Monday, October 02, 2006
A bad week for the Democrats on policy, for the GOP on media fronts.
The Democrats got nailed in the Congressional chambers last week. On the detainee issue, Bush pretty much got what he wanted, a fair approximation of what has always been done. But when listening to the irrational rantings and historical/military revision of Democrat Senators Pat Leahy, Ted Kennedy and Bob Kerry, one shudders at the thought of them actually setting policy in the General War on Terror. Republicans can pretty much use this as campaign fodder for the undecideds or unenthused who understand the war on terror. From my Minnesota perspective, I care more now about the race between Kennedy and Klobuchar than I did last week. I’ll be making my first contribution to his campaign.
The second issue was the vote for 700 miles of fence on the Mexican border. This will help bring the base back home as it has been very dissatisfied with the DC GOP’s lack of action on this issue.
This was overshadowed - heck, shoved into non-existance - by two media plays. The first was the release of the Bob Woodward book that claims to detail how dissenting voices on Iraq were squashed in the administration so the American people could be lied to. The ‘other shoe’ is beginning to drop here and we’ll cover more on this later, but suffice it to say that the principles quoted in the book are crying foul, and that 'secret information' claimed by Woodward were never secrets. In the plus column on this one is that the Republicans seem to playing a bit of offense on this issue, with Andrew Card giving interviews saying that, among other things, Woodward took him “completely out of context” over his comments on Rumsfeld to President Bush.
The second was the resignation of Florida Congressman Mark Foley, which the media and the Democrats (sorry for the redundancy) are trying to leverage into a representation of the entire Republican party. Again, other shoes are dropping, but the media will use this to keep real news off the front page and nightly news. I've already seen a couple very biased reports on the issue; it will keep the GOP off-balance for this week, maybe more. As above, more on this later.
The second issue was the vote for 700 miles of fence on the Mexican border. This will help bring the base back home as it has been very dissatisfied with the DC GOP’s lack of action on this issue.
This was overshadowed - heck, shoved into non-existance - by two media plays. The first was the release of the Bob Woodward book that claims to detail how dissenting voices on Iraq were squashed in the administration so the American people could be lied to. The ‘other shoe’ is beginning to drop here and we’ll cover more on this later, but suffice it to say that the principles quoted in the book are crying foul, and that 'secret information' claimed by Woodward were never secrets. In the plus column on this one is that the Republicans seem to playing a bit of offense on this issue, with Andrew Card giving interviews saying that, among other things, Woodward took him “completely out of context” over his comments on Rumsfeld to President Bush.
The second was the resignation of Florida Congressman Mark Foley, which the media and the Democrats (sorry for the redundancy) are trying to leverage into a representation of the entire Republican party. Again, other shoes are dropping, but the media will use this to keep real news off the front page and nightly news. I've already seen a couple very biased reports on the issue; it will keep the GOP off-balance for this week, maybe more. As above, more on this later.
# posted by Ricard : 3:51 PM
