07-11-2006, 06:27 AM
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NYT’s Media Menagerie & Netroots Hand Republicans 2006
http://www.democracy-project.com/archives/002643.html
Quote:
NYT’s Media Menagerie & Netroots Hand Reps 2006
Two core Democrat constituencies, mass media scrouges of the Bush administration and Leftist activists, are handing the 2006 elections to the Republicans.
For those who expected or feared the 2006 state and Congressional elections to be nationalized on the issue of widespread Iraq war-weariness, instead the nationalized issue is becoming the undermining of domestic security by the bridge-too-far route taken by the mass media allied with the New York Times and its netroots shock-troops (shock, in this case, being how outrageous can their conspiracy theories get).
Compared to the complexities and frustrations of military action in an alien culture halfway around the globe, on the issue of domestic security there is not widespread weariness nor confusion. The common American expectation is of safety at home, in one’s everyday peaceful pursuits, in the freedom to congregate or travel without fear, and that criminals – especially foreign-allied terrorists – should be vigorously stopped.
Always astute and succinct Robert Caldwell today summarizes the survey data about how this is “A political battle Bush is winning.”
The Lieberman-Lamont Democrat primary battle in one of our most liberal states, party primaries being where the effect of activists are most felt, is still expected to result in a Lieberman victory. If by some chance not, surveys of Lieberman’s standing as an independent in the general election show him overwhelmingly winning.
The minority standing of those Democrats most opposed to the U.S. engagement in Iraq, evident even in Connecticut, mirrors their national weightlessness. The latest Gallup poll shows even less (19%) understanding the Democrat’s position on Iraq than understanding the Bush administrations’ (25%). More telling is that 31% favor “gradual withdrawal”, 30% favor “stay the course” policies, and another 7% various consultative steps, which are closer to the three-fold tack the Bush administration is taking than to the “immediate withdrawal” course most identified with leading Democrats and favored by 47% of Democrats.
Unlike 1952, the Democrats have no one with a fraction of the credibility of an Eisenhower, or even 1968’s Nixon, to amorphously pledge to solve the war. The Democrats’ harping on “Bush lied” about WMD’s in 2003 is even unraveling as more Iraqi documents dribble out revealing substantial real threats and potential. (See Ed Morrisey’s stream of posts at CaptainsQuarters blog as a handy way to keep up.)
The bold and baldly false assertions by NYT’s executive editor Bill Keller that his decision to expose operational intelligence techniques via SWIFT was relatively harmless, even salutary, is belied by the stirring of opposition and undermining occurring among European participants, as seen here in the NYT’s itself. Such affirmations of solidarity as Slate media commentator Jack Schafer’s “Bush wants us to trust him. I’d rather trust Bill Keller,” ring absurdly to all but that narrow band of NYT’s allied Bush haters who are self-blinded from reality.
Of course, there’s much time between now and November for surprises, and no one should underestimate the ability of Republican politicians to shoot their own feet. However, there’s little reason to believe that Bush’s natural calmness and decency along with continued alternative and mainstream conservative media penetration of Leftist twaddle won’t be seen on balance as more assuring of overriding self-interests in domestic safety by the decisive margin in 2006, at least to the marginal extent that nationalized issues affect votes.
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