The MoveOn Dust-Up, the GOP's Self-Righteous Indignation, and Winning the White House
"How many times do we charge up the hill and run straight into enemy fire before we figure this shit out?"
I remember an angry Republican asking that question to no one in particular in a crowded GOP conference. The government was shut down, the public was testy and Bill Clinton was once again pounding a GOP Congress more interested in ideological purity than practical results.
This week's Moveon.org dust-up reminded me of that time when we Republicans led with our hearts and got pounded in our faces. We loved bathing in self-righteous indignation. Our base loved it too. But the practical results were always the same: we scared little children, household pets and crossover voters. It was a really great way to alienate the voters we needed the most.
Whoever dreamed up the ad questioning the loyalty of Iraq's top soldier would have fit in great with those of us who drove the political agenda in 1995 -- and guaranteed Bill Clinton's re-election in 1996. While I'm sure Move On's ad locked down the base in Manhattan and Madison, Democrats need to be more concerned with wooing voters in Tampa and Toledo.
I know this post will generate nasty emails. Every time I dare to tell Democrats how they can avoid the mistakes we Republicans made in the past, I am told to mind my own business. To those who are so offended, my apologies. Go ahead and spend the next year kicking around Generals and God. While you're at it, attack the Boy Scouts and burn a few flags for the hell of it.
You're right. Great election strategy. What was I thinking?
But for those who who actually want to win the White House in 2008, call your friends in liberal organizations and tell them to take a deep breath before they decide again to attack soldiers in a war zone.
Come on. This really shouldn't be that hard. The White House is the Democrats' to lose.
The president and his war are overwhelmingly unpopular.
The social issues that used to pull conservatives to the polls (guns, gays and God) are now so overshadowed by Mr. Bush's war that a pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay New York mayor is running away with the GOP primary.
Add in the fact that Republican senators are getting caught in bathroom stalls and whorehouses and one wonders what the Democrats could possibly do to give George Bush the upper hand with swing voters.
Oh yeah. They could attack a highly decorated general.
Ugh. It's deja vu all over again.
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Joe:
Take a clue from GOP petty cash. I'm sure it's overflowing with unused clues gathering dust.
MoveOn is NOT the Democratic Party. They are an INDEPENDENT organization. They do not run any aspect of the government. So your analogy, from the get go, is fatuous and without merit.
MoveOn did NOT "attack a highly decorated general." They dared to point out that a highly decorated general willingly shilled for George Bush. They did NOT go after his military record, as the Swift Boaters did to John Kerry. Yes, that, too, was an independent organization. Didn't seem to hurt Bush, who refused to condemn the Swift Boat ads, in 2004.
Maybe what you hate is seeing a GOP tactic being used against the GOP, and with far less slime.
And Joe: until the GOP realizes that severing all ties with Bush is their salvation, grasping at straws is all they, and you, have for your 2008 hopes. The empty patriotic rhetoric won't work. It's old news, in the past, which is where you and your analytical skills are still living.
Randy
Say Joe,
What would be your stand if a national political advocacy organization like MoveOn had run highly visible ads questioning the motives and veracity of General Westmoreland's reports and statistics during the Viet Nam war?
I continue to believe that the MoveOn.org ad was constitutionally protected political speech. The senate should, itself, be condemned for it, or maybe, be tasered into sensibility. Democratic Senators, rather than running from the ad, even those who preferred a different tactic, should have explained the frustration of MoveOn.org's grass root supporters, a feeling shared by many other skeptical citizens. It was not unreasonable that a true reporting of the Iraq situation would not happen, particularly when generals have come and gone based on fidelity to Bush's discredited and constantly changing goals. Now, this senate resolution, probably deliberately allowed to a vote by Senator Reid to get it quickly out of the limelight, may do nothing of the kind other than to transform Petraeus into a martyr, just like the right wing did for Ollie North. MoveOn.org needs to come up, quickly, with another fact-based ad with all puns aside (not needed anymore--it has there attention).
You republicans goad democrats all the time don't you? Your guys are always flip-flop[ing in your criticisms of democrats. It's part of the "Oh, look over there" distraction.
