No Antiwar Protestors to Demonize... Dean/Durbin will have to do...

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

I heard something interesting, I think it might have been on Air America. Speaker was talking about how Nixon played defense on Vietnam by demonizing the antiwar movement rather than trying to drum up support for unsupportable policies, and had some success at this.

Now while there were mass protests before the invasion of Iraq, there hasn't been any phenomenon like the Vietnam antiwar protest movement. I attribute this largely to the lack of a draft, as well as the current political climate that has been shaped in the U.S. since Reagan.

The absence of an easily identifiable movement (i.e. mass protests in the streets on TV), there is a vacuum. The Nixon strategy can't be applied, trying to demonize "liberals" and the odd Democrat who dares speak up is a poor substitute for those protestors. So, in effect, the events of the war get evaluated on their own, without the benefit of the visceral reaction some would have against street protestors.

[Neerav B. Trivedi]

1. It was mentioned on other DU threads that

Once a draft is implemented, there will be protesdts.


And THAT is when the Downing Street Memo and other documents relevant to that come up, and trhe whole Iraq War, including the prewar intelligence and the post war plans and the lies will be questioned, and a major impeachment movement both on the internet and in the form of protest (like we had before the Iraq War started) against Bush and his corrupt and evil Administation will occur.


By that time, which should be in mid to late September 2005, the average overall job approval ratings for Bush in all of the opinion polls should be in the lower 30s (31 - 34%).

Watch, when the much-feared "Draft" is suggested to be used by the Republicans in Congress, protests WILL occur.......guaranteed.

[Raksha]

2. The corporate media pretends there is no anti-war movement.

>>Now while there were mass protests before the invasion of Iraq, there hasn't been any phenomenon like the Vietnam antiwar protest movement. I attribute this largely to the lack of a draft, as well as the current political climate that has been shaped in the U.S. since Reagan.<<

To some extent, online activism has replaced in-the-street protesting, but you are right that there were mass demonstrations all over the world before the invasion of Iraq. The media chose to play them down or ignore them. So they can't very well demonize what they pretend doesn't exist...can they? (Well, boo hoo hoo!)

[TahitiNut]

3. Rove Rule #1: NEVER go on defense

Corollary to Rule #1: The best defense is a good offense. (If you don't have a "good" offense, merely being offensive is good enough.) Therefore

Rove Rule #2: ALWAYS attack the opposition's strength. Use falsehoods and misrepresentations in abundance. Why? When the opposition talks about the attack, then the attack is what gets the press - and the attack is what people will remember.
Corollary to Rule #2: Never bother to defend falsehoods and misrepresentations. (See Rule #1.) Never apologize.

[Independent_Liberal]

4. Exactly!

Since the Corporate Media hardly ever pays attention to the anti-war protestors, they have to go after a liberal Democrat and find some way to demonize him/her.