Posted on 06/01/2003 5:57:41 AM PDT by may18
By Toby Helm, Chief Political Correspondent (Filed: 30/05/2003)
The first signs of a solidly-based Tory recovery for a decade are revealed today in an opinion poll that shows a collapse of trust in Tony Blair is beginning to hurt Labour.
A YouGov survey for The Telegraph puts the Conservatives just one point behind Labour, their highest poll rating since 1992 apart from a blip during the fuel crisis in the autumn of 2000.
The results are a further shot in the arm for Iain Duncan Smith four weeks after the Conservatives gained 561 council seats to become the largest party in local government in England. Tory strategists insisted last night that they still had much to do but claimed that policies on university funding, taxation and Europe were striking a chord with voters.
For the first time since Mr Duncan Smith became leader in September 2001, more voters - 19 per cent - believe he would be a better prime minister than the 15 per cent who back Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader.
Click to enlarge The Tories also lie just one point behind Labour on the issue of economic competence, one of Labour's strongest cards at the 2001 general election. The findings will cause alarm in Labour ranks at a time when Mr Blair is under pressure from his backbenchers and the party rank and file to explain why no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.
The YouGov survey puts Labour on 37 per cent, down three points, the Conservatives on 36 per cent, up four per cent, and the Liberal Democrats on 20 per cent, down one per cent.
A month ago, when the Government was enjoying a post-war rise in popularity - the so-called "Baghdad bounce" - the gap between Labour and Conservatives was eight points.
The Tories' recent pledge to abolish student tuition fees appears to be having a positive influence. Their proposals stand in contrast to Labour's plans to allow universities to charge up to £3,000 a year for courses.
Although 52 per cent of voters agreed that universities are "chronically underfunded", 43 per cent said they were "more sympathetic to the Conservatives" after their promise to scrap tuition fees. Among parents and students the figure was 53 per cent.
Even more worrying for Mr Blair is the dramatic fall in trust in his Government.
Just 29 per cent think that, on balance, the Government has been honest and trustworthy - almost half the level, 56 per cent, of the 2001 election. On the other hand, 62 per cent said it was not honest - more than double the 2001 level.
Mr Blair's personal ratings are also suffering - 38 per cent now think he would make the best prime minister, down five per cent on April and 14 per cent on 2001.
Strategists believe Labour's splits over the euro are harming the party in the same way that divisions dented Tory popularity during the later years of John Major's premiership.
Labour officials point out that the party is, in historical terms, still in a remarkably strong mid-term position. Most governing parties languish well behind the Opposition in mid-term. To maintain the momentum, Mr Duncan Smith is planning a major speech - entitled New Europe: Old Europe - next month in which he will outline his thinking on Britain's relations with the EU and Europe's relationship with America.
One aide to Mr Duncan Smith said the party was finally getting its ideas across. He said: "It's one thing to have the policies, quite another to communicate them. We are beginning to do that."
Correct. The real reason we had to hit Saddam was that he hit us. His WMDs are the reason we couldn't say that out loud, and the reason he got off the hook again -- just like he did in 1991.
I don't buy this for one minute.
I find Blair and Bush to be extremely trustworthy leaders and those who have been making these sorts of accusations against them to be dishonest and duplicitous from the beginning.
They have tried everything to create suspicion about the motives behind the war on Iraq and now are exploiting the difficulty in finding WMDs for that purpose.
Never mind that virtually all those on the UN Security council agreed that Saddam had WMDs, that defectors from Iraq have confirmed he had WMDs and that we have already found mobile bio-weapons labs...exactly as those described by Powell.
I believe we will find the WMDs or find out what happened to them...once again embarrassing those who are so quick to judge and falsely accuse Bush and Blair.
Good point.
Apparently that's what some folks may believe.
And, I guess that if they believe that, they probably believe that the mobile (lab) vans were built to make ice cream and other tasty delights.
Saddam probably planned for those vans to go into all of the Bagdad neighborhoods as ice cream trucks, tinkling little bells, to bring people out for a cool treat on those hot Bagdad nights.
