That’s what I’m suggesting. There have always been people who believed that immediate withdrawing was the most sensible course of action. Six months ago, very few of them were willing to say so (or even hint so) in newspaper columns or on TV or on the floor of Congress. This state of affairs was aided by a media that reported very little of the ongoing violence in Iraq. When Sheehan started her protest, things started changing. The media was obligated to notice the human toll of the Iraq War, and public figures grew less afraid to stand up and say that keeping the troops in Iraq accomplishes nothing.
You say that politicians are following the lead of the people? Hardly. Public support has been dropping steadily for more than a year. It was the pundits and members of Congress who weren’t willing to stand up and say it, until Sheehan’s initial protest. As for the tedious claim that she’s hurting the anti-war cause, you can say it as often as you wish but it won’t come true. The anti-war cause is stronger now than it ever has been. If public support continues to fall, then eventually the government will have to bring the troops home. You can sit around reminding yourself that Sheehan is creating more support for the war by merely existing, but what will you accomplish by doing so?
I don’t what news outlets you’ve been paying attention to, but the almost daily bombings in Iraq have been right there front and center since long before CS started her vigil. How many Congressmen do you see at the Sheehan rallies? Maybe one person from the House, none from the Senate. No one in the Senate is calling for immediate withdrawl, and only a few minor players in the House are on that bandwagon.
No, Ms. Sheehan was a one-hit wonder back in August when the news was slow.
You see, I just don’t see him being able to do this. There simply isn’t the dollars and cents in the budget to make a concerted effort on border security.
There’s becoming quite the groundswell politically about getting the deficit under SOME sort of control and another large budget-busting initiative is going to have trouble getting through in an era where even democrats are saying that entitlements will have to be shaved to get things under control.
Who knows? Maybe Norquist is finally getting his ‘starve the beast’ thing going. The problem is that no one who’s elected actually has the courage to stop feeding it. If it takes deficit spending and devaluing the dollar down the road then so be it.
Political capital is an amorphous thing. If you say you have it and can sell that concept then you have it. Bush claimed to have it then didn’t bring it off. That’s effectively worse than not claiming it in the first place.
Seriously, other than the Roberts nomination, has Bush had ANYTHING go right since his election? He’s had Social Security reform go down, Miers get humiliated by her own party, Katrina, Brown, Wilma, Iraq getting worse, etc.
At this point he’s got to be thinking “What next? Locusts?”
It’s not like I feel sorry for him. A lot of this is his own fault in one way or the other. But, man, that’s quite a litany of woe.
Bill Clinton in the worst of the oral sex scandal did not have the Mainstream media sharpshooting every little move. The Washinton Post on the first editorial shortly after Clintoon pointed his finger at the American public and lied, didn’t have the testicles to put a name to the individual. Instead it was a four line editorial at the bottom of the editorial column. In essence it said, “He has lied to us before”. WHO?
Hillary Clintoon’s tasteless Ghandi joke was published in the Post four days after it was published on the Internet. It was published on the following Saturday. The quintessential slow news day and it was buried in the middle of the Style Section’s standard page three trash column.
Bush doesn’t have the Clintoons MSM covering his butt.
Me, I would vote efor him again. At least he hasn’t pointed a fingewr at me and shamelessly lied to me.
Seriously, if the policial will existed to do something about the border then they would. They’d find the money, cut from other programs, or simply run up more deficit. We already have a military. IIRC, the constitution specifically tasks the military with guarding the borders of the country. Why not use the resources we already have to bring sanity to the open borders?
There’s a dozen ways to solve the problem. The issue is having the will do actually do something. Up until now, Bush hasn’t.
Fair enough. You’re entitled to your opinion. I think that it’s absolutely nuts to give this much credit to one wacky protest group, let alone one individual. As I said before, I think she’s hurting her cause more than helping it. In any case, whatever affect she has is a tiny one. YMMV.
Huh? Sure he did. In fact, the MSM was so obsessed about his “every little move” in the Lewinsky affair that even the scandal-lovin’ American public got royally sick of it:
