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THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SAY "MOVE ON," BUT THE BANKRUPT REPUBLICAN PARTY REFUSES
09/13/2007
The Republican Party is bankrupt.
Shouldering enormous fears that they will lose the White House and become an even smaller minority in the 2008 Congress, they are desperate men and women without a coherent strategy to turn things around. Even if the Republicans had a strategy, it appears the American people have caught on to the hollowness of their rhetoric and the failure of their policies and are unimpressed with anything new, like for instance the dog and pony show put on this week by Petraeus, Crocker and Bush.
And so today on CNN, prior to the Bush address to the nation they had on a "Republican strategist" from their C team, someone I had never seen before, to repeat every tired and worn out talking point the Republican Party has used over the past six years. Rather than discuss the merits of the President's so-called war plan or the testimony of Petraeus and Crocker, she accused Move-On of being "socialists" and the Democrats of being "defeatists" who only want to "cut and run," which is really amusing as Bush himself will announce a small drawdown of troops tonight and no one will call that "cutting and running."
Mostly, though, this strategist wanted to change the subject and spend all of her air time talking about the Move-On ad in the New York Times with the title "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" She joins Rudy Giuliani and every other Republican that can get in front of a microphone to denounce Move-On (and by inference the Democrats) and insist the ad was "reprehensible." How dare an advocacy group bring up some facts about the war and the Petraeus testimony! How dare they exercise their freedom of speech! How dare they criticize a general! (Of course, Admiral Fallon, the general's immediate superior, once reportedly called him "an ass-kissing little chicken sh*t" and no one condemned him for his crude criticism.)
To be fair to Move-On and to set the record straight, it is important to read what the ad actually said, so here it is, in full:
"General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts. In 2004, just before the election, he said there was “tangible progress “in Iraq and that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward.”
And last week Petraeus, the architect of the escalation of troops in Iraq, said ”We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress.”
Every independent report on the ground situation in Iraq shows that the surge strategy has failed.
Yet the General claims a reduction in violence. That’s because, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon has adopted a bizarre formula for keeping tabs on violence. For example, deaths by car bombs don’t count.
The Washington Post reported that assassinations only count if you're shot in the back of the head -- not the front.
According to news reports, there have been more civilian deaths and more American soldier deaths in the past three months than in any other summer we’ve been there.
We'll hear of neighborhoods where violence has decreased. But we won't hear that those neighborhoods have been ethnically cleansed.
Most importantly, General Petraeus will not admit what everyone knows; Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war.
We may hear of a plan to withdraw a few thousand American troops.
But we won’t hear what Americans are desperate to hear: a timetable for withdrawing all our troops. General Petraeus has actually said American troops will need to stay in Iraq for as long as ten years.
Today before Congress and before the American people, General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us."
There it is, the horrible ad that Senator David Vitter wants to have the Senate officially condemn in a resolution and thus win back the favor he lost with his party when he confessed to seeing prostitutes in D.C.
Now, if it had been me writing the ad, I would not have used the word "betray" as I don't think it conveys what is really going on, and it obviously gives the bankrupt GOP a few good days to bash a powerful anti-GOP group, but I understand the word play that was going on here and the Move-On ad obviously got a lot of attention (although not nearly as much as those infamous "Swift Boat ads a few years ago.)
However, if you go to the Move-On website, you will see that documents every statement made in the ad with one or more reputable sources. The ad is factual, and that is why Republicans must condemn it. After all, they know their audience, only a handful of whom have read the actual ad, and Republicans are careful not to quote anything but the title, which is obviously controversial. To actually repeat the accusations presented in the ad would require Republicans to refute the allegations, and this is something they cannot do.
The American people, however, are not falling for it any more. They know that George W. Bush and his administration have strung them along for years and told them lie after lie about this war. Now that the truth is coming out, it hurts, as the truth often does, and the most GOP apologists can do is spin, spout tired old talking points and change the subject.
The woman who represented the Republicans on CNN looked foolish as she trotted out every hackneyed statement made by the not so grand old party over the past six years, which is why James Carville, her counterpart on the Democratic side, simply smiled as she babbled on. He got the final word, though, as the anchor asked him what advice he would give the President before tonight's speech. "I'd advise him to skip the speech and take a nap," he said.
Unlike James Carville, I don't want the President and the Republicans to take naps. I want them to start facing reality and stop spinning and changing the subject. I want them to level with the American people and tell them the truth about this war, regardless of the political price they might pay. I want them to be public servants, not servants of a power mad – and increasingly desperate - political party. I want them to care more about the American people than about their egos and their legacies.
Ironically, the group Move-On got its name from their advice to Republicans during the Clinton impeachment fiasco. Like a majority of the American people they disapproved of the proceedings against the President and they wanted the Congress to get over it, get back to doing the people's business and thus Move On. That's exactly what the people want the Congress and the President to do today. They want them to Move On, to move the country past this disastrous war and begin to bring our men and women home. They want them to abandon the petty politics that require them to support an unsupportable and failed policy, face reality and simply Move On.
I don't have any hope the GOP will do those things. And because of that they will remain a bankrupt party, and an increasingly foolish looking one.
And while they spin, spew talking points, distort, dissemble, and babble on disingenuously about a television ad, fresh-faced American soldiers and innocent Iraqis continue to die.
-Ellen Terich
All content © 2005 outragedcitizen.com
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