Posted on 12/17/2003 1:08:10 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
WASHINGTON -- Laura Coker-Garcia is the kind of suburban mom presidential campaigns love to woo: She votes, she cares about education and she worries about national security.
Coker-Garcia, a resident of unincorporated Harris County, is a member of this year's hot-button, swing voter demographic: the "security mom."
A step beyond the soccer moms of earlier election seasons, the security moms are a threat to Democrats, because their priorities have expanded beyond pocketbook and social concerns toward issues that favor Republicans, such as national security.
While polls have shown national security to be a rising issue with women voters, neither party has managed to gain meaningful traction on that issue alone.
Democrats are at a historical disadvantage with voters on national security, and the Bush administration has been criticized for its efforts at bringing about homeland security programs. The impact on next year's election, particularly with women voters, remains an open question.
Security moms are not the whole picture. In key battleground states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida, women of all stripes are once again expected to be pivotal in choosing the next president.
"The gender gap has been a critical factor in every election since 1980, and I suspect it will be once again," said Larry Sabato, University of Virginia political scientist. "But it's a complicated chessboard and not a checkerboard, because women, like men, are divided into about 100 different categories."
While more women tend to vote Democrat than Republican, they also tend to approach voting with a pragmatism that transcends party loyalty. Many are classic swing voters: They are ballot-splitters and party-switchers. Their political allegiance is elusive.
"When somebody says you have to vote Democratic, what does that mean? I disagree," said Liz Lara-Carreno, a longtime employee of Continental Airlines in Houston and a onetime Democratic activist.
"I have a group of friends and we get together for breakfast or lunch, Democrats and Republicans, and we agree -- don't do this or that because a particular candidate is a Republican or a Democrat. This nation has a serious budget shortfall, so who is the right person to deal with that?" she said.
Coker-Garcia, a libertarian who home-schools her kids, said her vote may also be up for grabs this year, if the Libertarian Party fails to get ballot access.
"I oppose the war, so that would be a consideration," she said.
At the same time, Coker-Garcia said she strongly favors national security measures, such as airport screening and keeping a Texas Air National Guard wing at Ellington Field.
Her views represent a widespread and perceptible shift that pollsters have measured since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Women want national security, and they've added it to their list of priorities when they look for a candidate, along with health care, education and economic concerns.
In the 2000 election, Democrat Al Gore won 54 percent of the female vote, to President Bush's 43 percent. This year, Bush is looking to improve his odds with women, in what is expected to be another close election.
"He has brought compassionate conservatism to a different level, he has reached way beyond his base," said Bob Stein, Rice University political scientist and pollster. "Medicare is a good example, working with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison on a stalker bill is another."
The way Bush has begun talking about the war in Iraq also is aimed at appealing to women, said Stein.
"He is defining the war not as a John Wayne macho thing, but more along the lines of what President Clinton or Carter would have said, `Because it's the right thing to do,' " Stein said.
The strategy may already be working to Bush's advantage. In 2002, the first national elections after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, election results showed the gender gap narrowing. More women were voting Republican, and helped Republicans gain control of the Senate and key governorships.
But whether Bush can pull that off in 2004 is questionable. Sabato noted that turnout was low for the 2002 midterm elections, and voters as a whole tended to skew more Republican that year.
Just as Republicans hold a traditional advantage on national security, Democrats tend to rate higher with voters on domestic issues -- which are of significant interest to many female swing voters.
Nancy Lomax, a Bellaire Democrat, said she's worried about the environment and world peace. A volunteer and mother who has hosted more than a half-dozen international exchange students, Lomax said she also is worried about this country's relationships abroad.
"I worry about a lot of things," Lomax said. "I am worried about Social Security and Medicare and the debt we are leaving to our children."
Uncommitted to any particular candidate, Lomax said many of her friends also remain undecided.
Suzanne Testa, a Spring Branch Republican, said she is sticking with Bush. All the same, she differs with the president on her biggest issue, immigration.
"I don't want to have legal amnesty, I think it would be a good idea to stop illegal crossing," Testa said.
With so much diversity of opinion in one demographic, it's hard to imagine a single candidate of any party successfully appealing to a large percentage of women.
Once the Democrats choose their nominee, pollsters predicted, the race for the women's vote will begin in earnest.
"Right now, every candidate is targeting Iowa caucus voters, whose average age is 65," said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.
For a party that says it's inclusive it does a great job of dividing everyone into their own particular brand of psychosis or whatever...
