Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Iraqi Tragedy and Republican Partisanship

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  • Republicans were completely incurious about the lack of WMD. If you care about winning, you care about getting the intelligence right. If you only care about winning the next election, then you change the subject. Similarly, they had no questions about the Niger forgery. 
  • They have only had a pretense of a strategy because that is all that is needed in our sound-bite polity. Evidence of this is how the Administration and Congressional Republicans were able to seamlessly switch from the position that the “Generals on the ground” had enough troops to the necessity for an escalation.

In all of these instances, Republicans recognized that if they lost the argument about Iraq, they would be humiliated. Not committing any people to Iraq, they didn't recognized that screwing up the policy about Iraq would be profoundly immoral.

 

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  1. Well said, and I think this is a good description of why the American people turned the Congress over to us.

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    Republicans have political cover; they can say they stood behind their commander in chief, and their base will hold.

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    Now the burden is on the Democratic Party. We have to end the war. Maybe we can leave a base or two, but we need a significant withdrawal with a firm date.

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    Every Democratic candidate should stand on one stage and demand this of the Congressional caucus: cut the funding, end the war.

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    If we do it, we win next year. If we don’t, we lose. Period.

    • The grassroots really need to start playing border collie on the Democrats or this war is going to drag on and on. It's very hard to get Congressional Democrats to stay together and on message. In another comment, I listed a primary campaign, a MoveOn campaign, and OpenLeft's Bush Dog campagin as possible ways to do this. While I think it's great that Kerry is going after the Roadblock Republicans, such efforts don't get much traction if Pelosi cannot get herself a majority in the House. (I provided links, too.)

       A recent article in Truthout points to how candidate recruiting and DCCC interference in Democratic primaries in 2006 gave us an unnecessarily hawkish Democratic caucus.

    • Jim C, I don’t think your suggestion is good politics.  Neither do Reid and Pelosi, who are shutting down the “firm date” for now. 

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      Although I’d probably concede I don’t have a lot of confidence in their judgment, either.

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      Here’s my question:

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      Given that Bush’s low approval ratings are linked to all of KBusch’s points (and more, of course)…..

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      ….why, despite all the R mistakes and corruption, do R’s have a 44-43% edge in national security?  Particularly when EVERY other issue skews D? 

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      My answer: just pounding on the anti-Bush message has limits.  It plays well to the D base.  Tsongas can have a simplistic “End Iraq/Bush is Bad.” 

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      In the presidential election, however, moderates who crave national security will say “Who’s better?  The R’s despite all their mistakes, despite Bush’s stupidity?  Or the D’s…who criticize and carp but who, with their simplistic ‘Leave Now’ message, don’t make any connection to how it fits into a larger, aggressive defense strategy?”

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      And by the way, that 44-43 edge comes without a single scary development at home.  One Al Qaeda incident, as Hillary has said, would probably move the needle to 54-33. 

      • I have a lot of respect for Reid and Pelosi, and Carl Levin, who’s pushing a compromise — a “goal” of withdrawal without a firm date.

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        But here’s the problem: we are ignoring the 2006 mandate. The GOP will run with any compromise and claim victory, call us weak, etc. The American people will not care about any of that. All they will see is, we elected Democrats to end the war, and the war goes on. It doesn’t matter who we vote for. So our base will fragment, and the GOP’s base, which is smaller and more focused, and which the GOP WILL HAVE SERVED, will hold. So they win the presidency, and we lose it.

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        I don’t see it any other way. We offer deals, they accept them and then renege on them and renegotiate later. That’s why Bush is in the toilet, nationally — but we’re right there with him (check the polls on Congress), because we were supposed to stop him, and we aren’t doing it.

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        FYI, theoretically I’m on vacation and not checking this (we haven’t left yet), so if I don’t reply it’s not personal. I appreciate your view, I just think the clock has run out. Our last chance to stop the war is right now.

