The 2006 Republican Game Plan, Redux: Keep 'Em Terrified!
Remember those quaint days before September 11, 2001, when it was the Republicans who accused the Democrats of having nothing to offer but fear, particularly as it concerned seniors losing Social Security and Medicare? Social Security in an "iron-clad lock box"? Accusations of a "MediScare"? We've all been told a million times over how "the world changed on September 11", and one of the very obvious ways in which it changed is that the Republicans now have exclusive ownership of the politics of fear. And unlike the Democrats of the late 20th and very early 21st centuries "scaring seniors" about the very Social Security and Medicare programs that Republicans attempted to disassemble at the first available opportunity, Republican fear-mongering post-9/11 is far more ominous, laced with cataclysmic language about a "fight for our survival".
While GOP exploitation of post-9/11 paranoia hadn't reared its ugly head for quite awhile, last week's terrorist plot thwarted by British intelligence brought it back to our doorstep like a freeloading uncle, timed in convenient correspondence with an upcoming election where the incumbent party appears likely to take it on the chin. The logic, using that term as loosely as humanly possible, is that because most in the opposition party want an exit strategy from refereeing a civil war in Iraq, they cannot be trusted to protect the homeland from unconnected al-Qaeda terrorists planning attacks on the U.S. hundreds of miles away from Iraq. Come again? And the fact that this terrorist plot was thwarted almost exclusively by British intelligence rather than anyone connected to the Bush administration matters not at all to desperate Republicans who were issuing press releases about the "Defeat-o-crats" within hours after a foreign country's intelligence stopped an airborne terrorist attack.
Even though the premise is nonsensical to anyone capable of adding two plus two and coming up with four, the strategy could very well work once again for the GOP as the only issue where Republicans get better marks than Democrats in public opinion polls is "national security". Again, there is precious little reason why this should be the case. In 2001, the Bush administration didn't hold a single staff meeting about terrorism until the week before the 9-11 attacks, despite warnings from Clinton administration intelligence predecessors of the dire threat that al-Qaeda posed to America. They even managed to ignore Presidential Daily Briefings in the summer of 2001 entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the United States" because it was a distraction from their obsessive plans to invade Iraq. And on the morning of 9-11, more than an hour's worth of mind-blowing incompetence by virtually every Federal anti-terrorist agency mucked up efforts to stop the hijacked jetliners from reaching their targets. Had it not been for Todd Beamer and his fellow passengers bravely charging the hijackers in their plane above southwestern Pennsylvania, the terrorists would have been 4-0 in striking their targets on September 11, 2001....all on the watch of a government dominated by a single party which has convinced Americans that it's the only one capable of keeping them safe.
Nearly four years later, a catastrophic natural disaster struck the Gulf coast while an indifferent Bush administration yawningly twiddled its thumbs. The Department of Homeland Security, which had been created in 2002 and which Republicans accused then Democratic Senator Max Cleland of Georgia of being one and the same as Osama bin Laden for not rubber-stamping, got its first test following Hurricane Katrina, and performed so miserably and incompetently that even a thesaurus couldn't find adjectives dramatic enough to describe the magnitude of its failure. Again, this all happened on the watch of "the only political party capable of defending us" from, among other images thrown at us in the 2004 Presidential election, attacking wolves.
To be fair here, the Democrats have been selling a bill of goods themselves this year, pretending that the current trainwreck in Iraq will change course if Democrats take over Congress this fall. That is not the case. The nation's ability to stop driving off the cliff in Iraq was squandered when John Kerry got three million fewer votes than George W. Bush on November 2, 2004. After authorization for war is awarded by Congress, wartime policy is almost exclusively under the jurisdiction of the Commander in Chief, and even if the Dems take back Congress, they won't have nearly as large of a majority as they'll need to strongarm Bush on Iraq. The double-edged sword for Republicans with that reality is that their propaganda of fear regarding what would happen if the Democrats take back Congress rings equally hollow. Even when one considers the bipartisan membership elected to the Armed Services Committees of the respective parties, it would generally be the same people receiving the same information whether Richard Lugar or Joe Biden is the committee chairman. The premise that we'd see this wholesale transformation of policy if the Democrats won Congress is just more of the same Republican snake oil they've been peddling for the last two election cycles.
