The recent spate of talking points centering on calling President Obama out on his supposedly wimpy backing of the protesters in Iran are obviously trying to pressure the President to act as recklessly and impulsively as their own albatross-in-chief, George W. Bush. By pulling a Bush and inflaming the country even more, turning the Muslim world against us once again and probably going into another pointless war would conveniently divert attention from their disaster in Iraq. Republicans like Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham suddenly care more about the protesters cause in Iran than they did the Americans who protested during the run up to the war in Iraq. In case you forgot, Republicans, conservatives and neo-cons laughed at the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who took to the streets to correctly protest the reckless bloodlust that killed over 4,000 troops, untold hundred of thousands of innocent Iraqis and destroyed the American economy. Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could force Obama to make the same stupid mistakes? You betcha!
The talking points also mention that Ronald Reagan never ran from a fight when he dared Mikhail Gorbachev to "Tear down this wall" in Berlin. What fight? Unfortunately the simplistic Republicans conveniently forget that glasnost was already taking place, other countries, most notably Germany itself were already doing the heavy lifting in regard to uniting the east and west and Berlin wasn't the war zone that Tehran is right now. It was a good speech but it was just stating the obvious. Of course looking through the gauze of Republican revisionist history, the media seems to believe that the speech was the sole reason the cold war came to a close and Reagan was the Abraham Lincoln of Western Europe.
President Obama's carefully worded statements and levelheaded handling of the situation obviously is not enough for the right. They want impulsiveness! They want fighting words! They want misinformation. They want another Christian Crusade! No wimps here! Rattle those sabers! Bomb-bomb-bomb Iran! More war! More terrorism! More Bush-like only without Bush! More blame to throw on the Democrats! Yeah, that's the ticket!
Apparently the Republican playbook is to make sure that Obama is pushed into repeating all the mistakes George W. made, no matter what the cost. Then they will be free to voice their righteous indignation at the ineptitude of the Commander-In-Chief. However Frank Luntz, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele and the other poobahs in charge of the message have overlooked one important difference. Barack Obama is no George W. Bush. Thankfully.
Stu Kreisman is the author of Dick Cheney's Diary available here, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.