Tuesday, October 21, 2008

The end of 9-11 page in the GOP playbook?

WE'VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com

As the blue tide rises across America, many Republicans are starting to fight back, trying to hit Democrats as hard as they can. One is Tom Feeney, Republican Congressman from Florida.

Feeney is currently down 20 points in his re-election. Chris Cilizza writes in the Washington Post that "Feeney Plays the 9-11 card" in his latest ad, though doubts that it will work. Seeing the lack of success that the GOP has had in this regard, he's probably right.

The attacks on the US seven years ago are something that none of us will forget, but the over-use of the incident as a political wedge is losing its effectiveness.

Because while Americans are still concerned with national security and the War on Terror, we aren't as concerned with staying in Iraq (though the two were never supposed to be linked, go figure). We've pretty much handed the keys to this country to the GOP for the past eight years, much of it in the name of national security, only to see that trust taken for granted and abused.

We saw Rudi Guiliani run for president on a platform of national security. We've seen Colin Powell - the man who made the case to the UN that we needed to go to Iraq - admit that we're headed in the wrong direction and we need to stop deciding who is and who is not "more American" and instead start addressing real problems in this country.

Thankfully we're now seeing the end of bumper-sticker-patriotism that came with all of this. As if a slogan saying "proud to be an American" or putting up a flag in front of the house makes one any more patriotic than anyone else.

This trivialization of the war, using the terrorist attacks to leverage for anything and everything possible just got completely insane. "If I don't get a matching chair with this desk set, then the terrorists have already won." Oh and that Patriot Act is a good example, too. I'll close this entry with an image taken at a local Target right after a little earthquake we had in LA over the summer - which was originally designed as a joke and fully illustrates the point I'm making here...