--- Russ Daggatt wrote: "Given how extreme the Republican leadership has become, and the fact that Republicans have a solid grip on the presidency and both Houses of Congress, I think it is time that the Democrats began to run as the anti-government party."
This would seem to be in the same spirit as my suggestion to adopt many (not all!) planks of the Contract With America. A jiu jitsu move with built in press appeal. Especially in light of the DeLay hypocrisy.
Ah, but there are other issues. I have been trying relentlessly, without success, to get somebody to look at the following potentially devastatingly GOP soft spots.
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1. Military readiness. It is at its lowest ebb since 1974. Possibly since Pearl Harbor. Our armed forces could not take on another major, urgent mission even if the nation were united behind it.
Alas, liberal think tanks and pundits seem unable to notice, so mired are they in obsolete anti-military thinking. If the democrats did make it an issue, it would take months of hammering to make people believe they were really serious.
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2. The purge of the Officer Corps. Listen to recent retirees, who are free to speak out. It is the worst political purge in our lifetimes, affecting not only the military but the intelligence services and diplomatic corps, as well. These people are our bulwark. They are suffering for us right now. Liberals must get past reflexive distaste for crewcut white men and rally behind this corps - the third best-educated group in American society and the most dedicated to constitutional government. (That's the reason for the purge.)
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3. Defending our borders. The weirdly unspoken truth is that Democrats control illegal immigration vastly better than Republicans do. One of Bill Clinton's first acts in office was to double the Border Patrol and institute Operation Gatekeeper, so that America's huge immigration wave can take place in an orderly manner, with full accounting and services. One of GWB's first acts was to _cripple the Border Patrol, so that most immigration will be furtive, illegal and create a cheap, unaccounted labor pool.
The facts are blatant, so why does the public not know? Why do they ASSUME that the GOP does this job better?
Because in politics talk and action sometimes conflict. Democrats don't like the SOUND of controlling illegal immigration. It seems surfically ungenerous, racist and discriminatory. So the party never brags of it. And the GOP certainly won't point out the fact that they like cheap labor to fill in the bottom of the social pyramid.
We need to test market the right phrases and expressions that could make this blatant fact clear to moderate red- staters, who care deeply about the issue, without sounding intolerant.
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4. Skyrocketing government secrecy. Democrats could refuse to accept the premise of the zero-sum game. The truism that there is a tradeoff between security and freedom.
Even an admirable and bright fellow like Wisconsin Senator Russell Feingold falls into this trap. "There is no doubt," he declared on the Senate floor, "that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists... If we lived in a country where the police were allowed to search your home for any reason... the government would probably discover more would-be terrorists. But that would not be a country in which we would want to live."
Sorry. Wrong. History does NOT show that police states and dictatorships have better overall internal security than consensus democracies. In fact, when they have dissenting minorities, the very opposite happens. Terrorism and violent resistance increase, leading to more repression and more disaffected groups. This effect will multiply in the USA, a society that extols suspicion of authority in all of its myths.
In fact, freedom and public safety are DIRECTLY, not inversely, proportional. The proof of this counter-intuitive assertion is... us. We are simultaneously safer and more free than any other people who have ever lived. There is no tradeoff. But the neocons desperately want to make us believe there is.
For one thing, so-called security needs have been used to justify the most dramatic increase in government secrecy since World War II. (The number of government-held secrets actually declined during the Clinton Administration.) This is the natural tendency of rulers who seek to evade accountability, behind a rationalization of national security.
It may be time for a direct attack on this devil's dichotomy, using very strong metaphors.
Example: "Do the neocons seriously mean to say that we are in more danger NOW than when a tense Soviet Union aimed 2,000 hydrogen bombs down our throats? Terrorism is serious business. Let's go after terrorists! But stop using them as justifications for Big Brother."
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5. The indictments test.
Find quotations from Limbaugh and others calling the Clinton Administration the "most corrupt of all time." Especially quotations predicting that the jails would soon fill with Clintonites, just as soon as Bush-appointed officials got ahold of the filing cabinets.
Seriously. these people have had all the files for four years now. So where are all the indictments we were promised? All that screeching from 93-2000... and the result? ZERO indictments of Clinton-era federal officials for acts performed while in office.
Zero. I do believe that is the first time it has ever happened in the history of the republic. GOP staffers have not found a single smoking gun, despite desperate searches. Could it be that the Clintons were the most HONEST of all time?
This may sound a bit abstract, but somebody ought to be saying it. Loud.
