Power Line News

Curmudgeon777 - 17 November 2006 06:08 PM

Conservative Bloggers are in a mind-boggling state of denial, IMHO.

I keep reading that the GOP debacle Nov 7 was attributable to “earmarks”, or to “No Child Left Behind”, or to various scandals (Duke Cunningham, Mark Foley, Robert Ney), or some other such nonsense.

It’s the Iraq War, stupid.

This is not right. The exit polls and all polling since the election has shown that the war fell a distant third in reasons for voting. The top issue was corruption (not unlike the 1994 election).

Of those polled who did highlight the war, the overwhelming majority were registered democrats or independents who had never voted for Bush, ever. No change there.

I believe we lost over two issues:

1. We lost some actual republicans who were tired of being ignored completely by our arogant elected class everywhere. We send a congresscritter to Washington who promised less spending, a cessation of illegal immigration, support for the president, good judges, etc and we got spenders, the Senate Amnesty and Cheap Labor immigration bill, hiding from the president instead of supporting the effort, Mavericks, RINO’s and the gang of 14.

The powers that be figured we would all hold our noses and pull the GOP lever again...most did but some simply wouldn’t.

2. We lost the independents and blue dog dems over corruption. We began behaving like a poor mans copy of the democrat party. The disgusting display of back stabbing and finger pointing that was the Foley scandal was the clincher.

The claim that we lost over the war is also disingenuous for another reason....the public never got the other side of the war. They were fed a Potemkin Village of a war by the democrat media 24/7 without any serious effort at showing the other side. Did any of the folk who voted against the war know anything beyond democrat propaganda about the effort? Schools built, electrification, water projects. How many know that 3/4 of the provinces in Iraq are more quiet and have less violence than do most US inner cities?

No, what they voted against was the cartoon version of the war they were fed by the old media.

JIMV - 20 November 2006 02:38 PM

Curmudgeon777 - 17 November 2006 06:08 PM

Conservative Bloggers are in a mind-boggling state of denial, IMHO.

. Did any of the folk who voted against the war know anything beyond democrat propaganda about the effort? Schools built, electrification, water projects. How many know that 3/4 of the provinces in Iraq are more quiet and have less violence than do most US inner cities?
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Nope, I didn’t know that.  It sounds like if I ever were forced to move back to the city, I should go to one of the peaceful provinces of Iraq instead. :-)

But seriously, are these peaceful places areas from which peace can spread...or are they more likely to be infected by the fever in Baghdad, Ramahdi, wherever, or can anyone know?  I will admit that we rarely, from the right or the left, get an intelligent analysis of “here’s where it’s bad, here’s where it’s good, and here’s how the pieces fit together.” Do you know of such commentary?

Did the generals talk about all the places where things are going well?  If so, I missed it

Dwight

My understanding is that the problem is in Bagdhad and the Suni triangle. There are only about 4 million Suni’s in the country total, about the population of Philadelphia. The kurdish areas of the north are serious success stories that will not be told.

The media is vested in the ‘Iraq failed’ canard, not unlike the ‘Bush lied’ lie. They will fight any story line that changes that and our own politicians find it easier to avoid the issue than to tell the truth and support the president.