Today’s Washington Post gives Republicans nationwide a reason to be hopeful come November, and there aren’t a lot of those. The Post reports that Congressional Democrats are really worried – the headline said it all “Democrats Scrambling to Organize Voter Turnout.” The story reports that
[House Democratic Leader Nancy] Pelosi — echoing a complaint common among Democratic lawmakers and operatives — has warned privately that Democrats are at risk of going into the November midterm elections with a voter-mobilization plan that is underfunded and inferior to the proven turnout machine run by national Republicans.
That is, of course, well and good. I’m quite proud to be a member of the GOP machine that turns out so many voters. Here’s the statement that really threw me for a loop, though:
Many Democrats said that despite a favorable political climate and record-setting fundraising, the campaign to recapture the House and Senate could fall short if the organizational problems persist. “What the party really needs is to get serious about local, volunteer-based” operations, said Jack Corrigan, a longtime Democratic operative. “The last-minute, throw-money-at-it approach . . . does not really solve the fundamental failure to organize that is there. The DNC is moving in the right direction, but needs to do more, fast,” he said.
I’ve been waiting YEARS for Democrats to realize that throwing money at a problem is not an answer… but why should a party’s election methodology be any different than their governing ideology?
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Maybe its just a plain lack of platform because they moved too far to the left? The primary election in Connecticut is a great exampe… when Joe Lieberman agrees with the party 90% except on the war, they go nuts. Sorry to say, the War and Foreign policy is not a Democrat strength. People liked Kerry because of his domestic issues… however even Democrats voted for Bush because he was better on Foreign Policy and the philosophy of Peace through Strength.
Bush’s bold foreign policy is really reaping benefits. Wow. Look at Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, North Korea, Somalia, Darfur, Venezuela, Russia, and tell me we are safer now than we were in 2004. People may like Bush’s foreign policy more, but that doesn’t mean its doing any good. OK, bring on the, “So you would perfer having Sadaam in power?”‘s.
Greg-
Let’s break this down.
Iran has been a problem for the US going all the way back to Carter, and no coherant attempt has been made to deal with them until now. Iraq should have been finished off in ’91 by Bush 41, and Bush 43 chose to deal with it since the UN decided never to enforce their own resolutions.(problematic as it has been) Lebanon/Hezbollah (yes I am lumping them together) should have been dealt with in the ’80s by Reagan after the Beirut bombing. Pushing Syria out of Lebanon last year was a good start, but they probably should have been handled in conjunction with Iraq in ’03 as part of the WMD hunt.
North Korea was given nuclear capabilities by Clinton in the deal we negotiated with them back in 1994. We ran from Somailia after one of our helicopters got shot down (in a battle with warlords that we ACTUALLY won), and Clinton decided to get out of there in ’93. To blame the Darfur situation on Bush is just silly-perhaps if we had intervened over the UN’s incompetence, it would not have been severe (although isn’t that the UN’s job to handle these situations?). Venezuala was a democratically elected government ultimately userped by Hugo Chavez and decided to become buddy-buddy with Iran-again, can’t see how this is Bush’s fault.
And Russia-well, Russia’s been a problem since the USSR days, even after the Cold War ended (which, now, in essence gave independence to all of the former USSR republics and weakened Russia’s military, while not really overall changing how the country is run).
The major problem with our foreign policies towards the Middle East (and North Korea) over the years is that we have taken a minimalist approach to solving these situations, instead of engaging full bore in defeating one of these countries right at the source of the problem. And over time, all these problems became interwoven into one another and have resulted into the situation that we have now. I still believe had we enaged Iran or Lebanon at the source of the problem, instead of now, I don’t think the current situation would be as bad as it is.
Unfortunately, it’s fruitless to negotiate with a country or ideologues that are focused on a sole mission-destruction of your country, since you have nothing to offer them that they want, except nuclear weapons. So perhaps limiting the talk and acting is a better approach right now, since every time we’ve talked, it’s just done more to complicate the situation.
Let’s just act and fix this stuff now before it gets any worse. Unfortunately, we’ve had too many Chamberlins and still have too many to mess this up further.
The General –
I wasn’t blaming Bush for all the troubles of the world, but rather pointing out that due to his handling of foreign policy, things have gotten worse, not better.
The Iraq war has totally restructured the balance of power in the middle east towards Iran. But I don’t really want to discuss the merits (or lack thereof) of that particular policy, because it will probably just devolve to trading talking points.
Your prescription for Syria is that we should have taken care of it during the search for WMD. What does that mean? Regime change? Demands for free and fair elections? Hopefully that won’t result in the election of a radical terrorist group hellbent on Israel’s destruction, which happened when Bush pushed for free and fair elections in the Palestinian territories.
I don’t really agree with your contention that we won that battle in Somalia – it was a humanitarian effort, it was a mistake to engage the warlords, and hundreds of somalis were killed in one day, if the battle you are talking about is the one from black hawk down. Which further enflamed anti-American sentiment and probably helped contribute to the rise of the Islamists now in power there.
Bush on Darfur – mad props for labeling it genocide, and talking about it here and there, but unfortunately not much has been done, and being bogged down in other places has a lot to do with that. It would be nice if the UN could better address the situation in Darfur, but then again the US has never really shown any faith in the UN or put a whole lot of effort into seeing it function well under Bush, so it’s not really fair to just pass off the dirty genocide laundry now.
I don’t think Syria and Iran are solely focused on the destruction of America – they have a lot of pandering to do to their own people, in order to explain why we in the west, while being “soulless unbelievers”, still prosper and live in such a damn good country while the vast majorities of their countries live in the throes of poverty. But if these countries had the ear of the US directly, something tells me their anti-American pandering would gradually decrease. As of now, our options are ignore them or bomb them. I wish there was a middle path, but Bush hasn’t shown the willingness to explore that.
Finally, if the oldest and most tasteless cliche in American political discourse is comparing one’s opponent to the Nazis, then the second oldest and tasteless is labeling every diplomatic effort “Chamberlain-esque appeasement”. I’m not saying Bush has created the perils of our present world, but it sure doesn’t seem like his policy prescriptions are making it any safer.