I guess there's nothing new under the Repub sun.

[ginnyinWI]

This just occurred to me (ok I'm a little slow on the uptake), but there is a definite Nixon-to-Bush analogy here. As Nixon sought to diffuse Kerry's anti-war message with his "own" pro-war veteran, John O'Neill, so now Bush has recruited his own pro-war mom to counter Cindy Sheehan. This is from Frank Rich's column (love that guy-- he's one of the best). http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/opinion/28rich.html?ei=5089&en=91d8ac21cc31d02c&ex=1282881600&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

ANOTHER week in Iraq, another light at the end of the tunnel. On Monday President Bush saluted the Iraqis for "completing work on a democratic constitution" even as the process was breaking down yet again. But was anyone even listening to his latest premature celebration?

We have long since lost count of all the historic turning points and fast-evaporating victories hyped by this president. The toppling of Saddam's statue, "Mission Accomplished," the transfer of sovereignty and the purple fingers all blur into a hallucinatory loop of delusion. One such red-letter day, some may dimly recall, was the adoption of the previous, interim constitution in March 2004, also proclaimed a "historic milestone" by Mr. Bush. Within a month after that fabulous victory, the insurgency boiled over into the war we have today, taking, among many others, the life of Casey Sheehan.

It's Casey Sheehan's mother, not those haggling in Baghdad's Green Zone, who really changed the landscape in the war this month. Not because of her bumper-sticker politics or the slick left-wing political operatives who have turned her into a circus, but because the original, stubborn fact of her grief brought back the dead the administration had tried for so long to lock out of sight. With a shove from Pat Robertson, her 15 minutes are now up, but even Mr. Robertson's antics revealed buyer's remorse about Iraq; his stated motivation for taking out Hugo Chávez by assassination was to avoid "another $200 billion war" to remove a dictator.

In the wake of Ms. Sheehan's protest, the facts on the ground in America have changed almost everywhere. The president, for one, has been forced to make what for him is the ultimate sacrifice: jettisoning chunks of vacation to defend the war in any bunker he can find in Utah or Idaho. In the first speech of this offensive, he even felt compelled to take the uncharacteristic step of citing the number of American dead in public (though the number was already out of date by at least five casualties by day's end). For the second, the White House recruited its own mom, Tammy Pruett, for the president to showcase as an antidote to Ms. Sheehan. But in a reversion to the president's hide-the-fallen habit, the chosen mother was not one who had lost a child in Iraq...

[karynnj]

1. Not quite the same

I think one big difference is that Nixon recruited O'Neil both as a counter to Kerry (so he could point to a sailer who still backed him) and as someone to challenge Kerry's honesty and view of the situation in Vietnam. Bush is using Mrs. Pruett for the former - but, other than expressing a different view, I don't think she is thrashing Sheehan - all though many RW nuts are.