Monday, July 10, 2006

Back to the Well, One more time, Will it be dry?

With storm clouds gathering on the horizon for the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, and with "the Architect" Karl Rove freed from his post as Deputy White House Cheif of Staff for Policy as well as cleared from further legalities in the Valerie Plame debacle, a nacent strategy is coming together on the part of the GOP to hold onto their majorities. This strategy is the same one that worked so well in 2002 and 2004: play the fear card. With missle tests in North Korea, the nuclear ambitions in Iran, and the strategically uncovered threat (which was really nothing more than some al-Qaeda fantasizing in chat rooms) of tunnel bombings in New York, Rove and the GOP will argue that todays' world is far to dangerous to turn over to Democratic foreign policy "wieners" and their multi-lateral (some would say conservative) approach to dealing with the rest of the world. This strategy is based on keeping the American people as frightened as possible for as long as possible: Think FDR's statement "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" turned on its head.

The Democratic challenge to defeat Karl Rove politics of fear is to take the statement above from one of our party's greatest leaders and apply it to today's world. The first step, I think, is to point out how the situations in North Korea, Iran, and also Afganhistan, has gone on unchecked due to all of the U.S.'s time and attention being placed in Iraq. This might be a good place to hammer home the theme of the Bush administration half-assing the "war of necessity" in Afganhistan in order to lead us into ao "war of choice" in Iraq. Next, we must convince Americans that a multi-lateral approach to fighting terrorism will work better than Bush's "Cowboy Diplomacy" at preventing terror. After all, preventing terrorism is an excercise in police work. Police investigations are careful, painstaking ordeals where sharing of information amongst all investigators is of the utmost importance. It is this police work, and not the Bush excursion into Iraq, that has kept America safe since 9/11. We must figure out a way to get that news to the American people.

Here is a good article on this issue.

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