Hey, maybe Saddam directed the torturers in his prisons to sing out "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream", as they they tortured thousands of Iraqi people to death. /saracasm off
Additionally, nowhere on the face of the globe does a more free populace exist. If our leaders have become the emodiment of self-interest, it is because the electorate has tacitly, and not so tacitly, approved it.
Any problems this country has can be laid directly at the feet of the voting and non-voting public. Even now, when a politician thinks his actions will cause him to lose an election, he'll tow whatever line is dragging him.
This nation decided a long time ago on an eclectic form of government; capitalistic to a larger degree and socialistic to a smaller one. There is hardly a citizen living across the fruited plain who has not taken advantage of the pooling of tax revenues, either through unemployment benefits, higher ed grants, State home lending, assistance with elderly parents, etc, etc.
It can be successfully argued that our socialistic bent has been accomplished extra-constitutionally. But that's a non-starter as the damage has already been done. The only thing that will bring about significant change is catastrophy, and that is not to imply that such a change, should it ensue, would gravitate towards individual freedom and full responsibility of self, family and property.
If we were going to plant them, we would have planted them from the beginning. We certainly wouldn't wait until we were going through this storm of impatience.
Poppycock. America was founded on the premise of self-government. The founders stated time and again that high ethical and moral standards were the major criteria to judge someone for fitness to hold office.
If the leaders of this country wanted a war for various reasons, they should have stepped up and stated those reasons plainly (instead of relying on bogus ones....ones that even Wolfowitz now admits were merely picked for convenience).
But...if the real reasons for a war are morally bankrupt or will primarily benefit only narrow groups of special interests, then you may have a hard sell.....in which case you can either not have the war, or lie (and since the interests involved in Iraq wanted the war at all costs, they chose the latter course of action).
I have to disagree again. The fact is, our system is controlled by the elites in several different ways...they have developed systems to ensure that only candidates who broadly agree with elite interests will ever see the inside of a political office.
First, is the media. The media is mostly owned by folks who, to one extent or another, are members of the elite who "play ball". They will never allow a maverick who threatens serious elite interests to win a major political office. I realize that there is a political spectrum in our elected leaders, but certain ideas are totally out of bounds (the federal reserve system, for instance).
Second, is the campaign finance system, which is rigged to favor entrenched interests and to give them lopsided influence in elections.
Third, is the unelected bureaucrats. To a certain extent, the holders of office are superfluous. It is the entrenched paperpushers who are there from one administration to the next who wield the real power behind the scenes.
Any maverick candidate who appeared and began to fight against a precious elite interest would: 1) suddenly be on the receiving end of an avalanche of negative media. 2) Would not receive any of the major institutional campaign money 3) would never get his policies past the entrenched bureaucrats 4) would, if all else fails, be mysteriously gunned down by a loner with a long history of psychiatric problems (Huey Long and George Wallace got this treatment).
Should the government publish intelligence gathering activity? Do you think there was no embellishment of English atrocities during the Revolutionary war or during our various other bouts throughout our history? Human nature is no different now than then.
Since time immemorial politicans have manipulated info to serve the needs, as they saw them, of the country. Sometimes they serve not the needs of the country but of the despot, that is true. But that is not the case with American politicians, they are elected and monitored.
You don't get to be a great nation by letting the population govern where they do not posess the proper information to do so, and where providing them with that information would compromise present or future states of national finance and/or security. AISI, it has never been part and parcel of successful governance, and it never will be.
I am currently giving Bush the benefit of the doubt. I voted for him, after all. I am assuming that his information was manipulated by various courtiers in the halls of power around him who gave him slanted intelligence in order to achieve their own objectives.
Either way, the WMD argument was bogus. We were led to believe that the country was awash in chemical and biological weapons that could be used in a heartbeat....tons of anathrax, warehouses full of chemical warheads, thousands of gallons of various viruses and toxins. Where are they? A program which is that advanced and extensive can't be hidden THAT easily....we've had 6 weeks to comb the country and have had several weeks to interrogate a bunch of high level operatives in the Iraqi govt.
