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ENEMIES – REAL AND IMAGINED
By Nancy Greggs
"Never attribute more intelligence to your enemy than to yourself and your brothers." Wise words from Abbie Hoffman, and never have they seemed more apropos than right now.
While I would never discount the ability of the GOP to stay on message, act in unison, and spin even the worst news into something that reflects positively on themselves, I recognize that these abilities have been the outcome of hard work and strategy, and not – as some would seem to have it – the result of some mystical, all-encompassing force.
Too many Democrats point to Karl Rove as an evil genius who is somehow undefeatable. His accomplishments in the political arena have been many, but he does not control events outside of his sphere of influence, and that sphere is limited. Yes, he has managed to push his incompetent puppet into the limelight, and certainly helped him secure the highest office in the land – no small feat, especially given the idiot he had to work with. But at the same time, he has not managed to keep his boy’s approval ratings up, and considering how ‘legacy’ matters to both Svengali and his off-tune Trilby, I doubt those plummeting poll numbers were actually part of the plan.
I have seen a lot of talk, here and elsewhere, about the concept that if the Republicans are losing the mid-terms, it was obviously their design to do so all along. Firstly, no one has come up with a viable explanation for why this would serve their purposes.
“If the Democrats have power, the GOP can blame everything that goes wrong in future on them.” Nice theory. The Republicans have been blaming the Democrats for everything that has gone wrong for years now – why do they need to hand them an election in order to continue doing so? I realize the citizenry is sometimes asleep at the wheel, but they have obviously noticed the disastrous situation the country is in, thanks to the present powers-that-be – which is why many of them will be voting Democratic next month. I sincerely doubt they can be convinced six, eight, ten months hence that things had actually been going along swimmingly until those pesky Democrats took control.
“The Republicans are deliberately engineering bad poll numbers for their candidates, so they can Diebold the election at the last minute just to prove their ability to do so.” That’s one of my personal favorites. I have no doubt that Diebold was a key factor in the theft of the 2000 and 2004 elections, but I fail to see how blatantly inviting scrutiny into that dirty little secret (which is becoming less and less ‘secret’) would be anything less than disaster for the GOP.
“They have engineered recent events to purposely lose this election.” What are the events that are losing them this election that were purposely engineered? The Foley scandal? The Abramoff scandal? The Ney scandal? Mounting casualties in Iraq?
If the GOP wanted to lose an election – the reasons for doing so still not clear – it would have been easily accomplished. Spend less money on ads. Run lacklustre campaigns. Fail to support candidates in tight races, and let them flounder. Or the ultimate race-losing proposition – connect your candidates to Bush instead of distancing them from him.
The recent surfacing of Republican scandals deliberately engineered? Do you really believe they would have chosen that route? Think it through. If they were looking to lose this election, wouldn’t the last course of action be scandals that will have dire consequences for their party long after the election is over – especially when they are about to allegedly “hand over” subpoena and investigatory powers to the Democrats?
“Bush and Rove keep saying they’re going to win. That means the fix is in!” Yeah, a politician predicting victory for his own party is a sure indicator that something underhanded is about to be put into play. How often have you seen a candidate predict getting his ass kicked? How often have you seen a politician pack up his campaign office weeks before the voting takes place, telling anyone and everyone that he knows he hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell, so he might as well move along?
The downfall of the Republican party is not a matter of the darker side of magic, nor machinations designed to effect some shadowy, ulterior outcome. It is simply a matter of the lies, deceit, and hypocrisy being laid bare, along with the shallowness of their so-called ideals, their inability to govern in any meaningful way, and their utter disdain for the welfare of their fellow citizens catching up with them at last.
The American citizenry has finally awoken, and are less than happy with what has been going on while they slumbered, safely ensconced in dreams that, in the morning’s light, have finally been revealed to be nightmares.
The mis-steps of the GOP have been astounding, especially in the last few weeks, where they seem to have developed an uncanny ability to do nothing that doesn’t backfire, destroy their credibility, and send their poll numbers plummeting to new lows. That is not design; that is the consequence of muddled thinking caused by complete desperation.
The Irish have a saying: “Don’t borrow trouble.” And it seems that’s what too many of us are doing these days, in an irrational need to see everything that happens – from the sun rising in the east to its setting in the west – as some kind of proof that Rove and his minions are manipulating the universe to their own advantage.
We, as a party and as a nation, will have enough trouble in the days to come, attempting to set our country back on the right track, undoing the damage done to our nation, and healing the rift between ourselves and our fellow citizens that this administration has so painstakingly crafted for their own purposes.
There is no need to borrow trouble from any other quarter. So let’s stop doing it.
Let’s focus on fighting the real enemy, and not the mythical dragon who only exists in the land of defeatism.
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