I have never understood why Dems are not attacking the Repubs on the issue of "terrorism." This is the only single major issue that the Dems do not absolutely kick the crap out of the Repubs on in almost all of the polling that has come out in the past year or so.
In the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, Terrorism is the only one of the issues in which Dems are not viewed substantially more favorably than the Repubs. Here is a link to the CNN article about the poll findings: http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/25/poll.bush/index.html
Not to belabor the point, but what the article basically says that Dems win on all major domestic issues and now, for the first time ever, win on the issue of who would be better at handling Iraq. However, 49% favor Repubs and 38% favor Dems on issue of "fighting terrorism," though the article says there has been a major shift in how the public views this issue, with a substantially higher number viewing Dems as better now than at any time in the past.
My question then is why is the Democratic leadership not pounding the Repubs on their handling of that issue? This is the only issue that they have left. They have gotten a rediculous amount of mileage out of this issue. My is it that they have been allowed to dominate the debate on this issue for this long?
The Repubs' public statements have been that 9/11 and terrorism is somehow linked to Iraq. Iraq has been described as the "central front in the war on terrorism." Yet, for the first time ever, this new poll shows that the public does not support this war and thinks it was a mistake. In other words, the majority of the public thinks that the Bush administration's primary vehicle for fighting this "war on terrorism" is being incorrectly managed and was not justified in the first place.
Why is it that our leaders have not completely beat the Republicans up on this issue? We now have the poll numbers to back up our arguments. There are no excusses at this point.
This does not even raise the point that domestically, these folks have dropped the ball with securing our ports, etc. Katrina demonstrated that they have dropped the ball domestically on disaster preparedness to the point that this issue doesn't even need any more discussion.
I'm not understanding why our elected officials are not beating up the other party on the one issue that they are still strong on. If we knock their legs out on the terrorism issue, they literally have no other issues left. It's the only issue they have and they haven't done worth a damn on that issue. We now have the ammo to go after them on that issue. Are we going to capitalize on this finally or not?