For example: "Be tough like us" = love war; but then you denigrate democratic war heroes. "You're attacking the president!" you scream. Um, yeah on his abysmal political record, But, very personal attacks come from you, on democrats, (remember Edmund Muskie? Thomas Eagleton?) And, your gutter-mouthed VP and Fake News entertainers are rude and crude and smug. What happened to preelection lies to elevate the dialog, bring "decency" to the office?
So, Moveon fights on your turf, that is, in the gutter with you guys, and gets a whole Congress of criticism. You guys are so full of it! So, keep your "advice to democrats" to yourselves and take care of your own very real scandals.
Joe
Here is something that I think you have a hard time understanding. A four star general who is a liar and has become the presidents lap dog is a four star general lying lap dog.
I know that you and many fellow citizens read that sentence and the blood boils to your head because you have this strange tendency to apply a strange sense of awe and respect to people in positions of power. You are told who is worthy of this respect(Colin Powell) and also told which individuals to villify on a partisan basis(Valerie Plame).
Colin Powell, a highly decorated general, stood in front of the UN making a case for war based on lies.
Valerie Plame, an American spy, whose career and most of her work was ruined because her husband dared to tell the truth about a false claim made by President Bush.
Now we are told look at this man's uniform with his medals, believe him. I'd rather look at the facts of the man.
He wrote an Op-ed piece prior to the 2004 election in favor of Bush and his Iraq war policy.
He was in charge of training Iraq police and misled us on the progess in that area failing to accomplish his core mission.
His statistical analysis of the death toll in Iraq was highly questionable and now his methodology shows glaring omissions.
Get yourself out of the office and talk to Americans in the street. We know when we are being lied to and we don't like it.
Joe--I agree with you. It was a dumb ad, politically tone-deaf, counterproductive, and a stupid distraction from the real debate--the hallmark of bad advertising. The political junkies of the Democratic base keep pointing to the smears of Cleland and Kerry as justification to defend MoveOn, not realizing that THEY are the only ones still nursing those wounds--that's ancient history to middle America, and most folks still probably believe those smears anyway, if they remember them at all. What matters is now--MoveOn seized the moment, and blew it, at a really crucial point in the Iraq debate. Thanks, guys--good work.
The Democratic Senate made the bad situation worse by allowing the equally stupid Cornyn resolution to even come to the floor of the Senate. If it had to be debated and voted on, Dems should have at least formed a united front on it and refused to vote on that silliness, or voted against it. Once again, the Republicans grandstand and deflect attention from their own evil obstructionism, and the Dems look like Keystone Cops with their shoelaces tied together--always in reaction mode and on the defensive. I have absolutely had it with both parties. Please, Michael Bloomberg--please run.
Funny...I just remembered protests where we called General Westmoreland General "Waste More Land" during the war in Vietnam. Walter Mondale lost to Richard Nixon because he was an old line Liberal and the country wanted to wave the flag and forget about the quagmire we all knew we were in. Remember "Peace with Honor"?
And then Richard Nixon cut and run, and got busy perfecting the welfare system. Gotta love the ironies of history.
At this point, the media have become either docile, compliant shills like the major networks or Corporate versions of Pravda, like Fox, and the Dems are more concerned with polls than confronting the evil, lying war profiteers who spend our blood and treasure without a blink or sleepless night.
General Petraeus: get over it.
The Dems who condemned Move On: silence would have sufficed, now get busy.
Joe Scarborough: We'll take our chances.
I respectfully, and strongly, disagree with Scarborough's post. I remember the same arguments being made when we started demonstrating against the Vietnam War. We were attacked for creating disunity among those who opposed the War. Similarly, there was a wing of the civil rights movement who believed the young, brash Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, by employing the tactics of non-violent civil disobedience, was playing into the hands of anit-civil rights and racist forces.
MoveOn couldn't have been more correct to put out the BetrayUs ad. That two-bit, lying general, who stabbed his superiors in the back by supporting the surge his superiors had rightly condemned simply to enhance his career, at the expense of his own troops, HAD to be challenged directly, as everyone knew what he was going to say. The despicable Democrats had allowed this General Custer to be lionized when they caved in and voted to fund the surge without restriction, except for the September Petraeus Report. All intelligent progressives KNEW what would be in the report -- a further lie to keep the war that resulted from lies told by the bi-partisan surrogates of the oil cartel continuing without end. The reason everyone knew this failure as a General -- David Petraeus -- told similar lies six weeks before the 2004 election about how the war was going well.
