The
Philadelphia Enquirer (bugmenot.com is your friend) has an article detailing Robert Casey's attempts differentiate himself from fundie Rick "Sick Fuck" Santorum. I took note of these passages:
"After months of maintaining a low profile, Casey said the Republican senator was being too focused on "partisanship and ideology" to go after President Bush with the fervor he showed during the 1999 U.S.-led raids of Kosovo under President Bill Clinton."
snip
"Also, Santorum said,
Iraq is different from Kosovo because it posed a national security threat. Bush is offering a clear objective - establishing a stable democracy in the Middle East - and is meeting benchmarks, Santorum said.
"This idea of suggesting they are the same, it is just fundamentally wrong," said Santorum, who is the No. 3 Senate Republican leader."
(emphasis mine)
As we all know, Iraq represented no threat whatsoever to the United States prior to our invasion.
But Casey can't embrace that.
"Casey said he would have voted for the war considering the evidence at the time, and supported the spending bills that funded the effort. But when asked to outline his plan for Iraq, including whether he favored a deadline for pulling troops out of the country, Casey would not offer specifics.
"I don't think you can, as a matter of policy, articulate a long-term strategy if you don't have the facts to make that determination," Casey said."
Casey will not go so far as to acknowledge what we all know: Bush lied. The intelligence was fixed. America was fooled. The GOP did and continues to play a part in the fraud.
In the upcoming elections, a lot of Democrats who voted for the
IWR will have to make a decision: run against the lie or run as deliberately deluded. Ignoring The Lie and running as hawk lite presents little in the way of contrast to their repuke opponent. The repuke will resort to the familiar old tactics of division (abortion, gays, immigrants) in order to energize the fundy base. They will rely on terra terra terra to scoop up nervous middlers. And, since the Dem will have no place to go on terra, except to mimick the repuke, the repuke will employ the "Liberals are cowards" meme. Without a solidly blue electorate, what's a deluded Dem to do?
But if the Dem were to run against The Lie, there may be a payoff. By embracing The Lie, acknowledging that they were lied to, that they take exception to The Lie, that the invasion was wrong, that it has not made us stronger and in fact has made the world less safe, that we should bring the troops home now, and that the GOP is beholden to The Lie, that The Lie has wrapped itself around the OP so as to become one with it, a true distinction is made. Courage is shown in the admission of having been fooled, something your standard issue repuke simply can not do.
By first admitting that they were played for fools by a corrupt repuke machine, showing that the entirety of the GOP is in lock-step in continuing The Lie and, thus, liars, then adopting the sort of language of Paul Hackett on the war, Dems will create a clear differentiation between themselves and repukes that can transcend some of the wedge issues that the repukes will be flinging. This approach, the Truth approach, may also win over some deliberate non-voters.
As this
Daily Kos post by Armando states, the GOP supports Bush. Dems must show that that is reason enough to vote against GOP candidates.
Encumbant Democratic candidates finally have room to move.
Edited because I made an assumption about Casey but did not lift a finger to check like an asshole.
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