I have a friend, a hiking buddy - let's call her Charlotte - whom I have known for many years.
Charlotte is middle-aged. She's a small-businesswoman, a longtime active Sierra Club member, and a wilderness enthusiast, well-traveled and well-educated. She might be the only person I know who has actually been to Afghanistan - albeit a long, long time ago. And she's a Republican.
Charlotte and I have shared many campfire conversations over the years. I have long been aware that she was a Republican, but it wasn't until about a year and a half ago, when we were sitting around a campfire at Joshua Tree National Park among a group of friends and the subject of politics came up, that my eyes were truly opened about what it is that drives so many people to vote for George Bush and the Republicans.
(I realize this may seem like the most patently obvious, elementary understanding ever
about the current Republican mindset, but when I heard it coming from Charlotte's mouth, it was a revelation to me. At the time, it hit me like a lightning bolt.)
So we're sitting around the campfire, trading stories and having a laugh, and somehow the conversation drifts around to politics. We get to talking about Iraq, and Bush, and terrorism - and during the course of the conversation it becomes clear to me - like sunlight breaking through clouds - that the reason that Charlotte - and, by extension, so many other otherwise intelligent, rational people - had voted for George Bush - twice - was very simple:
Fear.
Looming larger than any other single issue or combination of issues - the environment, the economy, the national debt, corruption, healthcare, constitutional violation, religious fundamentalism - completely overshadowing all of those concerns put together was naked, unadulterated Fear.
Specifically, Fear of Terrorism.
I have been watching the unfolding of recent events through the lens of this very personal understanding. The well-coordinated Republican response to a coincidental pair of events (Ned Lamont's victory in the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary, and the British government's foiling of a plot to blow up U.S.-bound airliners) has been laughable and utterly predictable. It represents a final, last-ditch effort to go to a well that has been gone to over and over by Republicans in the past five years. It used to work for them.
"A vote for a Democrat is a vote for the terrorists," has been the Republicans' message.
And it's time that we Democrats take a sledgehammer to that message.
It's time that we turn that message back on the Republicans who are so mindlessly spewing it once again.
It's time we turn the focus on Republicans and their inexcusable, abysmal, tragic, corrupt, and incompetent handling of the very real threat of terrorism.
Democrats need to be strong on the issue of terrorism. Democrats need to make Americans understand that they will be safer with Democrats at the helm in this country. Democrats need to project an aura of competence, integrity and common sense when it comes to dealing with the very real, very immediate threats to the physical safety of the citizens of this country.
Because, as I found out with my friend Charlotte, terrorism for many otherwise intelligent, rational people is beyond logic: it is a visceral issue. So here's what we tell them:
REPUBLICANS CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO KEEP AMERICA SAFE.
That's our message. Period.
Republicans - whether through corruption, incompetence, political expediency, lack of will or lack of caring - have demonstrated time and time again that they cannot or will not do what is necessary to ensure the physical well-being of the citizens of this country.
This is not a nuanced argument. This is visceral.
And the facts are on our side.
America is not safer from terrorist attack than it was five years ago; it is less safe. And that is due to the incompetence, corruption, and lack of true leadership demonstrated by the Republicans in charge of this country.
As pointed out by Meteor Blades in his diary, Republicans won't pass the Safe Skies Cargo Inspection Act. Under intense pressure from industry lobbyists, they won't appropriate funding for thorough and meaningful inspection of cargo coming into American ports. In fact, the only reason they even passed any kind of port-security measure - just three months ago, after years of pressure from Democrats - was because of the flap over the Dubai Ports fiasco, in which President Bush and the adminstration (including Treasury Secretary John Snow, who had just the previous year sold his interest in the very port operations whose contract he had approval power over) was ready to hand off operations of several of America's top ports to a country with a well-established history of abetting terrorists.
Five years after 9/11, emergency responders still cannot communicate with each other, in spite of the fact that the 9/11 commission pointed out the seriousness of that problem.
More than 10 years after a plot was uncovered wherein Al Qaeda planned to blow up multiple U.S.-bound airliners by smuggling on board components of liquid-explosive bombs, nothing was done by the Bush administration to address this scenario after 9/11 until last week, in a Keystone Kops knee-jerk response to an equivalent plot evidently uncovered in Britain.
In fact, as Hunter points out, BushCo has cut funding for research and development of anti-terror detection devices.
Five years after 9/11, after years of careful deliberation, the Department of Homeland Security tells us the top potential terrorist targets include Old MacDonald's Petting Zoo in Alabama, but not Times Square - and allocates money accordingly. As Devilstower reports, DHS thinks it's making America safer by buying a Bearcat armored vehicle for Germantown, Tennessee, another one for Santa Fe, New Mexico, and still another one - with a price tag of $250,000 - for the terrorist hotbed of Middleton, Wisconsin.
Five years after 9/11, and President Bush "doesn't spend that much time on" hunting Osama bin Laden, who is still at large. Five years after 9/11, and 2,700 American troops have died in Iraq - as many as died in the World Trade Center attack. So far, $300 billion has been wasted in Iraq, with zero benefit to the War on Terror.
These Republican efforts are pathetic and dangerous - and Democrats must jump all over them.