"Security moms"! I suppose it's better than "Safety moms" or I would have thought this was an article about contraception.
Why do so few people pay any attention to politics?
A Devastating Demo Memo By Adam Sparks [Full text] "Four things belong to a judge: to hear courteously, to answer wisely, to consider soberly and to decide impartially." -- Socrates, 470-399 B.C.
A devastating memo written by a Democratic member of the staff of the U.S. Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence and leaked to Fox News is now creating a furor on Capitol Hill.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is charged with protecting the nation's most guarded secrets. The members of that panel have the nation's highest security clearance. Much of the sensitive information they review is for their eyes only and is off limits even to the senators' own aides. Historically, this committee has been the least politicized of all the congressional committees. After all, it oversees the nation's intelligence community. Its duty, of safeguarding the nation, has historically been above the political fray. Until now, that is.
To congressional Democrats, nothing is sacred any longer: Even the nation's top secrets are fair game for staking out cheap, partisan political advantage. On Nov. 5, Fox News published a document that details the nefarious plans of the Democratic Party for politicizing the evidence that would be found in the Intelligence Committee's ongoing study of an intelligence fiasco. The evidence under review was received from the Bush administration, which was fully cooperating with the committee.
The Intelligence Committee hearings were called to investigate the sequence of events leading up to the military buildup that led to Saddam's overthrow and to the Iraqi liberation. The memo describes the brazen, unorthodox and fraudulent techniques the Democrats would actually use in order to gain power in the 2004 elections.
Originally, the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.), downplayed the significance of the memo and suggested it is the work of an overzealous aide and not the actual plan of committee Democrats. The memo, directed to the other Democratic members of the committee, reads, in part, "Pull the majority [Republicans] for as long as we can on issues that may lead to disclosures of . . . questionable conduct by administration officials."
The memo goes on to map out a partisan strategy of getting information that could then be used to launch an "independent-counsel investigation." Even the timing is plotted: It needs to break open at the most damaging time, "probably next year," during the 2004 presidential election. This detail clearly means that the Democrats' intent in their work on the committee is not to improve the operation, quality or techniques of U.S. intelligence gathering but simply to use the investigation as a ruse to release any embarrassing items to the press for partisan political advantage. That's sick. If a Republican had written that memo, he would have been drummed out of any position of power.
Immediately after the memo was leaked, the committee chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), halted the hearings and subsequently launched an investigation to discover the memo's author. It was soon discovered through a sheepish confession made to Roberts that none other than Rockefeller, the senior Democrat on the committee, had ordered his staff to prepare "options" that led to the creation of this clumsy memo.
Even some Democrats are upset at the power grab implied by the memo. Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.), for example, said, "If this is not treasonous, it's the first cousin of treason. This is one of those committees that you should never, ever have anything politicized, because you're dealing with the lives of ours soldiers and our citizens." Amen, Miller.
Unfortunately, this honorable senator and U.S. Marine Corps veteran is retiring at the end of his current term, and his departure will leave behind only a group of vipers hissing in a snake pit. Will the last honest Democratic senator, when leaving the nation's capital, please turn the lights off?
The memo goes on to suggest that the Democrats have had "some success" in getting Roberts to go along with their goals of having the committee "look into the activities" of senior Bush administration officials.
"The fact that the chairman supports our investigations . . . is helpful and potentially crucial," the memo boasts.
But the memo says that such cooperation alone is not enough and suggests that Democrats "take full advantage" of committee rules to, "among other things, castigate the majority for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry."
Once Democrats have "exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority," the memo adds, "we can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time -- but we can only do so once.
"The best time to do so will probably be next year," during the presidential elections, the document reads.
"Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public's concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq," it continues. "Yet, we have an important role to play in revealing the misleading -- if not flagrantly dishonest -- methods and motives of the senior administration officials who made the case for a unilateral, preemptive war. The approach outlined above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the administration's dubious motives."
Roberts kept his cool when he learned of the memo, but he was clearly upset that the Democratic plan was meant to, as he put it, "discredit the committee's work and undermine its conclusions . . . before those conclusions are even reached." Apparently, the message that becomes clear is that Democrats sit on the Intelligence Committee only as proxies of the Democratic National Committee and its primary goal of getting a Democrat in the White House next year.
If there is no trust between committee members on the Intelligence Committee, how can its important work proceed? The primary goal should be to improve the nation's security through the use of intelligence, not to gain poll points for their favored partisan candidate. This Demo memo has seriously poisoned the well, to the detriment of all Americans.
