Straw Man For President

Salon’s War Room notes that Junior and Uncle Dick are going around saying that the Democrats want to negotiate with al-Qaeda.

“See, evidently some must think that you can negotiate with them, you can talk sense with them, you can hope that they change,” President Bush said during his Rose Garden appearance Monday morning. Vice President Cheney, speaking at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, warned that al Qaida “is not a foe we can reason with, or negotiate with, or appease. This is . . . an enemy that we must vanquish.”

[…]

Where did the Bush-Cheney machine get the idea that Kerry would negotiate with or appease terrorists? CNN’s Judy Woodruff put that question to White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett Monday. He responded by changing the subject to the “explaining” Kerry must do about his votes on the Iraq war.

In the old days presidents were forced to face the press once in a while and the press would ask them questions like this and demand specific answers until they got something resembling an explanation. Today, we have “press availabilities” with functionaries who answer questions that haven’t been asked and the press just nods and moves on.

The president and vice president are not outright lying, of course. They said “some must think.” They didn’t name John Kerry. Indeed, they could very well be talking about their coalition of the willing friend and colleague Phillippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo who negotiated with “terrorists” in Iraq against the United States’s wishes just a week or so ago. Or they could be referring to our allies the Jordanian and Egyptian governments who’ve both been accused of negotiating with Iraqi insurgents in recent cases. And as the Salon article pointed out, they could even be talking about Ronald Reagan who also negotiated with terrorists and even sold them weapons (not that he recalled doing it.)

So they can say that it is not fair to condemn them for accusing John Kerry when there are so many other possible ways to interpret their words. They can’t help it if Americans automatically assume that they are talking about that Democrat pussy. That’s his problem.

To tell you the truth, I don’t know quite what to make of this. They have always operated as the “you can believe me or you can believe your lyin’ eyes” administration, but I think they are relying a little bit too much here on hate radio and outmoded stereotypes to carry swing voters. Nobody who saw Kerry’s speech the other night could possibly believe that he said anything about negotiating with terrorists. I’m not sure anyone who hasn’t been totally brainwashed by Limbaugh would believe this. This is right wing red meat politics and it’s a bit strange to see them shoring up their base this blatantly from the Rose Garden, especially as they try to make their run to the middle.

I’m really beginning to wonder if they haven’t arranged to manipulate the voting machines in a couple of the battleground states. It’s hard to see how they win with only their committed firebreathers and that really seems to be their strategy.