The Political Chase

Forget the issues, let’s just get reelected

A recent meeting between the White House Propaganda Dispensers and their GOP congressional counterparts provides ample evidence of what is most important to Republicans — Party Over Country and getting reelected. In fact, one could easily posit that Republicans could care less about actually resolving the issues. Instead, the critical issues we face today — Iraq, providing health care to children, and putting White House felons in jail — are simply pieces in a chess game.

This is what the NYT reported about their recent meeting.

Under fierce attack on children’s health insurance, beset by politically inconvenient retirements and uncertain if another scandal lurks around the corner, Congressional Republicans are feeling a bit under siege as even one of their former leaders predicts 2008 could be a Democratic year.

The twist is that the issue Republicans had feared most in the fall, the war in Iraq, has played out legislatively in their favor for the moment. In concert with the White House, Congressional Republicans say they were able to execute a strategy built around the testimony of General David H. Petraeus that allowed them to forestall Democratic calls for troop withdrawals and hold the party together on the war at a crucial turn.

But Republicans say they have lacked a similar cohesive plan to counter the Democratic assault over the children’s health insurance program that will be the subject of a veto override vote in the House on Thursday. President Bush’s veto of an expansion of that program and the strategic failure have exposed vulnerable Republicans to a backlash and allowed the party to be painted as uncaring.

As a result, Republicans have been scrambling for a health care response at a time when they had hoped to be pounding Democrats over excessive spending and re-establishing their image as the party of fiscal restraint.

How obvious is that? Top priority - use Gen. Petraeus as a political pawn to thwart Democratic efforts to end the war.

Moreover, when Bush’s veto portrayed them as uncaring, did they immediately begin developing a productive counter-proposal that would accommodate the health care needs of children and possibly ameliorate their tarnished image? Absolutely not. Instead, Mitch McConnell’s office resorted to the Rove Doctrine and began a smear campaign against a twelve-year-old boy.

Lt. Gen. Sanchez (ret.) recently described the dynamics of Washington perfectly.

There has been a glaring, unfortunate, display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders. As a Japanese proverb says, “action without vision is a nightmare.” There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight.

Since 2003, the politics of war have been characterized by partisanship as the Republican and Democratic parties struggled for power in Washington. National efforts to date have been corrupted by partisan politics that have prevented us from devising effective, executable, supportable solutions. At times, these partisan struggles have led to political decisions that endangered the lives of our sons and daughters on the battlefield. The unmistakable message was that political power had greater priority than our national security objectives….There is nothing going on today in Washington that would give us hope.

While no one could rightfully argue that Democrats are above reproach, there is overwhelming evidence that proves the Republican priorities are Party Over Country, Protect the President, and thwart any Democratic efforts to end the war in Iraq.

In every opening session, Members of Congress pledge allegiance to the Flag, but do they honor that pledge in word and deed?

I pledge allegiance to the Flag, of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Barack Obama nailed it when he said pinning a flag on the lapel of one’s jacket does not make that person a patriot.