First of all, I think that war is a unique event. The decision to go to war is unlike any other that a leader makes. If he lies in order to get the people to fund some new sewage treatment plant, I would still oppose it on ethical grounds....but its not a cosmic problem.
In war, on the other hand, you are asking people to kill and be killed. You are asking children to lose their fathers, wives to lose their husbands, and young men (and women, of course) to kill other human beings. Cities burn. Buildings are flattened. To ask people to do this while not being fully honest about your motives and goals is a moral atrocity. If the motives are pure, they will stand the light of public scrutiny...and Americans will step up and fight.
Furthermore, lying for a "greater good" quickly becomes a bad habit. The first lie may seem like it is for a great cause....maybe even the second one too....but eventually, the leader turns into a Clinton who lies morning, noon, and night over just about everything.
And yes, this sort of thing has happened for time immemorial. Unfortunately, the history of human governance is not a very pretty one. Those two facts are closely related.
Even if what you say is true (and I don't believe it is) that does not preclude the citizen from taking the time to understand the issues and continuously vote people who espouse your take on things out of office.
First, is the media. The media is mostly owned by folks who, to one extent or another, are members of the elite who "play ball". They will never allow a maverick who threatens serious elite interests to win a major political office. I realize that there is a political spectrum in our elected leaders, but certain ideas are totally out of bounds (the federal reserve system, for instance).
The media and/ or the elite do not control the myriad elections, Town, City, State which constitute the Nation.
Second, is the campaign finance system, which is rigged to favor entrenched interests and to give them lopsided influence in elections.
Money is not the problem, the unwillingness of the citizen to hold to constitutional dictates and elect people accordingly is.
Third, is the unelected bureaucrats. To a certain extent, the holders of office are superfluous. It is the entrenched paperpushers who are there from one administration to the next who wield the real power behind the scenes.
I don't what you're really referring to here, if you cite some concrete examples maybe I'll understand your thinking better. I work for City government and I can assure you, it's the elected officials who are running the show, not some third drawer paperpushers.
Any maverick candidate who appeared and began to fight against a precious elite interest would: 1) suddenly be on the receiving end of an avalanche of negative media. 2) Would not receive any of the major institutional campaign money 3) would never get his policies past the entrenched bureaucrats 4) would, if all else fails, be mysteriously gunned down by a loner with a long history of psychiatric problems (Huey Long and George Wallace got this treatment).
To the contrary, the bigger the maverick the more slanted 'newcomer' attention he'll get. The negative avalanche occurs when the candidate has something in his past to be ashamed of. George Wallace lost because he had a record of saying things like "I'll never be out niggered again", not because he was misunderstood by a negative media. They may not have lauded whatever good he might have done, but he was a fire breathing racist until such a time as he had a change of heart.
The people of this country are responsible for all that occurs. As imperfect as it is, there is no less corrupt government on the face of the earth than ours. It's up to us as informed, selfless citizens to make it better.
Actually it was the UN that came up with the figures for quantities of unaccounted for chemical and biological weapons.
To now blame Blair and Bush for misleading people isn't exactly fair.
Besides...none of this proves the WMD argument was bogus.
If police got a warrant to bust a house claiming there was meth there...and then ONLY found a meth manufacturing lab..but not the meth...would anyone say they mislead people to bust the house?
Of course not. That would be silly.
Bush is absolutey right when he points to the mobile bio-weapons labs as proof they were right about WMDs.
It's as if the British pollsters invented Special Sauce, and Zogby merely created a cheap knockoff.
Where is Saddam Hussein? We have been unable to find him. He, therefore, must never have existed.
In the meantime, your statements carry no more weight of truth than the statements of those whom you claim are lying, with the notable exception that those whom you are attempting to pillory have distinguished track records of success which you would be hard pressed to emulate, let alone surpass.
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