Republicans have not made Americans safer. And Americans understand that. Viscerally.
We don't need to get bogged down with every logical, factual argument that illustrates how corrupt, incompetent, and power hungry the Republicans are. Illegal wiretapping and violations of the Fourth Amemdment? Too wonkish. Concentration of power in the hands of the executive? BOH-rinnng! Mistreatment of detainees, illegal rendition, secret camps? Yawwwnnn -
What people understand viscerally is standing in line and taking their shoes off, or not being able to take their iPods on the plane, or their bottled water. What they understand viscerally is when the security guard - the only thing standing between them and being blown to little pieces at 30,000 feet - is making minimum wage. What they understand viscerally is that Republicans would rather have an Arab country with an established history of abetting terrorists handling operations at our most important ports, rather than federalizing it and keeping it under American control, because there's Big Money involved. PEOPLE GET THAT.
What is visceral and what has swayed people for the last two presidential elections - putting aside the question of whether they were stolen - is PERCEIVED PHYSICAL SAFETY FROM PERCEIVED THREATS OF TERRORISM.
On September 12, 2001, we had the goodwill of virtually the entire world behind us. But then, as he has done with so many things that he believes are "behind" him - the Constitution, the men and women of our armed forces, the economy, the American people - George Bush wiped his ass with that goodwill and turned it inside out, to the point now where America is a pariah.
Americans get that, and they don't like it.
Americans get the stupidity of not taking reasonable precautions against real threats on a regular basis in a matter-of-fact, adult, responsible way. The idea of liquid explosives being used in a plot to bring down multiple airplanes wasn't invented last week - it was attempted 12 years ago. After 9/11 it became clear that, as the 9/11 Commission put it, a "failure of imagination" had cost thousands of lives. In the case of the Three Stooges-like panic of last week - DROP THE HAIR GEL! STEP AWAY FROM THE EVIAN BOTTLE! - the failure of our Department of Homeland Security to address that type of scenario previously wasn't even a failure of imagination, it was a failure of common sense.
People get that.
We need to keep the message simple, and repeat it over and over and over:
REPUBLICANS CAN'T BE TRUSTED TO KEEP AMERICA SAFE. They are corrupt and incompetent.
Americans need and want their leaders to act like grownups when it comes to preventing acts of terrorism. Republicans have shown themselves unwilling or unable to make the hard choices, the responsible adult choices that need to be made.
After his stolen dubious presidential election victory in 2004, George Bush smirkingly asserted
I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style. That's what happened in the -- after the 2000 election, I earned some capital. I've earned capital in this election -- and I'm going to spend it for what I told the people I'd spend it on, which is -- you've heard the agenda: Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror.
Wrong, right, wrong, wrong, and wrong. Fact of the matter was, even when he uttered those absurd words, Mr. Big Spender already had burned through whatever capital he may have borrowed or stolen in the past, his Political CapitalOne card had exceeded its limit, and he was down to some pocket change at best. Now, with the 2006 midterm elections fast approaching, the Republicans are frantically digging through their wallets, reaching for the Fear Card and hoping that it, too, hasn't been maxed out.
So they're saying Democrats are soft on terror. The Taliban/Al Qaeda wing of the Democratic Party, and all that.
How perfectly ironic.
The fact of the matter is this:
Every time the choice has been between protecting Americans or protecting corporate profits, the Republicans have chosen to protect corporate profits.
Democrats need to take a firm stand against this bullshit line, and redirect Americans' collective rage, anxiety and frustration back onto the Republicans who have put our country into this compromised position through 5-1/2 years of failed leadership, and incidents like these:
- The fiasco over federalizing airport security just after 9/11, when the argument was made that another federal bureaucracy would do more harm than good to the security of Americans, even though the travesties visited upon the American flying public by private "security" firms were well-documented.
- Republican outsourcing or privatizing of huge chunks of our nation's security functions, from Blackwater to Halliburton (from filling sandbags to charging $26 for a meal and $45 for a case of soda)
- With the threat of avian flu hanging over the country, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's helping vaccine makers draft legislation protecting them from liability arising from use of the vaccine.
Republicans: Soft on terror, easy on Big Business.
As embodied by my friend Charlotte, even the most intelligent, open-minded, centrist Republican - and even many Democrats - can be swayed by fear of the unknown, and the (however misguided or baseless) belief that, somehow, their government will protect them. And, unfortunately, under a competent administration and Congress, this would not be an unreasonable expectation. With the current group of criminals, it is unreasonable.
And I'm not even going to touch upon the other ways the Republicans can't be trusted to keep America and Americans safe - healthcare, disaster relief, environmental and occupational health, child safety, safety from government spying - and instead, will just limit this diary to the terrorism aspect of the safety of America and Americans.
Too many voters still believe the Republican Party is the one that best can keep them and their loved ones safe. Democrats must destroy - must demolish - this misperception utterly, in order to win back the House and Senate in November.
REPUBLICANS CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO KEEP AMERICA SAFE.
The myth that Republicans are somehow better protectors of Americans is just that - a myth - and until the American voter has been convincingly shown that, he or she will continue to fall victim to the fear-mongering strategy of the Republicans.
(Hat tip to Jeffrey Feldman for his excellent diary on this)