Did Spain give in to terrorism by voting out the popular party... or...

[battleknight24]

... did they turn on an administration they didn't trust? I've heard both sides of the argument and I'm not sure I understand either side very well... what are your thoughts...


Peace,

[jpgray]

1. Definitely the latter

The rallies were originally in solidarity against the attacks. When evidence emerged that the Popular Party was trying to pin the attacks on ETA to avoid electoral trouble, THEN the people got fed up and made a 4% or so shift in favor of the Socialists. The attacks themselves didn't sway the voters, but the Popular Party's response certainly did.

The media here are NOT reporting this at all fairly--the basic facts (including the poll numbers before and after) are not even being reported. Before the attacks it was 42% to 38% Popular v Socialist, and after the government bungling the election results were 38% to 43%. With the MOE, that's not a huge shift, and it can't be blamed on the terrorism itself while ignoring the government's reaction to it. Our media are obfuscating this to a nauseating degree.

[battleknight24]

2. The media has constantly said that...

... the popular party was on its way to easily winning this past election... that's what has confused me a little...

[jpgray]

7. The margin was fairly fragile before the attacks,

Well within the margin of error. Take a look at yesterday's Daily Howler for more info:

SPINNING SPAIN: Did the Spanish electorate cut-and-run as a result of last week’s bombing? Was the Spanish election an act of appeasement? To judge this, you might want to know two things. You might want to know where Spanish polls stood before the bombing occurred. And, of course, you might want to know what the vote totals turned out to be.

But good luck finding either fact in your American “press corps!” Pundits, of course, are pushing spin; in this morning’s Washington Times, for example, Donald Lambro—reliable lap-dog—types the official, scripted spin-point. “earful Spaniards voted to throw out Prime Minister Aznar,” the troubled scribe writes. (And yes, those are his actual words. That’s what it means when we put words in quotes.) But to assess this spin, you need some facts—and as we’ve told you again and again, facts play almost no role in our discourse. Almost surely, you don’t know the facts about Sunday’s election if you read the New York Times.

For example, what did Spanish polling show before the bombing last week? The Times has given you several answers. In yesterday’s paper, for example, Lizette Alzarez and Marie Sciolino offered this assessment:

ALVAREZ/SCIOLINO (3/17/04): The contest in Spain had always been close between the governing Popular Party, which backed Mr. Bush’s policies, and the Socialists, who opposed them…

In March 2003, at the height of opposition to the Iraq war, the Socialists were ahead in polls. With the economy roaring and the Socialist Party in disarray, the Popular Party pulled ahead. On March 7, the last date in which polls were published, an Opina poll showed that the gap had narrowed, giving the Popular Party 42 percent, compared with 38 percent for the Socialists.

The Howler goes on to note that in later articles, the NYT exaggerrated the lead the Popular Party had and their chances of victory.

[peachy]

3. Increased voter turn out made the shift

The big shift was due to people (mostly young) who turned out to vote in the end who probably would have stayed home otherwise. Something like a 6% increase in voter turnout. Fed up over being lied to.

I forgot who reported this but can look it up again if you like...

[Caution]

4. Read the letter from a Spaniard on Tom Tomorrow's blog

http://www.thismodernworld.com/

it's under the heading:
Spain in perspective

This will give you a pretty good idea of what really happened in Spain.

[wug37]

5. I would say

that if the * administration is saying that the terrorists won, then the opposite must be true. Therefore, the only viable option is that the people of Spain turned on a party who was getting involved in things that 90% of the population didn't approve of, and then tried to cover up the real cause behind the train station bombings. The people put in a new party who would do what the people wanted, not what some bully across the ocean wanted.

[JHB]

6. Booting out someone they didn't trust.

In the critical hours after the attack, they pulled a Bush and reflexively blamed ETA, something which would puff their own image. As it turned out not to be the case, people got angry over the self-serving horeshit and booted them out.

For an on-the-spot perspective, read this letter at Tom Tomorrow's blog:
http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/mtarchives/week_2004_03_14.html#001398

[cjbuchanan]

8. They gave into nothing

The polls before the attack showed that the Popular Party was going to win, but only get 43% of the vote. Then the attack happened.

Right away, the Prime Minister (he was from the Popular Party) blamed it on the ETA. He also said that this is more proof that Spain needs to keep the policy toward the ETA that he has taken (ignore their wants and hit them as hard as possible). Well it turned out the ETA was not the party responsible and it looked liked the Popular Party was exploiting the attack for political gain. Combine this with the fact that 90% of the Spanish did not want to go into Iraq (the Pop Party pushed for it anyway) and the fact that it looks like this attack was motivated by Spain's involvement in Iraq, and you can see why people would vote against the Pop. Party.

I also think that the Socialists were more in line with the mood of most Spaniards even before the blast.

Good article on this here: http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/16/spain/index.html

[cjbuchanan]

9. A great article on this by Paul Krugman

A year ago, President Bush, who had a global mandate to pursue the terrorists responsible for 9/11, went after someone else instead. Most Americans, I suspect, still don't realize how badly this apparent exploitation of the world's good will — and the subsequent failure to find weapons of mass destruction — damaged our credibility. They imagine that only the dastardly French, and now maybe the cowardly Spaniards, doubt our word. But yesterday, according to Agence France-Presse, the president of Poland — which has roughly 2,500 soldiers in Iraq — had this to say: "That they deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride."

This is the context for last weekend's election upset in Spain, where the Aznar government had taken the country into Iraq against the wishes of 90 percent of the public. Spanish voters weren't intimidated by the terrorist bombings — they turned on a ruling party they didn't trust. When the government rushed to blame the wrong people for the attack, tried to suppress growing evidence to the contrary and used its control over state television and radio both to push its false accusation and to play down antigovernment protests, it reminded people of the broader lies about the war.

By voting for a new government, in other words, the Spaniards were enforcing the accountability that is the essence of democracy. But in the world according to Mr. Bush's supporters, anyone who demands accountability is on the side of the evildoers. According to Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, the Spanish people "had a huge terrorist attack within their country and they chose to change their government and to, in a sense, appease terrorists."

So there you have it. A country's ruling party leads the nation into a war fought on false pretenses, fails to protect the nation from terrorists and engages in a cover-up when a terrorist attack does occur. But its electoral defeat isn't democracy at work; it's a victory for the terrorists.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/19/opinion/19KRUG.html

[ignatius]

10. They booted out a lying administration and upheld the ideas of

democracy. I hope and pray that Americans learned something from them.

[Jacobin]

13. 'toon on Spanish election

[DinahMoeHum]

11. They were prepared to kick the Popular Party's ass months

in advance. Nearly 90% of the population didn't want Spain to get involved in this war.

:kick:

[Jacobin]

12. Steve Bell's take on it: (heh heh heh)