In order for the American people to know the truth, it was necessary to expose who General Betrayus really was.
MoveOn was right, even though the ad exposed them to serious criticism from the allies of the Swift Boat lie team. Petraeus's lying testimony in support of Bush's despicable war apparently had no effect on the American people, who still want to get out of Iraq rapidly. And although MoveOn may have suffered what Dr. Martin Luther King suffered when he emarked on the path of non-violent civil disobedience, what the anti Vietnam war protestors suffered when they started demonstrating against thw Vietnam war, MoveOn succeeded in forewarning the American people about Petraeus.
Generals should fight real wars, not political ones. Yet Bush decided to make Petraeus his front man in this political battle. Now you complain when Petraeus comes under political attack? I don't *think* so.
If you don't want your boy shot at, don't send him into the battle. If you do, don't complain about it.
Bush is blurring the line of separation between the civilian and the military for his own political cover. Bear in mind the MoveOn ad was *correct* in it's facts. But that seems to have been lost in all the hubbub.
General Petraeus was a good military man. No more. He is now a toady shill for the WH. If he were a great military man, he would have resigned his commission rather than let the President use him for political gain. The report should have been delivered by Sec. of Defense Gates. Where the hell was he? MIA! First and foremost, it was our criminal President who betrayed us and the truth. The General was complicit in his acts. A case can be made against the Democrats who voted to condemn the MoveOn ad. Since when is it disgraceful to ask for accountability? Was the ad rough? To be sure. But the latest ground rules have been set by the ideological Republicans who have hijacked this country and destroyed all that is decent that they could. I am thoroughly convinced that George Bush hates Americans and that the Republicans are oblivious to the suffering of the military personnel and their families.
By the way, the President looked drunk yesterday on TV. Is he off the wagon?
But for those who who actually want to win the White House in 2008, call your friends in liberal organizations and tell them to take a deep breath before they decide again to attack soldiers in a war zone.
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That is a straw-man if I ever saw one.
BTW, Senators caused me to spend another $100. As soon as I heard of their vote against MoveOn, I sent MoveOn anothe $100.
My take on this situation is as follows: If fascists don't like free speech, give them more of it.
I wish the right would show some indignation over the deaths of people for an immoral and disgusting war.
But hey...we won't mention the ads where heroes like Max Cleland are set side by side with Osama Bin Laden.
Hypocrisy.
Joe,Joe, Joe!!! The guy DID betray us...and himself, by becoming a political too of the neoconartists and Bushco! This is the sane guy who was in charge of training the Iraqi soldiers-maybe one batallion is trained to date-a complete failure! Also under his watch, 180,000 weapons have gone missing. Truman fired Mac Arthur for getting politically involved-just like patreyus has. He has betrayed the troops with his misstatements(lies) about the surge, which has failed-as there in NO EFFORT by the political folks in Iraq to do anything but point fingers at each other! It appears Bush remains hidden behind Pateryus' silver stars on his shoulders. Just WHO IS the real commander-in chief,Joe??? Patreyus has betrayed the troops families with his made -up testimony. The Dems should better explain to the American sloths what is REALLY going on here!! Bush's policy is a complete failure-and BETRAYUS thinks it's just peachy-keen!!! Get real, Joe!!!
I am a strong, bleeding liberal...
WTFman
Does a General deserve respect because he is a soldier? Does he deserve it because of service past?
Does a President deserve respect because he is the CIC? Does he deserve it in spite of no service past?
I don't think so.
I say Scarborough is fostering the same ideology that is destroying and that will destroy us.
Patreaus is either telling the whole truth and nothing but, or he is selling more lies. We've seen the results of lies already told.
If winning elections means fealty to crooks and liars because they hold office or wear a uniform, winning elections means the end of America.
I'd rather be impolitic. There's more hope in it.
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