Groundhog Day

June 16, 2006

I was watching The Daily Show earlier this week and saw a video on oil prices by “correspondent” Rob Corddry. It was a pretty funny bit — Corddry rode around in a stretch Hummer limo, mocking bike riders, complaining about the enormous cost of filling the truck up, and driving a car from one end of the monstrosity to the other. All the while, Corddry drew comparisons between now and the last oil crisis — high prices, a dubious war that had no apparent end, turmoil in the Middle East, and a scandal-plagued president whom the public no longer trusted. But, Corddry said, “Today, the situation is completely different.”

The video was, however, a year old. TDS ran the exact same clip almost exactly 12 months ago. It was just as funny this time around, but it was a little disconcerting to see how everything is exactly the way it was when the video ran the first time.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that recent political events seem to be repeating themselves. Quick, when were these headlines published?

* Karl Rove has an election-year strategy that involves smearing Democrats.

* Dick Cheney is arguing (falsely) that John Kerry saw the same pre-war intelligence as the president.

* Conservative Republicans are saying critics of the war in Iraq are implicitly pro-al Queda.

* Bush wants everyone to believe Democrats will raise taxes.

* The media is writing about how Democrats don’t all agree on a single policy for Iraq.

Most of these come from just the past three days, but they could have just as easily come from 2005. Or ’04, ’03, or ’02. It’s almost as if the political world is standing still.

The right seems to believe they’ll keep running the same play until the left figures out a way to stop it — and at this point, it’s not altogether clear they can. So we end up watching the players play their roles like they’ve been doing for several years now. It’s a little painful.

Bush wants everyone to believe Democrats will raise taxes.

Well, won’t the Democrats raise taxes if given the opportunity? I bloody well hope so! I’d be quite disappointed if the Democrats retake Congress and/or the White House and allow the Bush administration’s irresponsible tax cuts for rich oil buddies to stay in place. The Democrats should not be afraid to confront this issue and demand some sacrifice from the public to repair some of the damage from Bush’s completely irresponsible economic policies.

  • Re: Pre-war intelligence

    We have a bizarro world here. Let me get this straight; Congress is the body that can declare war, yet they claim they didn’t see all the intelligence. But, when it comes to Supreme Court Justicices, where they only have advice and consent (not the right to appoint), they put on a dog and pony show and obstuct and pull out all sorts of data concerning the candidates.

    It just doesn’t add up to me. Either they really didn’t see the intelligence or they cannot be trusted with the decision to go to war because they don’t have their own relationship with the CIA.

  • Also, don’t forget that prior to the last Presidential election, I heard much talk from liberals about how Bush was going to institute a draft. This is the same type of “warnings” that the Republicans engage in during election time.

  • It is the Barnum principle in action.

    Bush can profit from accusing the Democrats of wanting to raise taxes, as long as an electoral majority are not smart enough or responsible enough to recognize that government should finance its activities through prudent levels of taxation.

    Democrats favor prudent fiscal policy, so, yes, Democrats are sure to raise taxes relative to Reagan/Bush borrow-and-squander deficit policies.

    War is hard work, persistance and “resoluteness” are virtues and the Democrats want to give up and get out. That narrative only works because an electoral majority does not demand to know what our goals in Iraq are, and what the plan to achieve them is.

    Digby at Hullabaloo put it quite well. “Bush is incompetent.” Democrats should say it loud, and say it, proud. The evidence is abundant. If the American People decide they want incompetence, weakness and decline, well, that’s the will of the People.

  • Here’s one that caught my attention and I blogged about:

    We may have turned a corner in terms of security. . .
    This administration did not do a particularly good job of preparing for postwar Iraq before the invasion, and it has not always made the right decisions on how to proceed politically, diplomatically, and militarily in the reconstruction of Iraq. . . But the most important thing the administration has done is to make clear, both in word and in deed, its determination to see our mission in Iraq completed.

    From a Weekly Standard article in March, 2004.

