Learning from Richard Nixon About How to Frame the GOP on Iraq
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
We will again be delaying a day or two our commentary about the foolhardiness of progressive advocacy groups supporting any Republican senator, particularly Lincoln Chafee (where there is a good chance of picking up a Democratic Senate seat this year).
As usual, the Busheviks are tossing so much shi* at all of us, we need to tend to some more pressing issues.
And one of them is the perennial question of how do Democrats respond to the use of well-timed "terrorist arrests" (and this one appears to be more substantive than the last two, but we don't really know) that suddenly emerge around elections, or when Bush is in a political corner. (It should be noted that Bush and Cheney are currently trying to pass a law that would retroactively absolve them and other administration officials of war crimes. Good timing for a diversionary terrorist scare – not to mention getting our minds off the fiasco in Iraq and failure of leadership in Lebanon, right?)
A couple of weeks ago, we found our answer to the question of how the Democrats should respond in the words of none other than Richard Nixon (perish the thought!). In running in 1968 against the pro-Vietnam War stance of the Johnson Administration, Nixon's theme was:
"Never has so much military and economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively, and if after all of this time, and all of this sacrifice, and all of this support, there is still no end in sight, then I say the time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership not tied to the mistakes and policies of the past."
BuzzFlash doesn't usually favorably quote Nixon (LOL) -- and he ended up only worsening the Vietnam war -- but his words are the perfect ones for the Democrats to use against the barrage of politically timed fear alerts that the Busheviks uses with such Pavlovian mastery.
So, we repeat the words of the infamous and inimitable Mr. Nixon:
"Never has so much military and economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively, and if after all of this time, and all of this sacrifice, and all of this support, there is still no end in sight, then I say the time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership not tied to the mistakes and policies of the past."
This one sentence should be in every foreign policy ad, every foreign policy speech and every debate of every Democratic candidate.
And to think, we owe this magic bullet to dispel the power of the fear manipulators to Tricky Dick. Use Republican words against the Republicans, right Mr. Nixon?
A BUZFLASH EDITORIAL
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