)Posted on 11/03/2006 8:56:44 PM PST by Prime Choice
SPRINGFIELD, Missouri (AP) -- President Bush, working a southwest Missouri campaign crowd like a yell leader, blasted Democrats on Friday, saying they have no plan to keep Americans safe from terrorists.
Bush said Democrats calling for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq aren't unpatriotic, just wrong. He said Democrats who voted against legislation to detain and interrogate suspected terrorists, the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program and the Patriot Act don't understand the stakes in the war on terror.
"If they say they want to win the war on terror, but call for America to pull out of what al Qaeda says is the central front in this war, ask them this question: 'What's your plan?' " Bush said at a rally for Missouri Sen. Jim Talent, who is seeking re-election in one of the tightest races in the nation. (Watch how Bush is picking his election battles -- 1:36 )
"The truth is the Democrats can't answer that question," Bush said. "Harsh criticism is not a plan for victory. Second guessing is not a strategy.
"We have a plan for victory. We have a plan to secure this country, and part of our plan is to send Jim Talent back to the United States Senate."
Bush, who is making two campaign stops in Missouri before traveling to Iowa and Colorado, is on a six-day campaign swing that ends on Election Day. Talent's re-election is critical to the GOP effort to retain control of Congress. Democrats need a net gain of six seats to reclaim control of the Senate.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
My sentiments are expressed in my tagline.
That's good.
This is just election talk. The Dems are traitors and are working together from inside America to bring us down.
They are useful idiots of the Kremlin and Iran, of Saudi Arabia and Hizbollah, of Hamas and al Qaeda. They are wicked people from Hell, destined for Hell, to put it tactfully.
Teddy Roosevelt or George Washington, if they presided today, would have lined them all up before a firing squad. They hadn't heard of "Political Correctness". All they knew was patriotism, honor and courage in the face of adversity.
That's why Duncan Hunter needs to be President.
"I think this is the most frustrating thing about President Bush. These are the lies he tells that trouble me the most.
I think you do not understand the simple rhetorical tropes used by orators since the time of the Greeks and Romans.
What Bush is using is one of the commonest techniques. His purpose is to make the listener think 'what a wimp! of course they're traitors'. By starting the audience to thinking in reaction to what he is saying, rather than baldly stating what he intends the audience to conclude, he moves them to action more effectively.
That's the idea of classical rhetoric.
That is a very interesting observation and you could be right about President Bush's purpose for bringing up the Democrats and patriotism in his speeches.
My favorite example of the technique is Mark Antony's famous oration at the funeral for Caesar from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
Mark Antony begins with the famous line to deflect the Roman mob from his true purpose, "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." Throughout his speech, Antony states, "Brutus is an honorable man". Nevertheless, by the end of the speech the mob loves Caesar and wants to tear apart Brutus.
Perhaps President Bush's faint compliment holding that Democrats aren't unpatriotic is meant to have the same effect on his audience as Mark Antony's secretly sarcastic praise, "Brutus is an honorable man."
After President Bush finishes his stump speeches across the nation, I hope the majority of American voters next week have the same opinion of Democrats that the Roman mob held for Brutus.
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