GOP will trumpet preemption doctrine

The Republican strategy to win the election is to not only persist in the policy that divides the American people – and divides us from the rest of the world – but to trumpet it!

Republican Party officials intend to change the terms of the political debate heading into next year's election by focusing on the "doctrine of preemption," portraying President Bush as a visionary acting to prevent future terrorist attacks on US soil despite the costs and casualties involved overseas.

 

The strategy will involve the dismissal of Democrats as the party of "protests, pessimism and political hate speech," Ed Gillespie, Republican National Committee chairman, wrote in a recent memo to party officials...

Visionary???? I’m hoping this is a case of “If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.” (William Blake, from The Proverbs of Hell.) They still persist in believing they're right and everyone else is wrong; they refuse to listen to anyone who disagrees with them, engage them respectfully, and learn from them. Isn't this how they got us into this mess in the first place? So painful for the rest of us to be dragged through this administration’s long hard slog to wisdom.

12:36:13 PM      trackback [] 

Questions For President Bush’s Next Press Conference
Calvin Trillin has a rather polite way of attacking Bush. Here he suggests some "friendly questions" in the latest New Yorker (thanks, Tom, for the link). Here's one of them:

Alternative to friendly question: “Sir, do you think that the flowers with which your Administration said Iraqis would greet our troops will ever be found?”

11:17:11 AM      trackback [] 

Evenly Divided and Increasingly Polarized

A Boston Globe column this morning begins by quoting George W. Bush in 1999:

I think it's important for our party to look at candidates and determine who's a uniter, not a divider. Who has proven that they know how to bring people together based upon common consensus?

Time has proven it isn’t Bush. The latest Pew Research poll shows Americans increasingly politically polarized.

Nicholas Kristof in the NY Times also cites the Pew poll, saying vitriol no longer belongs solely to Clinton-hating Republicans:

Liberals have now become as intemperate as conservatives, and the result — everybody shouting at everybody else — corrodes the body politic and is counterproductive for Democrats themselves.

So the question remains: Who is a uniter? Can any of the Democratic candidates unite the country? At this point, the Democrats don't seem to see unity as a winning strategy. Kerry is reorganizing his campaign with a new plan to attack Dean and Bush. Attacking Dean, while probably a good tactic for Kerry, seems to me to just hurt the party. Attacking Bush surely resonates with the abject fury so many feel towards Bush. Is there a way to attack Bush that can actually change the hearts and minds of any of his supporters?

When the general election comes, who can gain the independent voters and win over enough Republicans? Who can show, in the heat of the battle, that though they’re attacking now they’ll be able to unite us in the end?

10:46:26 AM      trackback []