Just speculating, as I'm not near as versed in stratergy as our President, but here goes: Every prominent democrat, up until the start of the war in Iraq, can be quoted condemning Saddam's use and possession of weapons of mass destruction. No one in the mainstream would dare mention these quotes today as they pound the no WMD's line at every possible opportunity. Without concrete, irrefutable evidence of Saddam's involvement in September 11, the media would crucify (i.e. yellowcake/Niger) any claims made by the Bush Administration. I believe they are attempting to put together an unimpeachable dossier implicating Saddam before releasing it to the enemy, er I mean, the press.
Women hold the key to the election of Conservative politicians.
EVERY GOP presidential candidate since WWII would have won had only MEN voted. Yes, including Bush I (2nd) and Dole.
EVERY RAT presidential candidate since WWII would have won had only WOMEN voted. Yes, including Carter (2nd), Dukakis and Gore.
The candidacy of Schwarzenegger in rat-infested California was brilliant because it ensured the female vote.
Conservative/Libertarian purists have absolutely no political sense when it comes to winning and keeping elected office.
The most conservative candidate combined with the charisma to win the female vote is the ONLY option for the GOP.
It comes down to this:
The GOP candidate must be more attractive to men yet less offensive to women. In the current instance, Bush is a man's man with enough compassion to win some soccer moms.
The RAT candidate must be more attractive to women yet less offensive to men. In the current instance, Kerry is an effete pompous wimp who men do not like. Women do not find Kerry charismatic.
I think the female vote hinges on two factors:
1. Soccer moms have been displaced by security moms. Bush needs to make females understand their babies will be murdered by terrorists under a Kerry regime.
2. Iraq should ALWAYS have been pursued as a humanitarian issue to keep women voters on side. We ALL would have understood that Iraq was a continuation of the war on terror without saying it. Humanitarian cover would have pre-empted the bleeding heart females' criticism of the war effort no matter how it ended. Stupid move on the part of the political strategists, but certainly not fatal. NOW is the time to pick up this theme constantly and endlessly.
Men will not abandon Bush if we keep sending missiles into terrorist nests, while handing chocolates and flowers to women and children to assuage female guilt.
Bottom line:
With a warning for Bush to keep pounding on the female vulnerability of safety and security, and on our humanitarian successes in Iraq, Bush earns FOUR MORE YEARS!
Please help ensure the Bush team gets the message.
I had thought for some time as you do, Quilla.
I've since changed my mind. The fact that Saddam had such links with AQ is irrefutable and goes back over a decade. Such facts are easily provable.
If President Bush is waiting, he's waited too long (imo). He has lost a lot of support for the war and people are just turned off by it now. He's let the Democrats have the talking points for too long.
If he'd been talking about Saddam's links with OBL right along, Americans would have been cheering every bit of good news for 2 years, instead of ingesting all the bad news from the media and grousing about the war. That kind of optimistic view from Americans would be helping our soldiers and discouraging our enemies.
I'm so discouraged about this because I feel the only way for the president to turn around support for the war in Iraq is to bolster support for it. The only way to bolster support at this point is to find WMD - and I don't think we will as they are elsewhere, Syria for example. So the only other way to bolster support, and it's a truthful way to go about it, is to make Americans understand how Saddam supported terrorism in general and AQ specifically.
I think Quilla is correct ....the campaign in most of America is just now starting ...You wait till you see the whites of their eyes, before you unload the ammunition.
Monsoor Ijaz was recently quoted as saying those who think there is no connection between Iraq nd AlQaeda are simply wrong... A lot of Americans believe that..Its the media and the left that are obsessed with the idea that "Bush lied" about this.
I tried to post this article last night and the web site was having problems. I saw it at DU where those people were having a fit about it. If Bush can make the case that he was right to have gone into Iraq because it is the key in the WoT he will win.