Posted on 07/20/2003 7:24:21 AM PDT by veronica
Summer is the Democratic season of hope.
Last year around this time, they launched a campaign against the impending war in Iraq. President Bush was in Crawford, Tex., playing cowboy when a front-page New York Times headline announced, "Top Republicans Break With Bush on Iraq Strategy."
According to The Times, Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser under Bush's father, thought the U.S. should be more unilateral. So did Henry Kissinger. House Majority Leader Dick Armey had voiced similar concerns. A mutiny was brewing.
It soon emerged that Kissinger was actually in favor of the war. The posse of critics never grew. Still, many Democrats convinced themselves in the summer of 2002 that Bush was in trouble.
For weeks, nobody could talk about anything else. Nobody that is, on the TV talk shows. The rest of the nation pursued its normal summer activities, which did not include an impassioned analysis of the opinions of Brent Scowcroft.
In September, Bush came back from Crawford, put on a business suit and went to the UN. In short order he gave the critics of the war what they said they wanted, a UN Security Council Resolution, and, in November, what they did not want - a thrashing in the congressional elections. Then, popularity soaring, the President took the country to war.
Now it's summer again, and once more the Dems have a caus célèbre. This time it's Bush's last State of the Union speech, which contained the now infamous 16 words - a claim, attributed to British intelligence, that Iraq had been looking for nuclear material in Africa.
When the flap started last week, Bush admitted that it was a mistake to have said this. CIA Director George Tenet proclaimed his responsibility for the President's misstatement. The next logical step was for Tenet to resign.
Inexplicably, he hasn't. Instead, he seems to be fudging his admission of guilt by blaming the White House staff. This has given the Democrats hope that a State of the Uniongate is possible. They are demanding details: What did the President know, and when did he know it?
So far, their investigation has turned up this: Some guy named Bob Joseph on the national security staff told another guy named Alan Foley at the CIA that he'd appreciate it if the CIA would vet the African uranium claim for the Bush speech. So of course, Foley did, even though he knew (or should have known, or might have known) that yet another guy, Joseph Wilson - a retired second-string diplomat - had conducted an informal, eight-day inquiry and hadn't been able to confirm the uranium story.
Got it?
There are Democrats who think this convoluted bureaucratic squabbling could wreck Bush's credibility. Their optimism was reflected in another front page story in The Times, this time reporting that there are folks in Ohio who are beginning to doubt the President's word.
Sorry, but this isn't going to work. Nobody in Ohio or anyplace else can be persuaded to give a damn about Bob Joseph and Alan Foley and Andrew Wilson and their opinions. In fact, most people don't care about the President's misstatement in the State of the Union. They get the big picture - America is at war. They see that the President gets it, too. And that the Democrats don't.
There is probably enough anti-Bush indignation to feed the summer squall for a few more weeks. By then, the President will be back in Washington, ready to move on to the next stage of the war. He knows from experience that the great rockabilly political philosopher Eddie Cochran was wrong. There is a cure for the summertime blues. It's called September.
What the Dems COULD be hitting Bush on, but aren't, is the timeline for getting Iraq back up and running safely. But that would require the Dems to clamor for a LARGER military and MORE troops, and effectively admit that the war was a good idea---which they won't do.
Ruah also has correctly pointed out that they could be DEMANDING that we make a GREATER effort to find the WMDs, instead of pretending they never existed. That is how out of touch they are.
One of two things is happening: either the Clintons (as Rush and some others claim) are indeed running the party, deliberately, into the ground so that they can "rescue it," or the party has simply gone so far left as to be a mirror opposite of the 1800s Federalists, who were so far out of touch with the public that they became extinct. This is more than a "McGovernite wing" of the Party, this is the MAINSTREAM of Dems who are so furious with Bush's success that they are blinded by anger. Rich in his column said: "Pinch most Democrats these days and they'll vomit vituperation about President Bush . . . ."
PRECISELY! They are consumed by hatred, and that does not attract votes, ever!
Could be. Hillary is busy painting herself as a "moderate" compared to those radical dingbats in her party. I can see her riding in as the Great Uniter of her party, rallying the troops behind her and sailing on to victory. The scary thing is that there are enough kool-aid drinking dems that'll buy it.
Ax the Beast. She was the one who took to the Senate floor holding up some rag with the headline - BUSH KNEW!
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