        • I think you hit the nail on the head, JimC. The Republicans get the Democrats to demonstrate that they are weak in responding to partisan attacks. Voters generalize this and conclude that the Democrats will be weak on national security.

          Josh Micah Marshall pointed out that a similar dynamic played out with the Swift Boat Veterans “for Truth” attack on Kerry. It wasn't just the content of the attacks that hurt. It was the weakness of the response. 

      • The polling outfit to which you linked tends to poll Republicans more favorably than do other polls. In analyses of public opinion that I've read, they're frequently an outlier. I might believe that Republicans are polling close to Democrats on national security, but I seem to recall seeing polls where Republicans had lost even that. Perhaps I'm imagining things but I'd like to see how other polling organizations measure this.

        As an aside, the poll you give shows a huge interest in health care as an issue. 90% regard it as important or somewhat important. The Democrats also have a lopsided advantage on it.

        • …all polling companies are weighted using various weighting factors.  They are not publishing raw data.

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          According to Josh Marshall’s web site, Rasmussen’s weighting factors tend to favor Republcans.  Weighting factors used by other companies do not.

        • My citing one poll has generated a few thoughts: just 1 poll, Rasmussen biased, within margin for error, etc. 

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          I’m happy to stipulate all of that.  My point was not that R’s are ahead per se.  It’s that D’s are NOT ahead.  I.e., I mean we’re talking a ginormous amount of Republican leadership failure.  We’re talking about metric tons of press criticism of that failure. 

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          Yet it’s pretty much a dead heat. 

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          Or whatever poll you want to cite.  I don’t think anyone is arguing that D’s are ahead here by significant margins, if at all.  We agree Bush has made every mistake possible, almost every mistake one could theoretically IMAGINE. 

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          Yet no lead for D’s. 

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          My point is that it’s possible for D’s to win on EVERY issue, except national security, and still lose the presidential election.  I would like to avoid that scenario.

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          But I totally understand Jim C’s argument. 

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          His: Pelosi/Reid make a tragic mistake in not pushing for “Date Certain” — you lose the D base, they become very frustrated.  This is Vietnam again.  Every day you stay is wasted. 

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          Mine: Pelosi/Reid are right.  Get a bipartisan deal for drawdown, then win over centrists with natural advantage on other issues. 

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          Maybe it’s b/c Jim C is with the base, and I’m in the center, so we naturally focus the analysis on serving “our” part of the spectrum. 

          • But the GOP won’t honor the deal (sorry if that’s sounds partisan, but it’s true), and the Democratic Party base overwhelmingly opposes the war while the GOP base bvery narrowly supports the war. If by centrist you mean moderate, I find it hard to believe moderates want an endless war. So there’s the math: a hardline GOP happy, a demoralized Democratic Party, and a bunch of moderates who at least know where one party stands.

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            That’s why I say withdraw. If you do it in terms of “We’re withdrawing to make sure we’re safe at home and have resources to prevent terrorism at home and abroad,” I think we’re OK.

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            Leaving soon … I hope. Everybody have a good week.

      • It is well within the margin of sampling error. Furthermore, anyone would be foolish to trust the results of any one poll.

      • and a bad pick because it's a generic questions, not tied to specific candidates. So, here's some more cherry picking, if you please. According to Rasmussen in late July, Clinton lead on national security issues, not a Republican. That is, 28% trust her on national security issues, as opposed to only 20% trusting Giuliani. the supposed security-guru. That's an 8 point spread on real candidates – not a generic ballot. (The low numbers are because this is spread out amoung all the other Democratic & Republican challengers.) And Giuliani's numbers ain't because Americans trust other Republicans. Only 2% trust Mitt Romney. Thompson, the Republican TV-star, only got 11%, whereas the Democrat's rockstar, Barack Obama, is trusted on national security issues by 15% of Americans. And McCain? Only 7% trust him on national security issues.