But so it goes. The Republicans won elections in 2002 and 2004 by making sure the electorate was sufficiently terrified and under the impression that nobody who wasn't under the direct partisan supervision of George W. Bush was capable of keeping them safe. It's understandable that the Republicans believe their only route to salvation in 2006 is to make sure voters have piddle-stained underwear when they tremble their way into the voting booth in November. With that in mind, check the floors at your polling stations this November 7. If the floors are wet with panic-fueled pools or voter urine, it's probably an ominous sign that Republicans will have another winning election cycle. If the floors are dry, the good guys may yet pull it off.
While GOP exploitation of post-9/11 paranoia hadn't reared its ugly head for quite awhile, last week's terrorist plot thwarted by British intelligence brought it back to our doorstep like a freeloading uncle, timed in convenient correspondence with an upcoming election where the incumbent party appears likely to take it on the chin. The logic, using that term as loosely as humanly possible, is that because most in the opposition party want an exit strategy from refereeing a civil war in Iraq, they cannot be trusted to protect the homeland from unconnected al-Qaeda terrorists planning attacks on the U.S. hundreds of miles away from Iraq. Come again? And the fact that this terrorist plot was thwarted almost exclusively by British intelligence rather than anyone connected to the Bush administration matters not at all to desperate Republicans who were issuing press releases about the "Defeat-o-crats" within hours after a foreign country's intelligence stopped an airborne terrorist attack.
Even though the premise is nonsensical to anyone capable of adding two plus two and coming up with four, the strategy could very well work once again for the GOP as the only issue where Republicans get better marks than Democrats in public opinion polls is "national security". Again, there is precious little reason why this should be the case. In 2001, the Bush administration didn't hold a single staff meeting about terrorism until the week before the 9-11 attacks, despite warnings from Clinton administration intelligence predecessors of the dire threat that al-Qaeda posed to America. They even managed to ignore Presidential Daily Briefings in the summer of 2001 entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the United States" because it was a distraction from their obsessive plans to invade Iraq. And on the morning of 9-11, more than an hour's worth of mind-blowing incompetence by virtually every Federal anti-terrorist agency mucked up efforts to stop the hijacked jetliners from reaching their targets. Had it not been for Todd Beamer and his fellow passengers bravely charging the hijackers in their plane above southwestern Pennsylvania, the terrorists would have been 4-0 in striking their targets on September 11, 2001....all on the watch of a government dominated by a single party which has convinced Americans that it's the only one capable of keeping them safe.
Nearly four years later, a catastrophic natural disaster struck the Gulf coast while an indifferent Bush administration yawningly twiddled its thumbs. The Department of Homeland Security, which had been created in 2002 and which Republicans accused then Democratic Senator Max Cleland of Georgia of being one and the same as Osama bin Laden for not rubber-stamping, got its first test following Hurricane Katrina, and performed so miserably and incompetently that even a thesaurus couldn't find adjectives dramatic enough to describe the magnitude of its failure. Again, this all happened on the watch of "the only political party capable of defending us" from, among other images thrown at us in the 2004 Presidential election, attacking wolves.
To be fair here, the Democrats have been selling a bill of goods themselves this year, pretending that the current trainwreck in Iraq will change course if Democrats take over Congress this fall. That is not the case. The nation's ability to stop driving off the cliff in Iraq was squandered when John Kerry got three million fewer votes than George W. Bush on November 2, 2004. After authorization for war is awarded by Congress, wartime policy is almost exclusively under the jurisdiction of the Commander in Chief, and even if the Dems take back Congress, they won't have nearly as large of a majority as they'll need to strongarm Bush on Iraq. The double-edged sword for Republicans with that reality is that their propaganda of fear regarding what would happen if the Democrats take back Congress rings equally hollow. Even when one considers the bipartisan membership elected to the Armed Services Committees of the respective parties, it would generally be the same people receiving the same information whether Richard Lugar or Joe Biden is the committee chairman. The premise that we'd see this wholesale transformation of policy if the Democrats won Congress is just more of the same Republican snake oil they've been peddling for the last two election cycles.
