that's not even mentioning the DIEBOLDIZATION of the voting process in 2006, which investigative reporter Gregg Palast claims is out to swipe TWO MILLION VOTES from Democratic Candidates.
America once faced what courageous President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "A RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY", and that generation, LED by Democratic Party leaders, faced and met that challenge head on.
THIS generation of Americans faces a similar rendezvous with destiny, yet instead of fighting for the winning policies, programs, and themes of 100 years of Democratic progress, our leaders are seeking to ALLOW the Republicans to take America BACK to the days of DISENFRANCHISEMENT; BACK to the days when conservative and right-wing leaders SCORNED the US Constitution (15th Amendment prohibited disenfranchisement); Democrats are meekly sitting on the sidelines as Republicans attempt to take America BACK to the era of ONE-PARTY RULE in the Deep South, which was just as cruel to poor whites as it was to poor Blacks.
TalkingPointsMemo.com
April 30, 2006
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/008333.php
Mark Schmitt is pointing our attention exactly where it should be: Be warned. The White House is now telling us that engineering a confrontation with Iran is a key part of their plan to resuscitate the president's dismal approval ratings in time to survive election day.
And this is probably as good a time as any to address the question we hear more and more from Democrats: how do we prepare for whatever it is Karl Rove has cooked up this election season? How do Democrats or this or that Democratic candidate 'inoculate' themselves from this year's version of the Swift Boat scam?
With respect, this is loser talk. The 'how will we defend ourselves' conversation is an example of the malady itself masquerading as the cure to the disease.
On a battlefield there is a name for armies that spend all their time and energy planning and conditioning themselves to defend against their opponents' attacks. They're called defeated armies. You defend yourself when and where you must. But you do everything you can to maintain the initiative. And that pretty much always means bringing the attack to the other side.
This isn't just a good way to win political fights. It's also a window into the meta-message that often makes Republican attack politics so damaging for Democrats. If you think back to the Swift Boat debacle of 2004, the surface issue was John Kerry's honesty and bravery as a sailor in Vietnam. Far more powerful, however, was the meta-message: George Bush slaps John Kerry around and Kerry either can't or won't hit back. For voters concerned with security and the toughness of their leaders, that's a devastating message -- and one that has little or nothing to do with the truth of the surface charges. Someone who can't fight for himself certainly can't fight for you. At the time I called it the "Republicans' bitch-slap theory of electoral politics."
With respect to what's coming on Iran, what is in order is a little honesty, just as was the case with the Social Security debate a year ago. The only crisis with Iran is the crisis with the president's public approval ratings. Period. End of story. The Iranians are years, probably as long as a decade away, and possibly even longer from creating even a limited yield nuclear weapon. Ergo, the only reason to ramp up a confrontation now is to help the president's poll numbers.
This is a powerful message because it is an accurate message. We have many challenges overseas today. Chief among them, as one of the Democrats' senate candidates puts it, is "refocusing America's foreign and defense policies in a way that truly protects our national interests and seeks harmony where they are not threatened." The period of peril the country is entering into isn't tied to an Iranian bomb. It turns on how far a desperate president will go to avoid losing control of Congress.
Go to his heart. Go to his weaknesses. Though the realization of the fact is something of a lagging indicator, the man is a laughing stock, whose lies and failures are all catching up with him.
To the president the Democrats should be saying, Double or Nothing is Not a Foreign Policy.
The great bulk of the public doesn't believe this president any more when he tries to gin up a phony crisis. They don't believe he'd have much of an idea of how to deal with a real one. Enough of the lies. Enough of the incompetence and failure.
No buying into another of the president's phony crises.
-- Josh Marshall
Which, in a word, is a CONTINUATION of their, the Democrat's, "hear no corruption, see no fraud, for god's sake SPEAK NO OUTRAGE" of the continued FRAUDS, CORRUPTIONS, CRIMES, and ATROCITIES that is the George W. Bush presidency and Republican Congress in its 6th year.
As CowardlyDemocrats.blogspot.com has tried to document, the Democrats have a 5 year history of infamy, continually whitewashing the outrages emanating from the Bush White House and Republican Party, up to and including crimes of corruption, deceiving the nation into war using FALSIFIED "intel" and choreographed scare tactics (lies-to-war; specifically lies about Iraq's non-existant WMD program).
