The "fear mongering" isn't new.

[ewagner]

Every year, for the past four years, we Democrats stand by the sidelines and howl loudly about the Bush Administration "politicizing" 9/11. And we hate it when Bush uses 9/11 to justify everything from illegal wiretapping, to secret prisions to invading Iraq (and now possibly Iran or Syria or both). But we see that the technique is nothing new...it's been used before and the Republicans know it. They know how to pull out the "old playbook" and make it work again.

Take a look at this entry from the blog "Discrininations"

For those of you who are too young to remember Reconstruction and its aftermath, ?waving the bloody shirt? refers to the anti-Southern demagogy Northern Republicans would employ in the latter part of the 19th Century whenever it appeared the Democrats (the party of ?Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion?) were gaining. The ?bloody shirt? referred, of course, to the sacrifices of the Union in the Civil War.
A good example is this bit from Robert Ingersoll, a Union officer and post-war orator of some note:
"Every man that denied Union prisoners even the worm-eaten crust of famine, and when some poor emaciated Union patriot, driven to insanity by famine, saw in an insane dream the face of his mother, and she beckoned him and he followed, hoping to press her lips once again against his fevered face, and when he stepped one step beyond the dead line the wretch that put the bullet through his loving, throbbing heart was and is a Democrat." http://www.discriminations.us/2003/10/more_waving_of_the_bloody_shir.html

Sound familiar?

The technique is called "Waving the Bloody Shirt" and the Republicans have been doing it since Reconstruction Days...they've just dusted it off and dressed it up in new clothes.


The truth is, old post-bellum Democrats couldn't stop it then...can we stop it now?