  • I’ve had the same feeling for quite a while, that I’m seeing the same things over and over again. No progress at all. It’s so frustrating and scary. Can the nation survive like this?

  • Hey, look at that measure most Republicants cite as to our nation’s well-being, the stock market. It has been stuck for the past 5+ years as well.

  • I’ll buy the rest of the bullet points, but this one seems a little hard to swallow:

    “The media is writing about how Democrats don’t all agree on a single policy for Iraq.”

    That would suggest Democrats do have a policy statement on Iraq that is a substantially different from the Bush administration’s. When did that happen? Last time I looked, Congressional Democrats were still all over the map.

  • Also, don’t forget that prior to the last Presidential election, I heard much talk from liberals about how Bush was going to institute a draft. This is the same type of “warnings” that the Republicans engage in during election time.

    In one debate, Kerry said “Our Guard and Reserves have been turned into almost active duty. You’ve got people doing two and three rotations. You’ve got stop-loss policies, so people can’t get out when they were supposed to. You’ve got a back-door draft right now.”

    He never said Bush would reinstate the draft.

    Bush’s response was “There are 30 countries there. It denigrates an alliance to say we’re going alone, to discount their sacrifices. You cannot lead an alliance if you say, you know, you’re going alone. And people listen. They’re sacrificing with us.”

    How many of those countries are still there? How many have a significant number of troops on the ground?

    I remember some polls saying the majority of people thought a draft was likely, and conspiracy theorists have been saying it for years, but I honestly can’t remember any legitimate Democrat claiming Bush would actually reinstate it.

    In fact, didn’t Democrat Charlie Rangel introduce a bill to reinstate the draft? Granted, his purpose was to level the playing field between classes and races (since a large part of the military is poor or a minority) but if anyone could be accused of attempting to instate a draft, I would think it would be him.

  • The media is writing about how Democrats don’t all agree on a single policy for Iraq.

    Last night on NPR’s All Things Considered E. J. Dionne and David Brooks discussed the Iraq debate. I was struck by the fact that Brooks didn’t try to push the Republican party line as he so often does.

    Brooks actually said that the divide on the Democratic side over Iraq is a principled one. Further that Bush has bet his presidency on Iraq. Dionne picked up on this to note that the divide on the Democratic side is due to the fact that Bush has made such a mess of things, that it isn’t clear how to clean it all up. On the other hand, the Republicans have it fairly easy in the debate. Their clear choice is to stick with the president and don’t admit that things are FUBAR.
    There isn’t a transcript but you can listen to the exchange here.

    As a side note, there is an interesting scientific study which has been recently reported on which may shed some light on the BushCo. psychology with regard to Iraq.

    .

  • Yes, I recall Rangel’s effort. I frequent several liberal chat rooms and I heard many warnings about the draft if Bush won. Ironically, I mentioned Rangel as a rebuttal to these warnings, saying that it was the Democrats driving the issue.

    I should have been more clear that I wasn’t necessarily referring to politicians on this.

  • That would suggest Democrats do have a policy statement on Iraq that is a substantially different from the Bush administration’s. When did that happen? Last time I looked, Congressional Democrats were still all over the map.

    Fair enough, but that wasn’t exactly the point I had hoped to emphasize. Dem leaders don’t agree on what happens next in Iraq, that’s true. They didn’t a year ago, or two years ago, and they don’t now. Then again, so what?

    Media accounts seem fascinated by the diversity of thought among top party officials, so they keep writing the same story, over and over again, year after year. I keep wanting to tell editors at the major outlets, “Yes, Dems are divided on Iraq. We got it the first 10 times you told us.”

  • We just keep forgetting that winning the Republican GWOT has nothing to do with defeating terrorism, winning in Iraq or winning in Afghanistan and everything to do with winning votes.

    Problem is America loves a winner and hates a loser. W is losing in Iraq, losing in Afghanistan and losing the GWOT.

    Or more to the point: W is a loser.

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