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6. John Mauldin (April 1, 2005) in his widely circulated newsletter, asks "How can we go from oil priced in the low teens only a few years ago to oil now holding steady in the mid-50s? This week we have seen a projected price spike of $105 from Goldman Sachs. Can you say $4 a gallon gasoline, boys and girls?"
This question provokes a tsunami of complex answers from economic and technical sages, along with a raft of oversimplifications, ranging from "it's about time we paid the true price of a nonrenewable resource" to "this will all be fixed by the magic of markets."
Some or all explanations may contain elements of truth. Still there are times when a little _paranoia_ can seem just as valid. In other words, I think it is finally time to document the Saudi connection.
It needs to be done far better than Michael Moore started to do, in a fashion that is patriotic, rather than partisan. This is actually fairly easy to do, by raising the issue of *subornation.*
THE ISSUE OF SUBORNATION:
During World War II - and especially during the Cold War - it became standard practice to put a small black mark (metaphorically) next to the name of any diplomat, soldier or other person who was ever under enemy control - out of friendly view - for more than half a day or so. Such people MIGHT be "trusted" forever after. They might even be given great authority, depending on their effectiveness and influence. To be unsupervised in enemy territory did not automatically discredit you!
But still, such people always merited an asterisk, a dose of extra scrutiny, applied judiciously at various intervals. A fact of life during eras of geopolitical trickery and dirty trick rivalry.
What worries did the black mark signify? Fears could range from the dramatic (e.g. brainwashing while in enemy hands) all the way to blackmail-by-entrapment ("we have embarrassing pictures of you with our hookers, so do what we say!")
The point is that this practice of intermittent re-evaluation seemed prudent during an era when we faced a foe as relentless, clever and determined as Communism. Extra scrutiny always applied to anyone who had spent time exposed to KGB shenanigans, in Moscow and other Soviet controlled space.
THE CRUX: Is anyone doing the same thing in regards to the _modern_ enemies of Western Civilization? I wonder if anyone, even in the CIA, would dare to correlate time spent in Ryadh... or partying in Vegas suites with certain princes... the way that they once tracked diplomats and Marine Guards who were approached by KGB prostitutes in Moscow.
How many administration officials are former lobbyists for the one foreign power that currently backs the most vehement anti-american propaganda and uses our Iraqi involvement as a nightly infomercial for a counter-Crusade? How many of our leaders used to party-hearty with petro-princes under opulently decadent conditions potentially conducive to blackmail?
Weren't we asked to accept as our principal protector - the head of our Department of Homeland Security - a man who spent years performing bodyguard duties for the ibnsaud family's personal hospital?
(I part company with Michael Moore in crucial ways. This is not about oil, per se. Nor even about American plutocrats using our army to go plundering the Middle East. If that were true, would not Iraqi oil have begun flowing? Instead, Iraqi production plummeted, exactly what you would want if you were a certain OPEC nation dependant on high prices.)
(No. Moore had the master-servant relationship backwards. Could it instead be about geopolitical power wielded by an opposing empire whose leaders hate our society on fundamental ideological grounds and can afford to hire all the ex-KGB subornation experts they could ever want?)
(Bizarrely, even the Old Conservatives who are raising worried looks at the neocons seem unable to spot this possibility. Pat Buchanan (http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html) and his bunch claim that the neocons are ultimately influenced by ISRAEL, of all things.)
Yes, it sounds paranoid. But please, I am not asserting that such a conspiracy of the suborned IS true. I only wish to point out that the slim POTENTIAL for subornation used to be more than enough for our intelligence services to take seriously. Counter intelligence agents scrutinized even the best-trusted, if they failed the "never unobserved in enemy hands" test. Counterspies also searched for systematic patterns and correlations among whole groups who might have been suborned.
Today, is such an effort at pattern-recognition likely? At the agency most responsible, the top dozen officials are fiercely loyal political appointees. Amid a wave of political purges, will any loyal officers dare to propose a systematic tracking and correlation effort toward consortion with terror nations, similar to what was done towards those who spent time among the commies?
Note carefully what I am saying. I am suggesting that IRRESPECTIVE of party affiliation, it is wise to unleash skilled counter-intelligence professionals to do exactly what they did during the Soviet era... seek, uncover and expose patterns that might indicate subornation of influential Americans by our civilization's leading violent adversary and bankroller of terror.
In any event, it is the sort of thing that could be partially investigated outside of government, were there money and interest and passion to uncover the truth.
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Enough. Long rants generally get skimmed... or else completely unread.
Nevertheless, if even one of these issues got a closer look, I believe it could add some real juice to a tired party line. One that only serves to reinforce the wussy image that GOP operatives have exploited in turning the middle class away from the Democratic Party.
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