With the 2006 elections less than ten months away, the conventional wisdom is that the GOP is vulnerable. That scandals in Congress and the war in Iraq producing suicide bombings daily and, most importantly, the President on the verge of becoming a lame duck almost as soon as November’s elections are over, the talking heads seem to believe that the Republicans will lose seats in the House and Senate. The conventional wisdom, however, may be wrong. They were certainly wrong in 2002, when history seemed to dictate that the Republicans would lose seats, they gained seats. Will the same thing happen in 2006 ? I don’t know, but this article in today’s Washington Post shows that the GOP is going to certainly try.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove offered a biting preview of the 2006 midterm elections yesterday, drawing sharp distinctions with the Democrats over the campaign against terrorism, tax cuts and judicial philosophy, and describing the opposition party as backward-looking and bereft of ideas.
“At the core, we are dealing with two parties that have fundamentally different views on national security,” Rove said. “Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview. That doesn’t make them unpatriotic — not at all. But it does make them wrong — deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong.”
Not at all surprising, considering that this strategy has worked before:
It was four years ago this week when Rove, appearing at another meeting of the RNC, said Republicans would make terrorism a central issue of the 2002 midterm elections. Rove’s remarks infuriated Democrats, who protested that, until then, Bush had stressed bipartisanship and national unity in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Republicans made historic gains in 2002, and Bush successfully used the issue again to help secure his reelection in 2004, despite growing public dissatisfaction with the administration’s handling of the war in Iraq. Yesterday’s speeches by Rove and Mehlman signaled that the White House and the RNC intend to pursue much the same strategy in a midterm-election year that begins with Republicans on the defensive.
Some will criticize the GOP for politicizing the War on Terror, but I don’t see what the big deal is. War strategy has been a political issue before and it will be a political issue again. Additionally, there are differences between the parties on how to proceed in the War on Terror. To deny that they exist is to deny reality and to deny that terrorism is the most important issue facing the country today.
More on what this means for 2006 at Captain’s Quarters.
Technorati Tag: Republicans, GOP, 2006 elections