  2. you have to fight fire with fire.  “Cut and Run” was their phrase people (specifically democrats) who want to bring the occupation to an end.  Notice how  Republicans who want to end the war like Hagel dont get called Cut and Runners.  The Republicans question the patriotism of Democrats opposed to the war.

  3. But the Iraq debacle can be layed at the feet of Donald Rumsfeld, A pack of eunuchs in the US Military and every member of Congress.

     But mostly the Rumsfeld, Bremer, Wolfowitz, Franks, Pace clique, aided and abtted by the remainder of the bed wetters on the Joint Chief's of Staff.

    • …the primary reason that the Joint Chiefs now are bed-wetters is because Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld got rid of all the non-bed-wetters.

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      Bush, Cheney and Dumsfeld are what the Germans would refer to as Besserwisser.  That’s a sarcastic way of saying “know-it-alls.

    • …it is satire.  I don’t have the URL over here in Germany, but if you root around their cite you will find a “bingo” card displaying a number of excuses that yellow elephants use for not enlisting.  It is really hillarious.

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      The sad fact, though, is that they are all true.

    • It is a completely ad hominem maneuver. In a completely civil debate, we just would never ever indulge in such attacks. I guess that’s why I think it’s in mildly bad taste.

      On the other hand, Republicans have pretty much disqualified themselves from such special treatment given the bullet points above from Charley's my post. The problem is that they have not been honest players in the national dialog on Iraq.

      Otherwise, they maybe might have cared about the missing WMDs or the the stench of corruption. (Warning: The video heading the article to which I just linked contains literal stench.)

      • aren’t presidential and most other campaigns just giant ad hominem maneuvers?  they always pledge not to be, but they almost always become this.  so why shy away from making good ad hominem points on very large, fundamental issues central to the campaigns? 

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        I consider certain policies to be ad hominem attacks on the very being of the average citizen.  This can be any policy from never-serving leaders send out the peasants to fight, to enjoying your own marriage but forbidding one to you a class of citizens.  The yellow elephant thing isn’t perceived by everyone as an ad hom attack because a wide swath of the electorate already knows they’re being had.  so it’s not seen as incivil debate. it’s seen as pointing out hypocrisy.

      • …hypocrisy is of necessity ad hominem. 

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        But OperationYellowElephant isn’t arguing logic.  It’s pointing out hypocrisy.

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        Pointing out bias in a witness at a court trial is also of necessity ad hominem but how could you point out a witness’s bias without doing so?

  5.  This week I took the time to compile my own list of Republican corruption.  (I went ahead and included the pedophiles.)  I thought I'd finish in a couple of hours; it took me three days.  Last time I counted I had over 200 names.

    I thought you might enjoy a gander.

    http://fluffer-union…

        • adultery and sexual hypocrisy!  btw, the Now Completely HeterosexualTM Haggard recently sent out a fundraising letter saying he was going to be a councilor at some home for rehabilitating ex-cons, etc.  however, it transpires that
          a) the home says NO WAY is he coming here, and
          b) the “non-profit” he was asking people to donate to him through is defunct and…had been operated by a convicted sex offender.
          Good golly miss molly!

          • “Family values” Republicans and evangelicals committing adultery, consorting with prostitutes and sex offenders,  cruising for gay sex… it would be funny, if my civil rights weren't under constant assault by these clowns.

            BTW, I like that phrase Now Completely HeterosexualTM – doesn't it sound like a great title for a self-help video / book?  Sorry that I can't seize the business opportunity myself – I'd be even less convincing as NCHTM than Ted or Senator Tap Tap.

             

  6.  In a post on Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, he writes:

    And such is the war in Iraq as seen through neocon lenses. Mistakes are always in the past. The current policy is always working. When the mistakes are being made, those who point out the mistakes are tarred as near-treasonous. Then, after another year or two of pointless, futile bloodshed, it's conceded that mistakes were made in the past. But now we're right on track. And the liberals, once again, just don't get it.

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