The list of Bush crimes, frauds, and lies that the Cowardly Democrats sell Democratic voters and the American public DOWN THE RIVER is too long to rewrite at the head of every editorial or op-ed about campaign 2006, but TALKING POINTS MEMO details how this abject RETREAT from CONFRONTING Republican crimes is no more or less than a CONTINUATION of the PATHETIC CAMPAIGNS of Al Gore and Joe Lieberman in 2000, Tom Daschle and Joe Lieberman guiding the Democrats to losses in the 2002 midterms, and John Kerry's pathetic "rip Van Winkle", stand there and be smacked by Swift Boat Liars" campaign of 2004.
WE DEMOCRATIC VOTERS ARE BEING ROBBED by the 'centrist,' establishment, belly-of-the-beast, corportized DLC Democrat hierarchy, who, for a total of about $100 million in total campaign funding (much of it from big donors) are perfectly willing to sign of on BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars of Republican spending of taxpayer monies, on programs including wars, torture, incompetence and abject corruption in the New Orleans recovery process, and of course continued sale of federal lands and resources to crony, well-connected buyers for pennies on the dollar.
And that's not even mentioning the DIEBOLDIZATION of the voting process in 2006, which investigative reporter Gregg Palast claims is out to swipe TWO MILLION VOTES from Democratic Candidates.
America once faced what courageous President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "A RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY", and that generation, LED by Democratic Party leaders, faced and met that challenge head on.
THIS generation of Americans faces a similar rendezvous with destiny, yet instead of fighting for the winning policies, programs, and themes of 100 years of Democratic progress, our leaders are seeking to ALLOW the Republicans to take America BACK to the days of DISENFRANCHISEMENT; BACK to the days when conservative and right-wing leaders SCORNED the US Constitution (15th Amendment prohibited disenfranchisement); Democrats are meekly sitting on the sidelines as Republicans attempt to take America BACK to the era of ONE-PARTY RULE in the Deep South, which was just as cruel to poor whites as it was to poor Blacks.
TalkingPointsMemo.com
April 30, 2006
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/008333.php
Mark Schmitt is pointing our attention exactly where it should be: Be warned. The White House is now telling us that engineering a confrontation with Iran is a key part of their plan to resuscitate the president's dismal approval ratings in time to survive election day.
And this is probably as good a time as any to address the question we hear more and more from Democrats: how do we prepare for whatever it is Karl Rove has cooked up this election season? How do Democrats or this or that Democratic candidate 'inoculate' themselves from this year's version of the Swift Boat scam?
With respect, this is loser talk. The 'how will we defend ourselves' conversation is an example of the malady itself masquerading as the cure to the disease.
On a battlefield there is a name for armies that spend all their time and energy planning and conditioning themselves to defend against their opponents' attacks. They're called defeated armies. You defend yourself when and where you must. But you do everything you can to maintain the initiative. And that pretty much always means bringing the attack to the other side.
This isn't just a good way to win political fights. It's also a window into the meta-message that often makes Republican attack politics so damaging for Democrats. If you think back to the Swift Boat debacle of 2004, the surface issue was John Kerry's honesty and bravery as a sailor in Vietnam. Far more powerful, however, was the meta-message: George Bush slaps John Kerry around and Kerry either can't or won't hit back. For voters concerned with security and the toughness of their leaders, that's a devastating message -- and one that has little or nothing to do with the truth of the surface charges. Someone who can't fight for himself certainly can't fight for you. At the time I called it the "Republicans' bitch-slap theory of electoral politics."
With respect to what's coming on Iran, what is in order is a little honesty, just as was the case with the Social Security debate a year ago. The only crisis with Iran is the crisis with the president's public approval ratings. Period. End of story. The Iranians are years, probably as long as a decade away, and possibly even longer from creating even a limited yield nuclear weapon. Ergo, the only reason to ramp up a confrontation now is to help the president's poll numbers.
This is a powerful message because it is an accurate message. We have many challenges overseas today. Chief among them, as one of the Democrats' senate candidates puts it, is "refocusing America's foreign and defense policies in a way that truly protects our national interests and seeks harmony where they are not threatened." The period of peril the country is entering into isn't tied to an Iranian bomb. It turns on how far a desperate president will go to avoid losing control of Congress.
Go to his heart. Go to his weaknesses. Though the realization of the fact is something of a lagging indicator, the man is a laughing stock, whose lies and failures are all catching up with him.
To the president the Democrats should be saying, Double or Nothing is Not a Foreign Policy.
The great bulk of the public doesn't believe this president any more when he tries to gin up a phony crisis. They don't believe he'd have much of an idea of how to deal with a real one. Enough of the lies. Enough of the incompetence and failure.
No buying into another of the president's phony crises.
-- Josh Marshall
posted by verifi at 6:14 AM
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