My original 4 points included fight corruption in defense contracts, supply body armor, set an annual budget, and repair relations with other countries to get help.
Since I offered this, the GOP has staked out a position on corruption by killing a bill that would have investigated contractors (GOP loves corruption). Soldiers were captured and killed and the GOP wants to give their killers amnesty–with no plan and no direction from the dubster (GOP = stay the course “lie and die”). We have all offered up another $80,000,000,000 check for the invasion.
It’s looking to me like the types of aguments that I suggested would resonate and take away some of the avenues of negative and dishonest campaigning that the GOP will undoubtedly use in the coming months.
No matter how bad you think the GOP/Bush position is, your 4 points are scattered, too detailed (body armor? Let the Army figure that out,) and too fuzzy (“repair relations with other countries?” Let the State Department figure that out.)
<
p>
Try a smaller program, with one or two main points. Big points. “Fighting corruption in defense contracts” is all well and good, but it isn’t a policy that gets ANYBODY elected.
<
p>
Until then, Kerry has the megaphone, and it’s blarring “get out now!”
These are points that won’t get ANYONE elected.
<
p>
According to your comment, you are a liberal who want our boys to get killed because you oppose giving them body armor. You want us to lose. (Pan to woman in black veil holding folded American flag)
<
p>
You’re saying that Democrats are also corrupt and it doesn’t really matter that Congress won’t even put together a panel to investigate billions of dollars lost to Parsons and Haliburton with no results in reconstruction. (Pan to shot of William Jefferson) Welcome back to Washington Mr. Ney!
<
p>
If you don’t take these positions they will be used against you. Getting out of Iraq is what we want, but not what will win the election. You must exploit your opponent’s weakness. Ads with pictures of GOP congressment associating with Abramoff should cost them votes and energize the left base if we have any honor left after 6 years of the dubster.
<
p>
“Get out now!” equals “Cut and run” and debases the honor of our men and women in uniform ready to make the ultimate sacrifice so that we aren’t burying more innocent Americans killed by Islamofascists attacking our Homeland. (Switch to slide show of dubya at ground zero and Giuliani raising hands of FDNY hat-clad fellows, and a woman holding a kitten who is suddenly struck down by Sheik on a camel.)
<
p>
These wingnuts are mad with power and will unleash the most sickening ads and rants on their huge platform of cable TV that will reach large number of people. You have to be ready for an onslaught like we haven’t seen before.
Kerry & Fiengold’s proposal for Iraq.
The Democrat’s jumping all over the amnesty proposal struck me as an instance where Bush hatred led them to close the door on a potential solutionm in Iraq just to score a layup on Bush. I’m led to believe that even if a grand solution presents itself in Iraq, Democrats will attempt to thwart it, because they seem to like the polictics of Iraq going badly.
<
p>
Amnsety for killers of US troops is exactly the sort of concession that the government in Iraq should offer in return for an end to civil war. In their view, the Americans are conducting an occupation, and insurgency against the Americans might be viewed as patriotic, whereas insurgency against fellow Iraqis was an attempt to foment civil war. If amnesty for killers of American troops can be part of an overall solution there, why would anyone stomp on it? Even if the chance was small, it struck me as tawdry pandering by Democrats, who are presently counseling retreat, to “support the troops” in this way, by pouring cold water on something that had even a small chance of sparking some success.
<
p>
Amnesty of this sort is exactly what Lincoln offered, for offenses far more extreme (actual Americans who, in a state of insurrection, killed American troops by the hundreds of thousands) in 1865.