So, what's the one thing
you took away from Bush's press conference on Monday? The admission that there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11? The declaration that we'd never leave Iraq while he's president?
Here's the actual story from that news conference: Bush, Rove and Bolten have decided that the way to win this November is to embrace the war.
From the New York Times:
Bush's political aides have urged fellow Republicans to embrace the conflict, and Bush seemed to go a step further, suggesting that he hoped the midterm elections congressional would be fought over rival approaches on Iraq.
So what, you say. Haven't they always embraced the war? Well, no, they haven't. They've defended the war. They've tried to justify it. They've consistently lied about it. But it's been 3 years since they've embraced it. Don't cry "semantics!" until you've gotten beneath the fold, because there's a huge difference. This strategy is newer, riskier and bolder than it might appear.
Here's how the GOP expects to win November: take ownership of the war, tie it to terrorism, and let the average American idiot sufficiently confuse the two.
A sampling of the nation's papers indicates it ain't working.
The Boston Globe:
Bush - or rather Karl Rove - wants Iraq to be the defining debate in upcoming elections. They are gambling on it. They figure they can pull off the tried-and-true Republican song and dance one more time: They scare the country and marginalize those who challenge war in Iraq as left-wing moonbats who don't understand the true nature of the terrorist threat.
At this stage in the midterm game, it's astounding that the Republicans would adopt such a risky strategy. Certainly, someone has read the polls to Bush. Fully 61% of Americans disapprove of this war, and he could never change their minds in 11 weeks, right?
But there are "reasons" for doing it:
1. No other options are available
BushCo has known for weeks that they'd be recalling thousands of troops who were just starting to get their lives back in order - who thought they were done with Iraq. The civil war and the escalating "sectarian violence" and the civilian casualties and the loosening grip on Baghdad have, collectively, exposed an undermanned coalition. Knowing this involuntary recall would make news, the GOP had really no other choice except to publicly acknowledge that we're a long way from "done" in Iraq. Those of us anticipating an "October surprise" featuring U.S. troops returning home, en masse and in tears, kissing American soil and embracing loved ones after a job well done, would be either disappointed or emboldened, depending on your perspective.
That tells you exactly how bad the situation is in Iraq.
From the LA Times:
In tying together several U.S. objectives in one vital "job," Bush is trying to make it harder for critics of an open-ended U.S. commitment to question any particular goal. The debate that needs to take place is about which, if any, of those objectives can justify the president's ominously open-ended commitment.
2. A lot can happen in 75 days - and none of it is good for Bush
By the third week of October, the number of coalition deaths in Iraq will equal the number of American deaths on 9/11. The media will have a field day at Bush's expense, thanks in large part to you and I and the rest of the blogosphere. This will be the Democrats' opportunity to stand together and say, quite unequivocally, that the Iraq war has now produced more coalition deaths than the manufactured, false excuse for initiating it.
Then there's Iran. With much posturing and blowharding yet to be done, nothing good can come of Iran between now and November 7th.
A little storm named "Debby" may even have something to say about the GOP's fate between now and November.
In other words, even Rove can't manufacture good news in the run-up to the election.
3. Rethugs need a reason to vote
The goal here isn't really to change anybody's mind about the war; instead, the goal is to neutralize the conviction of those beliefs - to energize the GOP base in such a way that the anti-war vote is effectively cancelled out. With the tide turning against them this fall, Republicans might otherwise not have any reason to show up on November 7th.
The Washington Post:
It's also important to remember that the national GOP's focus on security issues is less an attempt to appeal to independent and swing voters than it is an effort to energize their base. Democratic partisans who strongly disapprove of the job Bush is doing are already motivated to turn out this fall, a fact that causes endless worry for Republican strategists. Typically in a midterm election only those who follow politics most closely (and tend to be the most partisan) turn out -- therefore a major difference in the energy levels of the respective party bases could spell disaster for Republicans in November (a la 1994 for Democrats).
4. Rove knows the majority of Americans are too numb (or too dumb) to pay attention
Did you notice the "wordsmithing" of Monday's press conference? Bush said, "nobody's ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack." Ordered. That's the key word. Of course, we've all seen and heard Bush make direct and indirect connections between Iraq and 9/11. Read all of them here. And while "only" 44% of Americans now believe that connection, the idiot ratio is still way too high.
Now, Bush gives the idiots the new talking point - that no one ever implied Saddam "ordered" the attacks.
So...
How's this all playing out with rubberstamp MSM? Not so good, as it turns out. In fact, I can't remember a time when the print media was so vehemently defiant in the face of a new Bush strategy. Can you guess which newspaper led with this sentence in a Monday editorial?
It is clear that President Bush has no Iraq policy beyond the ill-defined one he's been pursuing for three and a half years. That policy has torn the country apart and brought it to the brink of civil war.
That would the Salt Lake Tribune, believe it or not. And they kept punching:
Since before the administration's ill-conceived attack and poorly executed occupation of Iraq, the White House has promulgated the fiction that al-Qaida was plotting with Saddam Hussein and that the war was central to combating terrorism. It wasn't then and it isn't now.
Here in my own hometown of Madison, this was the entire editorial:
Just to confirm for any Republican strategists who might still be thinking about suggesting that the United States needed to invade and occupy Iraq as part of a response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, here is what President Bush said when the issue arose at this week's press conference.
Question: (What did Iraq have to do with) the attacks upon the World Trade Center?
Bush: Nothing.
`Nuf said.
The LA Times:
President Bush emphasized no fewer than 10 times in his news conference Monday that U.S. forces would not leave Iraq "before the job is done." It's a clever piece of rhetoric, appealing to Americans' sense of duty as well as their pride. Just one question: What was that job again?
And the best paragraph of all, again from LAT:
At times, the loudest noise at his news conference was the sound of mission creep. In June, Bush conceded that a democratic Iraq will at some point have to stand or fall on its own. ("Success in Iraq," he said, "depends upon the Iraqis.") On Monday, however, Bush said U.S. forces would remain until the Iraqi people "achieve their objectives and their dreams, which is a democratic society." Success may depend on the Iraqis, but it is defined by the Americans.
Oh, yeah...about Peoria:
The Bush administration is once again engaged in a pattern of fright politics, attacking Democrats who question their policies and insisting their own methods are the only right methods of fighting terrorism.
They continually use the real terrorist threats as a rationale to bolster their own power through secret and sometimes unconstitutional policies. Cheney and Bush do not think they should answer to anyone, not even the congressional or the judicial branches of government.
They continue to insist that the only possible response to 9-11 is the war in Iraq (which, unfortunately, further destabilized that region), rather than engaging in more useful prevention methods such as intelligence gathering. Or, as Gov. Tom Kean of the 9-11 Commission has suggested, to make sure that no nuclear materials get into terrorist hands.
If I didn't research these articles myself, I'd swear that we were writing them, not the MSM.
What's the "embrace the war" reaction in your slice of the country?
(Note: Part II of this diary, coming tomorrow, will call "marketing genius" Karl Rove out on the carpet, and detail all the marketing rules he's breaking with this strategy.)