Also in the
Chicago SunTimes' Daily Southtown |
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My Democratic friends are counting up the number of
seats they're going to win in the election: 16, 20, 35, 50. I hate to
disappoint them, but the Republicans will win in the sense that they will
not lose. Democratic overconfidence, as American as cherry pie,
happens every election year along about now. The Republicans will win because they are tough and the Democrats are weak. The average American does not care a hoot about the Bill of Rights, privacy or torture. Quite the contrary. Typical Americans are afraid of terrorists. How could they not be with the cliche "war on terror" heard constantly in the media and from the president every day? |
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President Bush has always been
tough on terror. He's perfectly willing to approve torture (though he
doesn't call it that), eavesdrop on phone lines, repeal the Bill of Rights
and suspend habeas corpus. While folks don't like the war in Iraq anymore,
they half-believe that the president is telling the truth when he says it is
the central front in the war on terror. The typical voter, cowering with
fear, wants to know what habeas corpus means. The Republicans may not in
fact be tougher, but they sound tough (tough on illegal immigrants, too --
Build a wall!). Second, the Republicans are smarter. They've spent the last year and a half digging up dirt about potential opponents and have developed slogans against them to which they are unable to respond effectively. Thus, in one district in the Chicago area, the Republican candidate says on every possible occasion that his opponent (a veteran who lost both her legs in Iraq) wants to give $6 billion of Social Security money to illegal aliens. The allegation is absurd but effective. Democrats don't have the gall and the guts to say such things. Therefore, they lose. |
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Third, the Republicans are richer. They have piles of cash to pour
into the closing days of the campaign to fill TV screens with negative ads
that a harsh person might call lies. None of these ads will discuss the Iraq
war or weapons of mass destruction. But they will emphasize toughness on
terror, which the Republicans have made the issue of this campaign. They
will emphasize the flabby-minded liberalism of their opponents who are as
bad as the terrorists. How do you establish that you're not a flabby-minded
liberal? Easy! Become a Republican! Fourth, the public does not want to hear about the National Intelligence Estimate that the war is producing swarms of new terrorists all over the world. Nor does it want to hear about the delicious tidbits in Robert Woodward's new book. No one cares whether Secretary of State Rice remembers or does not remember meeting with CIA people two months before the World Trade Center attack, a meeting in which she was warned about an imminent attack on the United States. Fifth, nor do the voters care about Mark Foley's folly. They understand, as the media prophets do not, that the only sex scandals that matter in contemporary politics are Democratic scandals. It may be a shame, but that's the way the rules are written. The Republicans, members of God's party, are all godly men. Accusations against them are the result of Democratic pre-election leaks. Besides, an "overly friendly" or "naughty" e-mail to a teenage page is not a serious matter compared with national security, is it? Someone tries to point out that the memories of both Rice and House Speaker Hastert seem to be failing: So many events that everyone else remembers, they can't seem to recall. The response is obvious. They're so busy at work protecting the security of the nation that they can't be expected to remember unimportant matters like a warning about a major attack or an e-mail to a stupid page. The Democrats will snipe at one another after the election, exchanging blame for one more loss. Why didn't they run a vigorous campaign -- on such matters as health care, college education, the decline of the middle class? The answer is they did, but no one heard them. The three simple words ''war on terror'' drown out everything else. We knew that six months ago. All else was Democratic wishful thinking. And young American men and women continue to die in Iraq. . |
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