Sounding the Death Knell

Dan Abbett

Democrats have developed an interesting and apparently effective political strategy. By constantly ridiculing, demonizing and slandering the president, with gleeful participation by the mainstream media, they have cowed the timid Republicans into breaking with the Bush Administration and hastened a Lame Duck Presidency.

By utilizing a constant drumbeat of negativity and propaganda to create public animosity toward the president in an election year, they have fractured Republican support for his policies. By so doing, they have created a de facto majority.

Under these circumstances, according to the wisdom and logic of the mainstream media, it is all but a done-deal that Democrats will win back control of both the House and Senate in this fall’s elections. Given their propensity to declare absolutely everything accomplished by the Bush Administration a total failure and their continuing determination to find scandal and incompetence in every act by the president, they revel in their pronouncement of the failure of the Bush Presidency.

The mainstream media operate on the premise that the majority of the American people are either gullible or stupid. Given the success they are having in continuing to move the president’s approval rating lower, they may be right. Their intent with regard to the president is “no win, period.”

On the other extreme, the Bush Administration seems to have a desire for political suicide. For whatever reason, they consistently fail to aggressively push back in the face of relentless, warrantless and often outright lies by their critics. As has been stated frequently in this space, neither Democrats nor the mainstream media intend to allow the facts or irrefutable evidence to interfere with their manufactured scandals and demagoguery.

Support for our war in Iraq has been completely eroded by the fabricated mantra that “Bush lied” about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Very credible and growing evidence, to include actual audiotape by Saddam Hussein to support the WMD claim, is being ignored by the president. It doesn’t help your case when you choose to hide the smoking gun that will prove your allegations.

The single greatest liability the president has is his inability to be a spontaneous public speaker. George Bush has many of the personal and policy qualities of Ronald Reagan. Unlike President Reagan however, he just can’t seem to deliver his lines and his critics are taking full advantage of it. It may partially explain his reluctance to have frequent encounters with the press, where he will undoubtedly have to react to their juvenile gotcha questions.

Absent an aggressive strategy to fend off the constant pummeling by his opposition, the president is taking it squarely on the chin. He is clearly behind on points and his best chance to win is to go for a knockout. The left believes they have damaged the president beyond his ability to recover. It is very premature to begin sounding the death knell but it will take a “Rocky” moment to get back in this fight.

If he is going to regain public support, the president will have to lose the compassionate part of “compassionate conservatism”. Mr. President, you have the minions standing in your corner. Show them they backed a winner and take this fight to the losing arguments of your opponents.

Email: danabbett1@charter.net