I've realized that the GOPers' worries about the Iraqi prison scandal are overblown. What they should actually want is for it to get
worse. Worries
Matthew Yglasias:
Quote:
But I've been afraid since the first word of this [the Abu Grahib story breaking wide open] started trickling out that it might be a dead end for American liberalism. The charge that he's been overzealous -- that he's gone too far, that he's done to much -- to try and defeat America's enemies is, I think, one that George W. Bush can live with. The American people may well feel that he really has gone too far in one or two points, but you'd rather have the guy who does too much to defend America than the guy who does too little. Pressing this line of argument makes it seem as if Democrats are saying that the government needs to be more evenhanded between the terrorists, on the one hand, and American soldiers on the other.
Now, of course, I know that that's not the right way to understand all this at all, but I'm afraid it'll come across that way. The good issues for Democrats are things like, "the war was a distraction," "bad diplomacy raised the costs," "stingy budgeting (not enough armor, etc.) got soldiers killed," "who's guarding the ports?," and "sure, terrorism's bad, but that doesn't mean we don't also need a better health care system." Running as the defender of the rights of accused terrorists, on the other hand, doesn't seem like a winning game plan to me.
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Brilliant, I tell you! Genius, I say!
So, I see Rove's commercials coming out in, say, September with sequential images of:
- Lyndie grinding it out on film, then
- Kerry (or a more attractive liberal surrogate) complaining about the US violating the GC and Bush being responsible, then
- various 9/11 images, with a voiceover stating that this is what Democratic, sissyliberal policies will bring us, then
- A statement from Bush in the Oval, saying "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."*
Game over. Landslide, GOP.
Gattigap
* I know, I know. But he's been dead for a while. No one will connect the dots, and the line is handy these days.