But so it goes. The Republicans won elections in 2002 and 2004 by making sure the electorate was sufficiently terrified and under the impression that nobody who wasn't under the direct partisan supervision of George W. Bush was capable of keeping them safe. It's understandable that the Republicans believe their only route to salvation in 2006 is to make sure voters have piddle-stained underwear when they tremble their way into the voting booth in November. With that in mind, check the floors at your polling stations this November 7. If the floors are wet with panic-fueled pools or voter urine, it's probably an ominous sign that Republicans will have another winning election cycle. If the floors are dry, the good guys may yet pull it off.
posted by Mark at 6:01 PM
5 Comments:
The best hope is that people will finally be bright enough not to be demagogued by the Bush administration's draft-dodging chickenhawks and their empty bellicose rhetoric. Their record on homeland security has been one of the worst in American history, yet they're attempting to use it as a selling point. It would be easy to dismiss as total madness if it hadn't already worked twice. With that said, I'm expecting the propaganda will be effective in shaving the "generic Congressional preference" advantage the Democrats currently have.
I cannot imagine a scenario where Sherrod Brown or Harold Ford win their respective Senate races, so I'm expecting our best-case scenario is 49 Democratic Senate seats (perhaps 48 if Lieberman defeats Lamont in CT). I'd put our chances of taking back the House at 50-50 right now. This may be a preferable long-term scenario because the Democrats would be stronger heading into the '08 Presidential election holding only one house of Congress rather than both, given the country's obvious distaste for single-party rule.
Sean, I saw that poll too. The good news is that the poll was done by Gallup and involved the same voter sample that gave Bush a 42% approval rating (at least five points higher than anybody else). Gallup has oversampled Republicans by huge margins in recent election cycles, putting out a poll in September 2004 showing Bush with a 14-point lead over Kerry.
The bad news is that Republicans are seeing improvements across the board, in generic polls and in individual races (check out Rick Santorum's surge in PA). At least right now, this tells me the Republicans same old tricks will work on enough people to prevent the Democrats from winning back either House of Congress, just as I've been predicting since spring.
sean, I haven't seen the poll showing the GOP more enthused about voting than the Dems. I've been hearing the exact opposite up to this point.
Whatever the case, there are more of "them" than there are of "us" in America today. The Dems only chance at winning elections is if Republicans sit them out. That hasn't happened since 1998, and that was pre-Karl Rove when political polarization hit overdrive and started boosting political engagement. With that in mind, along with increasing signs of trouble for Democrats in Senate races in Maryland, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, among other places, you have reason to be pessimistic. I doubt the Dems will lose seats, but at this point I'd be blown away if they won back either House.
sean, Bob Casey has been sitting on his ass waiting out the clock for more than a year now and it's finally catching up to him now that Santorum is saturating PA airwaves with unanswered TV ads. I still doubt Santorum will win given his awful numbers.
In Maryland, the outcome of the Democratic primary will likely further help Michael Steele. If Cardin wins, a high percentage of blacks will defect to Steele. If Mfume wins, a large percentage of whites will defect to Steele. Did you hear that hip-hop mogul Russel Simmons endorsed Steele this week? That's a HUGE development and will likely further boost Steele's share of the black vote. There is significant reason for concern in Maryland.
Michael Bouchard is trailing Stabenow by single digits in most polls, even with non-existent name recognition in most parts of the state. Jennifer Granholm was in better shape than Stabenow before anyone knew about her opponent. This race can be expected to tighten considerably when Bouchard's ads hit the airwaves at fever pitch. It's a toxic environment for incumbents in both parties in hardscrabble Michigan this year. I'm increasingly nervous that Stabenow could be another casualty of it.
The Michael Steele-Harold Ford comparison is probably pretty good, although if Mfume ends up with the nomination in Maryland, I'd put Steele's chances as much better than Ford's.
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