Memos, Memos
This memo was not a fluke. The Democrats must have taken a page out of the classic Chinese military-strategy manual of Sun Tsu, "The Art of War." This book advises, in relevant part, "Hoodwink the enemy, so that he may be remiss and leisurely while you are dashing along with utmost speed." In other words, victory must prevail at all costs, and let honor, statesmanship and the public be damned.
Earlier this year, a group of leaked memos uncovered Democratic duplicity and complicity in the obstruction of the confirmation of several of President Bush's key judicial nominations. The targets of the attack were Judges Caroline Kuhl, nominated for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Priscilla Owen and Charles Pickering, prospective members of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The principal target of this manipulation, Miguel Estrada of the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals, finally withdrew his nomination several months ago after waiting nearly two years on a confirmation vote. In Estrada's case, as revealed in a Nov. 7, 2001, memo to Sen. Richard Durban (D-Ill.), "various civil rights groups" opposed Estrada's nomination because "he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment." ("Minimal paper trail" is a code phrase that means the senators have no legitimate basis to knock the nominee out of the running for the heinous crime of holding conservative views.) So the Dems had no rational alternative but to filibuster the nomination, a procedure that effectively allows the minority to control the majority.
These are the same "civil rights groups" that later wrote in a memo to Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) Feb. 4, 2003, expressing the opinion that Estrada could not be allowed confirmation, because "we can't repeat the mistakes we made with Clarence Thomas." Discouraging the elevation of minority conservatives is evidently what Democrats understand the constitutionally mandated "advise and consent" powers to mean. Read these memos to see how the Senate Dems really work behind the scenes and out of the light of day.
An earlier memo, again to Kennedy, this time on April 17, 2002, recites the desires of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for nominees to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Michigan. The memo, written by Elaine Jones of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, states the organization's position: "[The NAACP] would like the [Senate Judiciary] Committee to hold off on any Sixth Circuit nominees until the end of the University of Michigan case regarding the constitutionality of affirmative action in higher education is decided by the . . . Sixth Circuit."
The NAACP feared that "if a new judge with conservative views is confirmed before the case is decided, that new judge will be able to . . . review the case and vote on it." As if right on cue, Judge Julia Scott Gibbons' confirmation vote was indeed delayed by several months just to garner a verdict favorable to the NAACP, without any potential interference from a new, "conservative" justice. Does the business of the American people take a back seat to pressure from leftist special-interest groups working behind closed doors? For Democrats, you bet it does. The proof, after all, is in the memo. [End]
Adam Sparks is a San Francisco writer. He can be reached at adamstyle@aol.com.
That ad's message - that Dr. Dean, the former Vermont governor, lacks foreign policy experience - is fair enough. But it is delivered with low-blow stealth as the ad's graphics dwell entirely on the sociopathic bin Laden stare. The screen shows floating scraps of scare phrases, "Dangerous World . . . Destroy Us . . .," and finally the tag-line bodkin alleging that Dr. Dean "just cannot compete with George Bush on foreign policy."
The ad is intended to take Dr. Dean down a peg from his early front-runner edge over Democratic rivals who supported the Iraq war. Antiwar sentiment is what made Dr. Dean the political star of the moment, and he continues to press this point, insisting that the country has not been made safer by the war or, now, by the capture of Saddam Hussein. This issue - whether the Bush policies since 9/11 have made the nation truly safer - is perfectly legitimate in the evolving debate. President Bush certainly intends to use it as the cornerstone of his campaign - he intoned the phrase "more secure" six times at his news conference on Monday in describing the nation under his stewardship.
The Osama ad was concocted with labor figures and politicians who have supported Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and Representative Richard Gephardt of Missouri, Dr. Dean's primary rivals, who disown any connection. It's always risky to ask how dumb the ad makers think voters are. But Grand Guignol attack ads underwritten by generic-sounding committees unconnected to any particular candidate are bad politics at any season.***
Coker-Garcia, a libertarian who home-schools her kids, said her vote may also be up for grabs this year, if the Libertarian Party fails to get ballot access.
"I oppose the war, so that would be a consideration," she said.
At the same time, Coker-Garcia said she strongly favors national security measures, such as airport screening and keeping a Texas Air National Guard wing at Ellington Field.
In many cases, they cancel their husband's vote, a vote based on "broad" perception of the world rather than a narrow-minded, single issue that women seem to jump on the band wagon for. The same women that cringe at child abuse believe in the right to abortion. Insane!!
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