Yesterday, I sketched out a
plan for taking back the House that involved painting the Republicans as corrupt and portraying ourselves as the party that values the common good. It still needs some work so feel free to go over there and comment.
On a similar note, President Bush's decision to nominate Alberto Gonzales has given Senate Democrats have a great opportunity to make progress on the Values front. Gonzales memos okaying violations at worst or extreme distorations at best of the Geneva Convention has been documented elsewhere on this blog. Most Americans were apalled by Abu Ghraib and many libertarians are appaled by the scaling back of civil liberties by this administration. We need to make an argument that Gonzales does not share the American value of liberty that stretches back to the time of the Founding Fathers. We need to say that torture is not something valued by American civilization. We need to point out that Democrats oppose Gonzales because Democrats are protecting one of the three central American values outlined by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: liberty.
The Republicans claim that they are the party that respects "life." We need to fight them on this. However, there are still two central American values that Democrats ought to own fully if we'd just care to use them: liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
On a side note, the use of Salazar as the point man to oppose Gonzales is a good idea so that it would make clear that we oppose Gonzales for his beliefs, not his ethnicity.