If the Army Times’ editorial decisions are any indication of how members of the armed forces are going to vote in November, it’s going to be a very good year for Democrats.
The Progress Report noted today that the Army Times has run yet another item noting which party is really on the side of men and women in uniform and their families.
The [Republican majority on the] House Budget Committee was determined March 17 to just say no when Democrats offered a slew of ways to improve military pay and benefits by cutting tax breaks for the wealthy.
Specifically, the Army Times noted that committee conservatives rejected a Dem proposal to scale back tax cuts for the richest Americans in order to provide:
$1 billion for expanding health-care benefits for reservists and their families; $1 billion to improve military housing; $350 million for targeted pay raises for enlisted members; $141 million in danger pay and family separation allowance increases; $50 million to improve family support programs for reservists; $14 million for public schools near military bases that teach many military dependents.
Not surprisingly, the GOP sided with the tax cuts instead of the diverse benefits for the troops. Also not surprisingly, the Army Times didn’t seem to appreciate it.
Keep in mind, the Army Times was the same publication that offered a scathing editorial on the administration last summer for failing to follow through on its commitment to the troops. The editorial was titled, “Nothing but lip service.”
In recent months, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap — and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately.
[…]
Taken piecemeal, all these corner-cutting moves might be viewed as mere flesh wounds. But even flesh wounds are fatal if you suffer enough of them. It adds up to a troubling pattern that eventually will hurt morale — especially if the current breakneck operations tempo also rolls on unchecked and the tense situations in Iraq and Afghanistan do not ease.
Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas, who notes that the House passed a resolution in March pledging “unequivocal support” to service members and their families, puts it this way: “American military men and women don’t deserve to be saluted with our words and insulted by our actions.”
Translation: Money talks — and we all know what walks.
And speaking of politics and the armed forces, be sure to check out Ryan Lizza’s item about Kerry’s outreach to servicemen and women in this week’s issue of The New Republic. It does a great job explaining why many in uniform may be hesitant to back Bush this year, the ways in which Kerry is seeking to capitalize on that fact, and the larger dynamic of why targeting the “military vote” isn’t as easy as it may sound.
Whether or not Bush has been paying attention to Fox and the veterans’ groups he represents, it’s clear that John Kerry has. Indeed, the Massachusetts senator’s platform on veterans’ issues reads as though it was lifted from the most recent The Independent Budget. There has been a great deal of attention paid to whether Kerry’s status as a decorated veteran would enable him to win more votes among veterans and the military than another Democrat might. But Kerry’s pitch to this audience goes well beyond his biography. For months, Democrats have been salivating over the prospect that the anger of veterans’ groups, the frustration of military families whose loved ones are away on extended troop rotations, and even the discontent of the troops themselves have combined to create a perfect storm of opportunity for Kerry to win a large chunk of the military vote.
“The military vote” is actually a misnomer. Though it suggests a monolithic group of voters, the truth is there is very little data available about how Americans tied to the military actually cast their ballots. Logistically, it’s difficult to survey troops serving abroad, and, historically, exit polls at home haven’t asked questions about military service. But Kerry advisers and outside academics who study the armed services divide the military vote up into four basic categories — current service members, reservists and National Guard members, military families, and veterans — each with a varying degree of potential for the Democratic nominee this year.
In fact, Lizza identifies the two constituencies that may be the most amenable to Kerry’s outreach.
Kerry may have a greater opportunity still pursuing the votes not of soldiers themselves but of their families. “The one place where Kerry has an appeal is military households,” says Peter Feaver, a professor at Duke University who studies the political culture of the military and is generally skeptical of claims that Democrats have an opening with military voters. “He may have an advantage there. Not all of them, but the ones of National Guard or Reserve who are over-mobilized or poorly mobilized to serve in Iraq.” One of the few pieces of recent data about how these families feel about Bush doesn’t bode well for him. A poll in September pegged Bush’s approval rating at 36 percent among the relatives of servicemembers.
But the bloc of “military voters” that might have the greatest Democratic potential is the largest of all: veterans. There are some 27 million veterans nationwide, making up about 20 percent of the overall electorate. Kerry has done more to target them than any other military subgroup. His advisers believe that his status as a decorated vet will earn him a hearing with these voters that Al Gore never got–and they’re determined to make the most of it. “We think that those folks are more available to us than [to] lots of other Democrats for two basic reasons,” says a senior adviser. First, “John Kerry is a veteran and has fought for vets his entire career. The veterans’ community knows that. Second, is that this administration has done a lot to tick off the veterans’ communities–veterans’ health benefits, pensions, and a variety of other issues. There is a push away from Bush, and there’s a pull toward John Kerry.”