Democrats' rare chance to go for gut

From Sunday's Inquirer....

http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/20070722_The_American_Debate___Democrats_rare_chance_to_go_for_gut.html


By Dick Polman
For The Inquirer

Consider this hypothetical:
A Democratic president is forced to take action after terrorists attack New York and Washington. It's clear that the terrorists' sponsors are based in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But within 18 months, this Democrat decides to invade a country that had nothing to do with the attack. In the next four years, he spends half a trillion dollars, sucking America deeper into a quagmire, stretching the military to the breaking point - while in Pakistan, the culprits remain free. Indeed, U.S. intelligence officials warn that the evildoer group in Pakistan has "regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability."

Imagine it's the eve of a national election. Any question how the GOP would respond?

They'd run TV ads mocking the Democrats as the party that has made America weaker. Their talking heads on Fox News would lament about how the Democrats are wrecking our proud military, can't be trusted to run a war, can't even choose the right war to fight. They'd crank out podcasts about how the party of George McGovern is wasting our precious blood and treasure while our true enemies plot to kill our kids in their suburban beds.

In short, the Republicans would craft a visceral message that aims for the gut and engages the emotions. Over the last 40 years, that has been the GOP's metier.

These days, however, the Republicans are stuck in neutral, because it's their own guy who has fought the wrong war and emboldened our enemies. Which gives the Democrats a rare opportunity to lash out at GOP national security failures, to aim for the gut and engage the emotions.

But that is not what Democrats do.

They are cerebral by nature. They dislike emotional appeals. They fear that if they get too pugnacious, some voters might get mad. But as clinical psychologist and political consultant Drew Westen argues in his new book The Political Brain, this fear of gut-level combat is a big reason the Democratic Party keeps losing national elections.

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much more

and more today on the blog

http://dickpolman.blogspot.com/2007/07/bushs-spymaster-says-yes-to-reality.html

the military after 9/11 and I do not think so now. It is a police issue. Thus I have been waiting for someone/anyone to set the legal branch of government to finding, catching and prosecuting them. In a military action we kill too many innocent victims. It is like bombing a whole town because a single killer lives there.

We need to decide which war we are fighting: the war on terror which should be done by law enforcement or the war for the control of ME oil?

Ads are a drop in the bucket compared to what the Repiggie pundits do to us.